כמעשה ארץ מצרים אשר ישבתם בה לא תעשו וכמעשה ארץ כנען אשר אני מביא אתכם שמה לא תעשו ובחקתיהם לא תלכו: את משפטי תעשו ואת חקתי תשמרו ללכת בהם אני ד': ושמרתם את חקתי ואת משפטי אשר יעשה אתם האדם וחי בהם אני ד': (“According to the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelt you will not do, and according to the practice of the land of Këna‘an whither I am bringing you, you shall not do; and by their laws [huqqoth] you shall not go. My judgments [mishpatim] you shall do and My huqqoth you shall keep, to go by them; I am Ha-Shem. And you will keep My huqqoth and My mishpatim which an adam will do, and live by them; I am Ha-Shem”; XVIII, 3-5).
The Egyptians amongst whom the bënei Yisra’él had lived for 210 years had built a spectacular civilization, whose archaeological remains draw millions of tourists to the Nile valley to this day. What practices of this people are we not to emulate? How were they like those of the Këna‘anim from whom Israel would inherit the Holy Land? And while we are asking questions, note the peculiar alternation of verbs in the next two verses: We are to “do” or “make” [‘asa] G-d’s mishpatim, and “keep” [shamar] His huqqoth, then we are to “keep” them both, to “do” them. What are huqqoth and mishpatim? What is the point of the alternation?
B.
Hazal ask our first question: אי "כמעשה" יכול לא יבנו בנינים ולא יטעו נטיעות כמוהם ת"ל "ובחקתיהם לא תלכו" לא אמרתי לך אלא בחקים החקוקים להם ולאבותיהם ולאבות אבותיהם (“According to what ‘practice’? Can it be that they should not erect buildings or plant crops as they did? This is the teaching of ‘and by their huqqoth you shall not go’: I said this to you concerning only the laws which have been decreed for them [huqqim ha-haquqim lahem] and for their fathers and their fathers’ fathers”; תורת כהנים, פרשתנו). The midrash then goes on to detail these huqqim ha-haquqim lahem, which turn out to be the very catalogue of deviant practices, ‘arayoth, which occupies the rest of our parasha, against which Israel are repeatedly warned.
The Maharal mi-Prag (גבורות ד' פ"ד) picks up this thread, and notes that even after two centuries of exposure to the corrosive Egyptian influence, Israel had been little affected by this aspect of their culture. In evidence, he cites Psalms CXXII, 4: שבטי קה עדות לישראל (“Ha-Shem’s tribes are testimony to Israel”), i.e., שהעיד שמו עליהם שהם בני אבותיהם (“that His name upon them attested that they were sons of their fathers”), unlike the Egyptians who, because of their practices, could never be certain of their patrimony. Indeed, throughout that entire period, only one woman of Israel היתה במצרים שזנתה ופרסמה הכתוב שנאמר "ויצא בן אשה ישראלית והוא בן איש מצרי" מלמד שלא היתה בישראל רק זו וגו' (“was there in Egypt who fornicated and Scripture publicised her, as it is said, ‘And the son of an Israelite woman who was the son of an Egyptian man went forth’ [Leviticus XXIV, 10], teaching that there was no other in Israel but this one....”). The Këna‘anim, close ethnic relations of the Egyptians (cf. Genesis X, 6), shared their proclivities, as is apparent from the juxtaposition of their “practice” to that of their North African cousins just before the catalogue of ‘arayoth in our parasha. It is interesting that in the above-quoted midrash Hazal refer to both nations’ sexual mores as huqqim ha-haquqim lahem, especially in light of their comment elsewhere, on Exodus XV, 25: שם שם לו חק ומשפט (“...there [Moshe] laid down to [Israel] hoq and mishpat...”), that חק אלו העריות (“hoq [refers to] the ‘arayoth”; מכילתא שם). So if a hoq is something like the prohibited ‘arayoth, what are mishpatim?
C.
The Talmud defines mishpatim as follows: דברים שאלמלא נכתבו דין הוא שיכתבו ואלו הן עבודה זרה וג"ע וש"ד וגזל וברכת השם (“things which, were they not written [in the Torah], judgment would cause them to be written [by people], and they are: Idolatry, and ‘arayoth and bloodshed and robbery and cursing Ha-Shem”), whilst huqqim are דברים שהשטן משיב עליהם ואלו הן אכילת חזיר ושעטנז וחליצת יבמה וטהרת מצורע ושעיר המשתלח ושמא תאמר מעשה תהו הם ת"ל "אני ד'" אני ד' חקקתיו ואין לכם רשות להרהר בהם (“Things about which the yétzer ha-ra‘ talks back: Eating pigs [cf. e.g. Leviticus XI, 7], sha‘tnéz [ibid., XIX, 19 and Deuteronomy XXII, 11] and halitza [ibid., XXV,9] and the purification of a mëtzora‘ [Leviticus XIV, 2-32] and the scapegoat [ibid., XVI, 10]; and lest you say that they are meaningless practices, this is why it says ‘I am Ha-Shem’; I, Ha-Shem, decreed it, and you do not have permission to question them”; יומא ס"ז: עיי' רש"י שם). As the Torah Tëmima explains, the Talmud is מפרש משפט על הדינים שהשכל והמוסר מחייבים אותם לעשות או שלא לעשות וחקה הם מצות שאין השכל והדעת משיגם (“explaining mishpat in terms of things which reason and morality compel to do or not to do, and a huqqa is [one of] those mitzvoth which reason and knowledge do not grasp”). He goes on to explain that this is the reason the Torah says simply “do” concerning mishpatim: Since they are intellectually self-evident, no justification or detailed explanation is necessary; all that is necessary is execution and implementation. Concerning huqqoth, however, we are obli-gated to learn them, to commit them to memory, since they are not self-evident or subject to logical analysis.
But the sharp-eyed reader will already have noted the apparent contradiction between the midrëshei halacha quoted above and our Talmudic passage, in that the first assign ‘arayoth to the category of huqqoth whilst here they are termed mishpatim. And why does our passage then go on to tell us the we must “keep” both mishpatim and huqqoth, in light of the Torah Tëmima’s explanation?
D.
To engage in the practices which the Torah terms ma‘asé eretz Mitzrayim and ma‘asé eretz Këna‘an is to undermine the foundations of a stable, functioning society. This should be obvious to anyone capable of viewing the matter dispassionately: Such actions corrode and vitiate the family structure essential to the nurturing of the next generation, and, by fostering mistrust and suspicion, they wreck social cohesion generally, not instantaneously, but gradually, over time.
Hence, the Talmud categorizes them as mishpatim, matters discernible through the exercise of judgment. However, the human capacity for self-deception under the influence of the yétzer ha-ra‘ and its physical lusts is endless. Once one accepts the demands of the yétzer, they become huqqoth (or huqqim; for our purposes he two words are basically synonymous), and children raised in the spirit of this laissez-faire, anything-goes attitude toward fundamental morality will regard them as haquqim lahem (as the Torath Kohanim quoted above ssys), not amenable any more to rational analysis and judgment. Over time, “for them, for their fathers and their fathers’ fathers,” such practices will work their evil, corrupting the society at large, leaving it a rickety, vulnerable, insecure structure. This is why Hazal also tell us, in this context and that of the instructions given at Mara, before Mattan Torah (“there” in the verse from Exodus quoted supra), that they also fall into the category of huqqim. To a prophet and tzaddiq of the stature of Avraham avinu, the trend was obvious already in the early days of the Egyptian state (cf. Genesis XII, 10-20, Rashi ad loc.). Later, his great-grandson Yoséf experienced personally the force of Egyptian depravity (ibid., XXXIX,7ff.) and therefore warned his father and brothers to segregate and seclude themselves in Goshen (ibid., XLVI,31-34). Such a trend in Këna‘an was equally obvious to Avraham’s son, Yitzhaq, as we read in Genesis XXVI, 6-25. Over time, their society, too, would be eroded and crumble before the onslaught of Israel, girded with the moral armor of Torah. This is what G-d meant when he told Avraham that his descendants would only return to the Holy Land in the fourth generation after exile, כי לא שלם עון האמרי עד הנה (“...for Emori iniquity is not complete until them”; ibid, XV, 16). Këna‘ani society was not yet ripe for the fall. Western civilization now finds itself at this same moral crossroads. The United States, in particular, has been subject to the assault of the “sexual revolution” since the early 1960’s, and the resulting laissez-faire, “anything-goes” attitude toward traditional morality has even come to infect relatively conservative circles, for it underlies the Libertarian fallacy, that such behaviors between “consenting adults” do not harm anyone else; to the contrary, as we have seen, they rot societies from the inside out. The choice between the Torah’s self-evident mishpatim or the “non-judgmental” huqqim ha-haquqim lahem will have to be made very soon, lest the damage become irreversible, and the West go the way of Egypt and Këna‘an. For ourselves, as we complete our preparations for Pesah, simultaneously cleaning the hamétz from our houses and from our souls, it is wise to reflect on the liberation from the mores of Egypt and Këna‘an which the Exodus from Egypt and subsequent Mattan Torah constitute, and redouble our sense of gratitude to Ha-Shem Eloqeinu.
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