Welcome to KOE's project, dt@koe. Thank you to Yehudah Mirsky for contributing this week's dvar torah. If you are interested in participating in this project through writing or receiving divrei torah, please contact Jason Herman at dt@koe.org. Shabbat shalom.

The revelation at Sinai was deeply auditory, full of sound. Now we move to a more silent realm. These laws are not spoken; they are literally ‘set before’ the people, arrayed, as Rashi famously says, like a shulhan arukh, a set table, an imposition of order and etiquette on the messy business of living. The absence of dialogue here is a fitting legal preamble to the largely silent mishkan whose workings are to be described in the coming weeks.

There are, however, some voices to he heard here. First the eved ‘ivri, the Hebrew slave who freely accepts his servitude and is thus, in his way, the perfect herald of the law. And we have the shomer, the bailee, who swears in his own defense, who before the law can only avail himself of sacred words as his own will not suffice. And then a different voice entirely:

“You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do, I will hear their cry as soon as they cry out to Me. And My anger will blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives will become widows and your children orphans.” (22:21-23)

The wail of the widow and orphan erupt amid the staid formulae of the law, and the balanced formulations of ‘if x then y’ crack under the moral cadence of commandment, and then crack again, at the prohibition against keeping the poor borrower’s collateral overnight: “It is his only clothing, the sole covering for his skin. In what else shall he sleep? Therefore if he cries out to Me, surely I will hear his cry, for I am compassionate.” (22:26)

The Targum says that these crying voices are prayers. Ordinarily, the Gemara says (Bava Kamma 93a), one may not cry out for divine judgment against others, unless there is no earthly judge to take matters in hand. The widow, orphan and destitute are clearly people who might be expected to find little justice in the human world. But is this a conventional prayer? Commenting on the words ‘I will surely pay heed” the Mekhilta (Horovitz-Rabin ed., p. 313) says that God will hear the cry whether or not the oppressed actually cry out. The inaudible cry is not inaudible to God. And yet, He holds us to account for the cries we do not hear, and exacts judgment for our willful deafness.

The silent cry of the widow, orphan and destitute point to a deeper truth about the Divine presence.

In commenting on these verses, the Malbim notes that Rambam writes in his Guide of the Perplexed (I: 36) that God’s anger is reserved exclusively for idolaters – divine rewards and punishments are simply the natural workings of the universe, but the idolater disturbs that system at it’s heart and kindles divine anger. Yet here God’s anger is expressly inflamed at those who oppress widows and orphans, and where is the idolatry there?

There is, I think, an answer to be found elsewhere in the Rambam’s writings, specifically in the Mishneh Torah. There (Hilkhot Matnot ‘Aniyyim 10:3) he writes that whoever shirks the duties of charity “is called base, as an idolator is called base…And the Holy Blessed One is close to the cries of the poor…for a covenant obtains between Him and them as it is written ‘surely I will hear his cry.’”

What connects the idolater and the oppressor? Both proclaim the absence of God and the ultimate multiplicity of existence, a thoroughgoing alienation of people from one another and from the larger whole. Elsewhere in his Code, the Rambam says that “He who spoke and the world came to be” always heeds the cries of the widow and orphan (Hilkhot De’ot 6:10); in yet another he passage refers to the command in this parsha not to oppress the ger, the stranger: “for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” (23:9) and says that this encompasses even the wound of verbal abuse, which is “masur la’lev,” given over to the heart. (Hilkhot Mekhirah 14:18). God is the Master of speech and the Lord of silence.

In hearing the silent screams and sensing hidden wounds of the widow, orphan, destitute and stranger, we testify to the reality that ties us to them and bids us to act before the Divine presence.

Rav Kook tells us in his Orot Ha’Kodesh (vol. I, p. 116) that there is a divine attribute, or facet, of silence (midat ha’demamah) and that we must cultivate a higher listening (ha’hakshavah ha’elyonah) that attends to that silence, a cultivated silence where we discover our connections to the world and others through God and rise above the cacophony of this alienated world.

Near the close of this week’s parsha (24:7) B’nei Yisrael say “na’aseh v’nishma’” -- we will do and obey, literally, we will hear. The spoken and unspoken, said and unsaid, heard and unheard. For all that, we will listen.

For more information, please contact us at dt@koe.org.