Parshas Mishpatim: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream... To HaShem!
A special Weekly Shtikle mazal tov to my niece Rochel Leah (née Shonek) Greenwald and her husband Shua on the birth and brith of their son, Reuven Pinchas. Mazal tov to the extended Greenwald, Shonek and Bulka families and may the little one grow to be a merit for his namesake and follow in his ways.
Today, 23 Shevat, marks the 4th yahrtzeit of my Oma Jakobovits. The shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmasah, Chayah Sarah bas Zechariah Chaim, z"l.
With the devastating news coming from Eretz Yisrael this week, there has surely been much anguish and tze'akah on a national scale. Apropos of these recent developments, I made an intriguing discovery regarding this word as it appears in our parsha and in numerous other occurrences throughout the Torah. (For a deeper look into the parsha connection, see this week's heart-wrenching video installment from Noam Jacobson.)
A Concordance lookup shows 19 instances of the root tza'ak in total in the Torah, two of which are very close to each other in the week's parsha (22:22 and 26). In both instances - regarding the persecution of widows and orphans and the improper withholding of a garment as collateral - the pasuk speaks not only of the outcry of the victim but also HaShem's heeding those cries. This reveals a fascinating nuance in the precise translation of Targum Onkelos. The word used for tze'akah is kevilteih, a kuf-beis-lamed root. The targum of eshma/veshamati, and I will heed, is ekabeil, seemingly "I will accept." Sure enough, it is the exact same root, kuf-beis-lamed.
I feel this observation is significant enough in its own right. But it gets more interesting. The very first mention of tza’ak, (Bereishis 4:10), when HaShem describes the blood Hevel crying out, the same translation is found – kavlin. There are various other instances as well. However, there are also numerous cases where a different word is used. When the Egyptians cry out to Paroah (Bereishes 41:55), when the officers do the same (Shemos 5:15) and regarding the betrothed girl (Devarim 22:27) the word tzivcha is used. This seems to denote a simple scream. There is a clear pattern. In all of those cases the cries are directed at humans. Even Esav’s cry when he finds out his blessings have been stolen (Bereishis 27:34) are interpreted to be just an exclamation and not a prayer of any sort. So all of these are rendered with the tzadi-vuv-ches root.
The initial examples cited are all cries to HaShem, even if metaphoric (such as blood.) These are assigned a special word. Perhaps we can interpret this choice of root, nearly identical to that of HaShem’s listening, as a means of indicating that these cries are always accepted by HaShem. By definition a call to HaShem will always be answered, whereas screaming to mere mortals can often prove futile and fruitless.
