Listen Up
I am posting a week early and several years late :-). Now that we have ventured out of the narratives in the Torah, the parashah-themed meals become a bit more challenging. I have always been stymied by the more legalistic/ritualistic and less story-based parshiyot, but I have renewed focus and will try to add to my well-honed parashat hahshavua ideas. For Parashat Mishpatim, I will build a meal around an odd variety of foods: orecchietti, corn on the cob, wood ear wild mushrooms, elephant ear pastries, and onion rings.
Each of these foods calls to mind the following passage at the start of the parashah:
If you buy a Hebrew slave, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If his master has given him a wife and she has born him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the slave shall plainly say, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.” Then his master shall bring him to the judges; he shall also bring him to the door or to the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever. (Shemot 21:1-7)
With the pasta (whose name means tiny ears), the ears of corn, Chinese mushrooms, onion rings (to symbolize the hole pierced in the ear) and the palmierre desserts, the focus will be all ears. These dishes will invite discussion about why a slave's ear is pierced when he forfeits his freedom. The questions surrounding this mitzvah abound and generate a lot of food for thought:
- Why is this the sign chosen for the slave?
- What does the ear symbolize?
- Why is the master tasked with piercing the ear, rather than a beit din, the slave himself or some other entity or person?
- Why must this be performed at the doorpost? How might this connect to the doorposts from the Exodus story? What is it about this threshhold?
Fortunately, traditional (starting with the gemara in Kiddushin 22b) and modern commentators and Torah scholars delve deeply into these questions. The meal will generate our own discussions and also give us the chance to explore what others suggest about this ritual. Of course, the entire ceremony and surrounding section of the parashah also call the institution of slavery into question. We will have an opportunity to think about why the Torah introduces this mitzvah on the heels of Matan Torah of what this ritual says about the Jewish attitudes toward enslaving someone else when our own purpose is to exercise our freedom to serve God.
