Myth and Law - Senior Sermon - Mishpatim

This past Thursday it was my honour and privilege to deliver my senior sermon to the JTS community, my colleagues and teachers that have meant so much to me over the last 5 years of learning. You can watch it on YouTube here, or read the text below (but you'll miss some of the ad libbed jokes).

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never / saw before.
Say "please" before you open the latch, / go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted / front door, / as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat / nothing.
However,
if any creature tells you that it hungers, / feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty, / clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can, / ease its pain.

    Thus begins the poem ‘Instructions’ by Neil Gaiman, explaining the rules one should follow if you ever find yourself in a fairy tale, the web of laws that one should obey in order to emerge triumphant from the realm of folk and fable.
    In genres that are defined by breaking the rules, by imagining the impossible, we might be surprised to find so many laws that drive the plots of fantasy and science-fiction stories. In the classic movie Gremlins, we learnt that ‘No matter how much it cries and begs, you mustn’t feed a Gremlin after midnight’, or the cries of Chief Engineer Scotty in Star Trek that ‘I can’t change the laws of physics, captain.’
    Mythology too is full of rules.
    Celtic Mythology, for example, laid out a system of Geasa, taboos that should never be broken, on its heroes and kings. These rules often seemed arbitrary, like never eating dog meat, never wearing a rainbow cloak at sun rise, never sleeping away from home for 9 nights - but violation of these Geasa usually resulted in tragedy.
    And just as the tales myth often hinge around rules, so too rules are often founded on myths.
    After nearly 5 years of living in this country, perhaps I can mention the legendary status of the Founding Fathers, the mythic quality of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, as opposed to the more legal agenda of the American Constitution.
    Law and myth are intertwined, each giving birth to the other.
    And so it is in Parashat Mishpatim.

The Bricks of Heaven - Mishpatim - Mythic Torah

Lucifer published by DC Comics

If you want to read a comic about Lucifer, the fallen angel starred in his own series written by Mike Carey, published by DC comics, from 1999-2006. A spinoff from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Lucifer followed the story of the devil after he quit his job and left the management of Hell to others.

But if you want to read a comic about God, you're out of luck. With the exception of DC Vertigo's comic Preacher, whose depiction of God is graphic and theologically challenging, the big comic book publishers have chosen to keep God out of there comics.

God clearly exists in the DC universe, for example as seen in Sandman's Season of Mists, but God is never depicted. Both Marvel and DC have chosen to avoid showing God in the flesh, as it were, choosing to have God off the page, if mentioned at all.

While their reasoning may be simply to avoid offending Christians, Muslims or Jews, they are remarkably in-keeping with most of the Bible, that teaches that "you cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20).

We may be surprised then to learn that in this week's parasha of Mishpatim, 74 people did just that.