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February 18, 2023
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parshat Mishpatim
Rules of Life
February 18, 2023 — 27 Shevat 5783
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Pierre Frelix had a rough childhood. He spent his early years on the southside of Chicago, in a neighborhood which was rife with gunfire and violence. Both of his parents worked as hard as they could but money was always tight, and the family was always on edge. When Pierre was just seven, his parents had managed to scrape together enough resources to buy him a bike. That first day with his new bike, he rode it to a local park with his friends and was playing around when someone put a gun to his head and demanded that he get off his bike and walk away without turning around. He never saw his bike again, and his parents didn’t have the resources to buy him another.
After that, Pierre was terrified to go out. His family decided to move, but without any real resources, they ended up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Minneapolis. There, Pierre made friends and discovered a love of basketball. He and his friends developed strategies to get close to the basketball stars they idolized. They would call hotels where they knew NBA players stayed and would ask for Steve Kerr or other players who made room reservations using their real names. If they got through and the player answered, they would race to the hotel and try to get autographs. Pierre remembers being rebuffed by Michael Jordan who told him, “I ain’t signing nothing. You all should be at home sleeping and getting ready for school tomorrow.” That memory was a treasure.
When they weren’t stalking players at hotels, Pierre and his friends would shovel snow or rake leaves or collect cans to scrape together enough money to buy a ticket to a basketball game at the Target Center. They would send one boy in with the ticket, and he would go in, walk to the back and creep down a side stair where he would open a side door for the rest of the group to come in. They did this all the time. They would stand in the upper deck and watch the game until after half-time, when the security teams stopped checking tickets, and then they would go down and sit closer to the game to watch the end. They were cheery and polite, they helped everyone around them and acted as if they belonged there. They were such a constant presence that some security personnel thought they were related to one of the players. Every time they came, they would try their best to jam the doors with bubble gum or tape to try to make it easier to come back.
One night, though, things didn’t go as planned. The boys had successfully jammed the door the night before and walked in cheerily only to find a team of security guards waiting for them at the top of the stairs. They turned to run, only to find another team of security guards had come up behind them, trapping them. They were marched by guards and police to the Target Center Security Center, in front of then-Director of Security, Bob Goedderz.
Pierre was sure he and his friends were headed to jail. There they were, standing in the middle of the security office, surrounded by police and security staff. Goedderz stood in front of them. He didn’t say anything, just looked from one boy to the next, daring them to speak. Every boy was contemplating his fate, unsure whether it would be worse to be sent to jail or for their parents to find out what they had been up to. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Goedderz asked, “these are the kids?” Then, again with intensity, “These are the kids?!”
As was recently published in The Athletic, “Goedderz reached into his blazer and pulled out a stack of tickets, handing one to each of the boys. “Stop breaking into this building and causing trouble,” Goedderz told them. “If you all want to come to the game, you don’t have to do that. You come ask for me. I’ll give you all tickets to the game. You don’t have to cause trouble anymore.””
How is it that the Director of Security, after weeks of watching these boys break into the stadium without punishment, after weeks of tracking them and building a plan to catch them, how is it that he could respond with such kindness?
As he shared recently with reporter, Jon Kraczynski, “I could see (Pierre) was a good kid…he wasn’t a guy that was going to get in trouble. He didn’t have the means to buy tickets. I guess I felt for him.”
This week, we are reading Parshat Mishpatim. This Torah portion is all about rules and regs. After the revelation, God spells out in minute detail what the people should do and how they should behave. It’s not a conversation, not open to interpretation, the laws are given without explanation and the people simply accept them. They say, na’aseh v’nishmah—we will do what God says and then we will seek to understand what we are doing and why.
So often, this is how we engage with our world. That is how law enforcement agents get into trouble. They get so hooked on forcing people to behave in a certain way, so focused on doing rather than thinking, that they lose track of what is appropriate force and end up causing harm rather than maintaining order. It happens in the classroom too. Recently, I was speaking with a family. Their child had come up with a creative way to solve a math equation. Their methodology wasn’t the same as what was being taught, but it worked. Every answer they wrote on their worksheet was right. But the teacher gave them a 0 for the assignment. Why? Because the way they did the work was different than what the teacher had taught. And the teacher wanted them to follow the rules—na’aseh v’nishmah.
When we receive rules and follow them in this way, there is a strength. It saves mental energy. Na’aseh v’nishma means you don’t have to evaluate every given situation. You just do, you follow the rules, you get through the day, and you save your mental energy for the projects and ideas you care about most.
But there is another way to engage with rules and with law that is revealed in the book of Vayikra. God says וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֤ם אֶת־חֻקֹּתַי֙ וְאֶת־מִשְׁפָּטַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֨ר יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה אֹתָ֛ם הָאָדָ֖ם וָחַ֣י בָּהֶ֑ם you shall guard my laws and ordinances and you shall live by them. In other words, rules aren’t just limits that are intended to be followed without thought. In an ideal world, the process of following rules, of affirming societal norms, should enhance and sustain our lives.
If you follow rules in this way, you aren’t just thinking about what the law says or about preserving status quo, you are instead thinking about what needs to happen to preserve everyone’s best interest. For this security guard, that meant that he interpreted his job not as needing to punish the boys, but as coming up with a creative way for them to live within the scope of the rules without compromising security or standards. He didn’t change the rules for the boys, he didn’t compromise his values, but he also didn’t push them out into the violence of the streets—he created a reality in which they could follow the rules and in which those rules could in turn teach them and help them to grow.
Because Goedderz didn’t punish the boys, and instead gave them tickets whenever they wanted to come to a game, they built a friendship over the years. That meant that when Goedderz was in need of additional security personell years later, he was able to hire a group of boys whom he knew and trusted. And those boys used the expertise they developed in their adolescence to make the Target Center safer and more secure. Pierre went on to become a loss prevention specialist at a local department store and a special education teacher during the day and continued working as a security guard at the Target Center at night. In his work, he always remembered the way that Goedderz had related to him as a teen. Whenever he is working, and in whatever context, he always sees the person in front of him and looks for ways that he can affirm the rules in a way that lifts everyone up.
Rules and regs are a part of our lives. We need them to function. But the way we engage with those rules—that’s up to us. We can follow blindly, without thinking, and just try to make our way through. Or we can choose to engage with the rules, to use them to enhance our lives and the lives of those around us.