Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Sanctify them today and tomorrow. This is what G-d instructed Moshe to do to the people in preparation of Matan Torah. Commentators point out that the amazing todays of Matan Torah, the Splitting of the Sea, of other manifest miracles – those days are easy for us to be sanctified. It's the tomorrows that are more difficult for us to become holy. But that is exactly the challenge of Jewish life. This was the challenge G-d presented to the people. Of course you will stand in awe at Sinai. Of course your belief in G-d at the Sea rose to the greatest heights. What about the next day? And the one after that.

B'shalach and Yitro were the Todays. Mishpatim represents the tomorrow. The day after Matan Torah, and the following day, and all the other tomorrows, when the miracles become yesterday's memories and inspiration, and the order of the day is REALITY. Mishpatim follows the major account of Matan Torah and precedes the command to build the Mikdash. It does not primarily deal with the lofty. It is down to earth. Laws of damages, lending & borrowing, injuries, money matters, civil justice, the day to day functioning of society.

Wait! Who said that wasn't lofty? It might not have the dazzle of an ever-increasing sound of the Shofar, but the details of Mishpatim give us another kind of WOW reaction. Your ox falls into the hole in my backyard and dies. Who pays whom? Whose fault is what happened? And what about the carcass? Everything seems to be so brilliantly fair. This is our life. Not just a momentary fiery mountain.

53 mitzvot in Mishpatim. Compare that with one single mitzva to build the Mikdash. Which sedra presents us with more opportunities to become the Holy Nation that G-d wants us to be? 

Mishpatim, actually, is another kind of Matan Torah for us. At the end of the sedra we have another account of the events of the Sinai experience. And throughout the sedra, through all 53 mitzvot, and the other uncounted (in this sedra) mitzvot, and the countless rabbinic laws that flow from the hundreds of pages of Talmud that are linked to Mishpatim, we have the Aseret HaDibrot presented to us, not in chapter-headings, but in nitty-gritty detail. Every one of the Ten Commandments is amplified, elucidated, multiplied, expanded, and clarified by example in Mishpatim (and throughout the Torah).

For example, Thou shall not murder. What about degree of intention, culpability, individual and community responsibility for the crime and its punishment? Not in Yitro. See Mishpatim & elsewhere. When each of our tomorrows becomes today, we need to be excited just as we were at Sinai.