Blogs

This week, I found myself caught in the wild west of internet lawlessness, on the receiving end of expletive filled messages from a total stranger, triggered by an unfavorable review on eBay. After a few attempts at resolving the conflict in a civilized manner, I finally stopped responding to the stranger’s increasingly virulent threats and insults, choosing instead to make a report to eBay about inappropriate behavior from a seller. In their automated response, eBay informed me that they would follow up on the complaint. In their words, “We’ll take it from here.”

Given the threatening nature of the messages I was receiving, this message did little to reassure me that the matter was closed. I would like to think that the seller received an e-mail with a reminder of the company’s policies and will respect those policies going forward. I am fervently hoping that this menacing stranger will forget all about me and move on with his life. In the absence of any guarantees, I am hoping nonetheless to never hear from this person again and to put the whole situation behind me. Fingers crossed!

This situation has had me thinking… If the real world resembled the internet world, with unenforceable policies instead of systems of justice, would society devolve into chaos, à la Lord of the Flies? Would people turn on each other, cheating, stealing, and killing with abandon, without any fear of consequences? Or would some kind of natural order prevail, some kind of utopian harmony in which people treated each other well out of an innate sense of goodness and justice? Do we need a system of justice to make sure that we treat each other as we would like to be treated?

This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, answers that last question with a resounding yes. Talmudic scholars identify 53 laws packed into this parsha, each intending to regulate the ways that people interact with the world around them. After the ten commandments in Yitro, it’s time to delve into some of the nitty gritty, dictating term limits for slaves, periods of rest for the land, just treatment of widows, consequences for aggressors and those who do not observe Shabbat. Some of these laws have no place in the modern world, but it is interesting that they are given the gravity of divine injunction, instructing the people that their treatment of each other is not just a matter of interpersonal responsibility, but also of respecting a system put in place for the greater good. Doing the right thing doesn’t make us better than anyone else, but it is a sign that we care about the world that we live in, care about the people who inhabit it with us, and recognize the need for a system of justice to hold us to a higher standard on those days when we are listening to our less divine instincts.

Sigh. If only all of this would fit into a comment box on eBay.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rebecca Abbate