What Are the Laws that God Has Commanded Us to Observe?

Bertrand Russell was a bit of a hero of mine back in my college days. As a math major, my first foray into his thinking was via Principia Mathematica, but I quickly came to admire him as one of the rare living (he died during my senior year) Renaissance men. As an adult, I eventually came to learn more about him – his freewheeling lifestyle, for instance – but I never lost respect for him, because of his mathematics and because of the breadth of his interests. A self-proclaimed agnostic, he witnessed the plight of people around him and wrote in 1907:

“The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.”

What better explication can there be of our purpose in life? For those of us who are believers, we can strive to be holy and to serve God, manifested by our caring for others around us.

This week and next, we read some highly significant parshiot. This week is יִתְר֨וֹ, the parasha that includes the Ten Commandments. For the most part, those are foundational laws that any society could live by. I try to imagine what it would have been like to be standing there at the base of the erupting volcano, thunder and lightning all around, with the voice of God intoning these commandments into my very ears. How would it feel to witness such an event in person? Yes, metaphorically, we were all present at Sinai, but what would the sensory experience have been like? No wonder the people were awed into stark terror and asked Moses to get the rest of the laws on their behalf so they wouldn’t have to keep on hearing that voice in those circumstances.

And then next week’s parasha is מִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים. This is one of my favorites, including many of the commandments that make me proud to be Jewish. Working within the context of the times, when slavery was a widespread reality, at least humane conditions were stipulated for the treatment of slaves, including reparations for bodily injury done to them, and provision made for their eventual freedom. 3500 years ago, laws were given about borrowed property, about dangerous animals, about making a loan and taking as security for it something that the borrower could not afford to be without. We are told to treat strangers equitably, for we were strangers in Egypt. We are to care for those who are in less favorable circumstances than ourselves – the widow, the orphan, the poor. Justice should be rendered impartially – don’t accept a bribe and favor the rich, but also don’t bend over backwards to favor the poor beyond the extent of the law. If your enemy’s beast of burden is suffering under its burden, you need to stop and help it, and if you find your enemy’s animal strayed far from home, you need to return it. The seventh day is a day of rest, including for animals. The land too gets its rest and must lie fallow every seventh year, with any crops that grow on it spontaneously belonging to the poor. All that God asks of the people is that they serve God and do not turn aside to worship any other gods, and in return, God will lead them to the Promised Land, protect them, and make them prosperous.

Bertrand Russell pointed out to us that our days are fleeting, that people all around us are suffering, and that the best and highest use we can make of our time is to pitch in, to bear the burden of the other (as Rabbi Ira Stone expresses it), ease the suffering around us. That was true 3500 years ago, that was true in 1907, and that is still true to this very day. Showing love and compassion for our fellow human beings, “shed[ding] sunshine on their path” – what nobler way could we occupy our time?