Miryam's Space

We have  experienced so much drama in Torah these last weeks, as we have at home: Redemption at the sea, Revelation at Sinai. Now in Parashat Mishpatim, meaning Laws, we learn that Sinai’s inspiration is carried forward by the perspiration of the way we act toward one another, to recognize the tzelem, the image of G8d in the other . 

In the few verses I’m honored to read on Shabbat are laws about taking responsibility for things you set in motion, even if you didn’t do them yourself:

If you let your animals graze and they eat grain or food from another’s field, you must pay double. If you start a fire, and it consumes food in another’s field, you must pay back double, or volunteer to work in their field. You set the fire, or the grazers in motion and you must take responsibility when things went out of control and other people were infringed upon. They might starve b/c of your actions. You are responsible.  

Do I have to say if you incite a riot?  On three things the world stands: Truth, Justice and peace.   Pirke Avot

But  if they are outside your group, a ger,  you should love them, and not oppress them, Why? Because, Torah says twice in this parshah:  you know their soul! you’ve been there – refugee immigrants in a land not your own, And in their eyes you are commanded to see your own soul!

I wrote this song for a drash on Mishpatim two years ago. Earlier that year our misdeeds against the stranger rose in glaring ugliness, as immigrants at our southern border were, and continue to be imprisoned and held in inhumane conditions.  For me the image seared in my mind of John Moore’s photo printed on the cover of Time, of the toddler crying beside a towering border patrol officer. The mother and child had been on the road for a month. Many families were separated, and human beings were called illegals

V’hager lo tilchatz, y’datem et nefesh ha-ger,  ki gerim heyitem

These and many other laws were entered into a contract sealed with the words: naaseh v’nishma – we will do, and we will hear. We do first, act justly, and perhaps then we will really be able to nishma – hear, not be deaf

HEAR THEIR CRIES, Miryam Wolfson December 30, 2018, updated January, 10, 2026

You already know how it goes 

To be so far from safety, from home

To be alone, to be a outcast in a narrow zone

Love the immigrant, you were one too

Love the immigrant, you know their soul

Hear their cries and know

You can be part of the healing, 

make things whole

A little boy cries in the night

Though they hear him no one comes to hold him tight

No one makes it right, or reunites

The world seems far too big and too cold

Without Papa beside her to hold  

Bridge

Naaseh v’nishma, We will help and then truly hear

When we comfort and dry the tears 

It can open the way

To be free, to live in dignity

Naaseh v’nishma,  

Let us open our hearts and our minds

Cause there will always be mountains to climb

We can truly be there, 

even gather a glimpse of Divine

if we..

Love the immigrant, we were there too

Love the immigrant, we know their soul

Hear their cries and know

we  must be part of the healing, 

make ourselves whole