Shabbat Services and & Torah Study: Mishpatim
Saturday, February 22nd
Emeryville, CA & online
9:30am Shabbat service // 10:30am Torah study

You can join us either in person or on Zoom for Shabbat services and/or Torah study. If you are in the Bay Area, we’d love to have you join us in person. After Torah study, we enjoy a vegetarian potluck meal together and have an opportunity to deepen our connection with one another. If you are able, please bring a vegetarian dish to share with others. For those joining us online, we invite you to also bring food to eat after the service. We will keep the room open so folks can connect with each other after the service.

A peek into Torah study with us and the parsha this week
Last week we received the 10 Speech Acts with broad moral principles for how to live our lives as individuals and how to build a community. Mishpatim sets forth more concrete rules and guidelines for how to live. It reads like a legal code, both criminal and civil. We will critique and discuss these various laws, what they may have meant at the time, whether they were more “advanced” than the laws by which other societies lived at the time, and how we feel about them today. There are laws about slavery, intentional, unintentional, and neglectful killing, injury to other humans and animals, and distinctions between slaves and others.

This parsha repeats two times (of the 36 times in the Torah) that you are not to oppress or wrong the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Remember where you came from. Remember you were slaves and are commanded to have compassion and empathy – that is our inheritance. God warns that if you don’t, God will hear their cries and heed them and put you to the sword and your wives will become widows and your children orphans.

There are many instances in the parsha when God warns of consequences if the rules are not followed. How do we feel about a God that enacts punishment in this way? Is there another way to understand this?

We hope you will join us either in person or on Zoom for spiritually meaningful prayers and a rich discussion.

Accessibility & Covid Practices for this gathering:
Shabbat Services and Torah Study are held at Rabbi Cat’s home. She has a dog that lives in the house (he will not be present). We encourage people to wear a mask if that is comfortable for you. There are 4 steps to enter the house. The house is one story. There are couches, dining room chairs, and a floor for seating (along with pillows one can sit on on the floor). Please try to be scent-free.

Organization: Beyt Tikkun