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Parshat Mishpatim – Land Laws Given in the Wilderness
By: Rabbi Leo Dee
Why does Parshat Mishpatim – the Torah’s great catalog of civil law – follow immediately after the drama of Har Sinai? Why move so quickly from thunder, revelation and the Ten Commandments to injured oxen, property damage, court systems, servants, and land law?
The traditional answer is that Mishpatim teaches us that Torah is not only about Heaven but also about Earth; not only about faith, but also about daily life. That answer is true—but incomplete.
Because Mishpatim is not merely about life. It is about life in a land.
The Mishnah in Pirkei Avot famously states (3:17): “If there is no Derech Eretz, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no Derech Eretz.” For centuries, Derech Eretz, meaning literally “The Land’s path” has been translated as “good behavior,” “a way of life,” or simple decency. A nice message. A necessary one. But perhaps not the original one.
Pirkei Avot was written by our Sages living in the Land of Israel, before exile became the Jewish default condition. Its authors were not imagining Judaism as a portable religion, detached from geography. They lived Torah as a national system, functioning in a real place, with courts, agriculture, economy, and sovereignty. In that context, “Derech Eretz” may not mean manners at all. It may mean something far more literal—and far more demanding: a path to the Land.
This idea is not a modern Zionist slogan. It originates deep in Jewish thought.
The Maharal of Prague explains that Torah is not meant to hover above reality. It needs a vessel in which to take shape. Outside the Land, Torah exists but in a reduced form. In its natural state, Torah belongs in Eretz Yisrael, where law, society, and holiness can align. Torah without a place to land is Torah without its full expression.
The Midrash says this more bluntly. “There is no Torah like the Torah of Eretz Yisrael.” And the Talmud states “Whoever dwells in the Land of Israel is like one who has a God” (Ketubot 110b). These are not compliments to Israel’s scenery; they are claims about the Torah as a code for living. The Torah changes when it is lived in its proper place.
So now, the Mishnah reads differently: If there is no Derech Eretz, there is no Torah. Without a real path (Derech) toward the Land (Eretz), without the aspiration to live Torah where it is meant to be lived, Torah loses its relevance. And if there is no Torah, there is no Derech Eretz: without Torah, the journey (Derech) to the Land (Eretz) becomes just another national story, stripped of covenantal meaning.
This reading fits the Torah itself.
The Torah is not a book about escaping the world. It is a book about returning to Israel. It begins with Creation, as Rashi famously explains, not to teach science but to teach ownership: God made the world and therefore He has the right to give the Land of Israel to His people. From then onward, every story is about struggle, displacement, exile, and return. The Torah ends on a single word: Israel.
Even the Sinai experience supports this idea. The Torah was not given in Egypt, and not given in the Land. It was given in the wilderness along the way. After leaving slavery and before arriving home. The Torah was given to a people already on the move, already committed to a destination. Revelation presupposed direction.
This point is made explicitly by Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi (Manitou), who taught that “Derech Eretz Kadmah laTorah” (Derech Eretz predates the Torah) refers first to Avraham. Before the 10 commandments, before Sinai, God told Avram “Lech Lecha.” Go. Move. Head toward the Land. Only a nation who were willing to walk that road could later receive the Torah.
Manitou also warns against a common but dangerous misunderstanding of the Midrashic phrase “Derech Eretz Kadmah laTorah” which means Derech Eretz preceded the Torah. He argued that it cannot mean that “basic human values” are a prerequisite for Torah, because the moment we ask what those values should be, the idea collapses. Are they American liberal values? Were they German values in the 1930s? Are they the moral fashions of whatever society Jews happen to be living in at a given moment?
If human values are not derived from Torah, then invoking them as a precondition for Torah makes no sense at all. Manitou suggests that Derech Eretz refers not to an external moral code, but to a historical direction. To the ability of a nation to move, to respond to God’s call of Lech Lecha, and to orient its life toward the Land where Torah is meant to be lived. Only a nation capable of stepping forward can receive Torah in the first place.
Perhaps it also explains why we say at the end of the Seder on Pesach, “Next Year in Jerusalem”, seven weeks before Shavuot when we finally receive the Torah. “Derech Eretz Kadma laTorah”. If we’re not planning our journey then we’re not fit to receive the Torah.
And now we can answer the question we began with.
So why does Parashat Mishpatim come immediately after Sinai?
Because Mishpatim is the Torah code designed for living in the Land of Israel. Courts, damages, property law, social responsibility—these are not abstract ethics. They assume land, sovereignty, and society. Mishpatim is Torah that expects to be lived publicly, nationally, and concretely. Without land, it can only be moralized into private virtue. With land, it becomes law.
So why did Derech Eretz come to mean “good manners”? Because exile required it.
When Jews knew that they, their children, and their grandchildren would not reach the Land of Israel, they understood that Torah had to survive without the Land. Chazal did not abandon Israel; they reinterpreted our language so that Judaism could endure in exile. Just as some later commentators spoke of Zion as an idea rather than a place, Derech Eretz became “a way of life.” These were not distortions. They were acts of spiritual triage.
But interpretations born of exile are not meant to last forever.
Today, when return is possible, the Mishnah may be asking to be heard again in its original voice. Torah does not reject living in the world—it demands that we live in the right environment. Torah without Israel is possible. Torah without orientation toward Israel is not.
Parshat Mishpatim reminds us that the Torah was meant to govern a people in its land. Pirkei Avot reminds us that without Derech Eretz, Torah itself collapses. Perhaps our task today is not to invent new meanings—but to allow old ones to come home.
Rabbi Leo Dee is an educator living in Efrat. His second book “‘The Seven Facets of Healing’ is dedicated in memory of his wife Lucy who, together with his daughters Maia and Rina, was murdered by terrorists in April 2023. It is available from Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/Seven-