In last week’s Torah portion, we read about the Divine Revelation at Mount Sinai. In this week’s Torah portion, the Torah begins to fine tune the Jewish moral compass. The Torah has transitioned from the story-telling narrative that we have enjoyed for the past few months into an in-depth study of law.

We begin studying about the laws of slaves, we are taught what it means to have a slave according to Torah law. We are taught about the monotheistic legal system, and about judicial honesty. As the Torah enumerates law after law, we begin to form a guidebook for moral and ethical behavior that will accompany the Jewish nation from their sojourn through the desert and into today’s modern society.

The order of the Torah is not happenstance, there is a clear reason for the layout of the Torah portions. A person may think that moral behavior is just what we would do naturally if we didn’t have the Torah as a guide. They may think that care for one’s fellow, respect, honesty, and kindness are values that are ingrained in our psyche as human beings.

The fact that the study of these laws begins directly after the biggest event of Divine revelation in history teaches us that our value system is a G-dly value system. We can see clearly in society today, as well as in many societies throughout history, that when removed from a G-d based belief system, society begins to degenerate.

The revelation at Sinai made it clear that every human being is created in G-d’s image and is worthy to be treated as such. The laws we study now guide us through seemingly mundane occurrences and show us that G-d is not only found in books and synagogues, rather He is with us, guiding us, in every aspect of our daily lives.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zushe Cunin