“Is this minutiae meaningful to you?” My friend Sarah, a rabbi in DC, asked me over a text earlier this week. I stopped and thought about it for a moment before responding. Her question was rhetorical; the context was troubleshooting her son’s sleep issues and discussing wake windows and naps and bedtimes. For any young parent, it’s so easy to get mired in this minutiae, and yet somehow, my answer to her was, “yes, it seems like it’s the only place to find any meaning.”
This week’s parsha, Mishpatim, builds on last week’s reading, featuring the Revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai. But in this week’s parsha we don’t experience the grandiose mountain with lighting and thunder and the sounds of shofar, we hear about over 50 laws that the Israelites must adhere to. They pertain to the mundane: our engagement with those that work for us, rules on kashrut and the way we eat, what happens when people fight and there are damages, finding a lost object or animal, and on and on and on. These are not the once-in-a-lifetime moments, these are about the everyday occurrences and the way the Torah wants to shape our behavior.
I am struck by the completely different nature of these two readings. And the rabbis commenting on this parsha were, too, and they read into one small letter connecting them. The parsha begins with the letter vav - meaning ‘and,’ a connecting word. It’s a strange way to start a new parsha, “And these are the rules you should set before them.” The rabbis, interpreting the Torah, remind us that these minutiae are so deeply connected to the more obvious meaning-rich experience at Sinai.
They are reminding us that it is precisely these small, mundane moments that uphold the big ones. In fact, one commentator teaches that if we focus on the 50+ seemingly smaller mitzvot in this parsha, we’ll end up fulfilling the 10 Commandments we received last week. The rabbis here are also reminding us that where we’ll actually find an enhanced life is in the day-to-day occurrence, the mundane, the regular.
It’s easy - understandable, even - to hope for Sinai moments. It makes sense that we’ll search for the big, mountain moments, all the while missing the small, everyday, seemingly boring experiences that can actually give us meaning. This is part of the Torah that Mishpatim offers us. Inside of the mundane, there is meaning. In the interaction with the employee, in the quick lunch we grab with a friend, in the way we speak with a stranger - these are moments that build up to a life of meaning. And while I’d love for each of us to have Sinai moments, I pray even more that our lives are filled with Mishpatim, with statutes, with the small moments that anchor us to meaning.
