Parashat Mishpatim: Eating While Seeing G-d
How Do We Balance Our Yearning for Spirituality with Humility to Serve?
Why do I Get Frustrated When Bogged Down by Administrative Work?
From a very young age, I was drawn to spirituality and expanded consciousness. As a teenager, I searched restlessly for ways to access deeper layers of reality beyond what is immediately visible in the physical world. I experimented with meditation, marijuana, and music-based ceremonies that promised altered states of awareness and glimpses of hidden truth. I remember vividly asking my yoga teacher, when I was fourteen, whether he could teach me how to see auras. I will never forget his answer: “You don’t need to learn to see auras. There is so much already revealed in this world, if only we focus on it.” Even then, his words did not quiet my yearning. I sensed that beneath ordinary perception lay another dimension waiting to be revealed, and I was determined to find it.
That yearning carried me through the exploration of different spiritual paths and religions, until it finally led me home to the Torah – thank G-d. In those early years of teshuva, everything felt illuminated. The spiritual radiance I encountered was breathtaking, almost overwhelming. I remember dancing with uncontained joy at my own wedding and at the weddings of close friends, celebrating the birth of my first son, and feeling the euphoric awe of becoming a mother. I sensed revelation in the most embodied moments of life – at baby celebrations, communal prayers, and gatherings in the heart of Har Tzion – where the radiance of the Shechinah seemed to pulse through every stone and crevice.
Is the Tension Between Inner Illumination and Outer Responsibility Found in the Torah?
The longing to touch the inner dimension has never left me. To this day, I find myself frustrated – and at times even weighed down – when I am consumed by administrative work. Although these tasks come naturally to me, they feel as though they pull me down from where my soul is drawn. I pray to merit the support of others who can carry these responsibilities, freeing me to devote more time to the inner work that sustains me. What keeps me in high spirits is catching glimpses of Hashem behind the scenes. When I sit with a woman in EmunaHealing, and insight is suddenly revealed about the root of her struggle – or when a gentle Torah chiddush rises within me, opening a new way of understanding a familiar teaching – I feel touched by a subtle, life-giving radiance. Those moments restore me. They remind me why I endure the outer work – for the sake of remaining connected to the inner source that gives everything meaning.
That tension between inner illumination and outer responsibility is not unique to my own journey. It is woven into the Torah itself. Parashat Mishpatim, which so often feels like a descent from revelation into regulation, quietly reveals that even at Sinai, the meeting point between heaven and earth was delicate and complex. Precisely at the moment of covenant, the Torah draws our attention to those who stood closest to that boundary – granted a glimpse of Elokim, and yet still fully embodied, eating and drinking before Him.
What Does “Atzilei Yisrael” Mean – and Who Was Included in This Inner Circle?
Parashat Mishpatim is often experienced as dense and legal – a sudden descent from the thunder of Sinai into the fine print of human behavior. Yet the parasha does not end in law alone. It culminates in a moment of startling intimacy – a moment that quietly redefines what it means to eat.
ספר שמות פרק כד פסוק יא וְאֶל־אֲצִילֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא שָׁלַח יָדוֹ וַיֶּחֱזוּ אֶת־הָאֱלֹקִים וַיֹּאכְלוּ וַיִּשְׁתּוּ׃
“But against the nobles of the Children of Israel He did not stretch forth His hand – they perceived HaElokim, and they ate and drank” (Shemot 24:11).
As the covenant is sealed and the nation stands at the threshold of revelation, the Torah draws our attention to a specific group called אֲצִילֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל/Atzilei B’nei Yisrael. Rashi identifies them directly – Nadav and Avihu, together with the elders. Yet the title אֲצִילֵי/atzilei does far more than label them as leaders. Rashi notes that the word can mean “great ones,” while Ramban explains that they were called אֲצִילִים/Atzilim because something was drawn forth upon them – a רוח אֱלֹקִים/ru’ach Elokim bestowed from Above, whether understood as prophetic inspiration or as reflected royal glory (Ramban, Shemot 24:11). Rabbeinu Bachaya draws us even deeper into the word itself – אֲצִילוּת/atzilut – a drawing forth of רוח/ru’ach that rests upon those who are prepared to receive it. The word אֲצִילֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל/atzilei Yisrael means so much more than the English translation “nobles.” They were so-called not merely because they held authority, but because a measure of Divine influence was drawn onto them in that sacred moment (Rabbeinu Bachaya, ibid.).
Even before we confront the tension within the verse itself, the Torah is already teaching us something essential. These were not simply prominent figures granted honor. They were vessels invited into a zone of nearness – a taste of closeness that carried both radiance and risk. The Torah is not describing an elite circle, but a spiritual threshold – a border-zone where revelation becomes possible, where greatness and danger touch, and where the human vessel is tested by how much it can truly contain.
What was the Flaw of Atzilei Yisrael, and Why Were They Not Punished Immediately?
The Torah’s wording is deliberately unsettling. “וְאֶל־אֲצִילֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא שָׁלַח יָדוֹ” – He did not stretch forth His hand against them – implies that such a response was deserved. Rashi makes this explicit, explaining that the verse itself teaches that they were worthy of punishment. Citing Midrash Tanchuma Beha’alotcha 16, Rashi locates the flaw in how they beheld Elokim: they gazed at Him while eating and drinking – with a lack of proper awe. Their failing was not vision itself, but the manner of their closeness. It was not their attempt to unite spiritual perception with embodied life, or a denial of G-d, but a loss of reverence through familiarity. Their hearts became overly familiar as they stood upright and gazed rather than recoiling in awe (Chizkuni, Shemot 24:11). In seeking to experience the Shechinah while still rooted in physical pleasure, they continued to operate in both intellect and bodily appetite simultaneously, allowing their sense of self to swell beyond its true proportion. Instead of being humbled by revelation, they tried to contain Divine vision – while remaining absorbed in physical selfhood – as something they could enjoy, contain, and take for granted (Kli Yakar, ibid.). Because of that joy, they became liable for death. Their punishment was not erased, only withheld at that moment as not to disturb the joy of Matan Torah (Ba’al HaTosafot, ibid.).
The same imbalance later reappears with Nadav and Avihu in the episode of the אֵשׁ זָרָה/Aish Zara – ‘strange fire,’ where unmeasured desire again overrides awe. The Torah is teaching a precise and unsettling lesson: closeness without reverence does not elevate the vessel – it inflates it. When intimacy with the Divine is approached without trembling, the vessel does not break because the light is too strong, but because it has blown itself out of proportion.
How Do We Balance Yearning for Illumination with Serving G-d in the Physical World?
Parashat Mishpatim unfolds as a Torah of alignment. Mishpatim are not abstract laws, but the structures that govern the meeting point between inner intention and outer action – between spiritual ideals and embodied life. They teach that holiness cannot remain suspended in revelation alone. It must descend into how we treat workers, how we handle money, how we respond to vulnerability – and, ultimately, how we eat. This is why the parasha culminates not in thunder, but at a table. To eat before Elokim is not to grab, not to hide, not to turn away. It is to allow food to steady the body so the soul can remain present.
This point is sharpened with striking clarity by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kosov in Parashat Acharei Mot, tracing the death of Nadav and Avihu directly back to this moment in Parashat Mishpatim. Their punishment was the unfolding of the same flaw already present at Sinai – gazing with a coarse heart while eating and drinking – a posture he identifies as ga’avah, spiritual arrogance. Their closeness to Hashem was not shaped by humility or unity, but by an inflated sense of self. They did not take counsel with one another, lacked true oneness, and approached Hashem as though their spiritual stature entitled them to such a vision. This is why the Torah later describes their death as occurring specifically through closeness before Hashem – because closeness entered without humility becomes lethal rather than life-giving (Imrei Menachem, Acharei Mot 16:1).
This returns us, quietly and uncomfortably, to our own lives. The Torah does not ask us to abandon our yearning for illumination – but it does demand that we discipline it with humility. The danger of revelation is not light itself, but the sense of importance it can awaken. When spiritual insight makes us feel too elevated to serve, too refined for responsibility, or too inwardly focused to engage the needs of others, the vessel begins to swell beyond its true measure. Perhaps this was the underlying intention of my yoga teacher’s response to my premature desire to see auras.
Parashat Mishpatim asserts the opposite path – that true avodat Hashem is lived within the physical, through steadiness, restraint, and care. Sometimes that service looks like prayer or insight. And sometimes it looks like administrative work, tending to obligations, or lending a hand to a friend in need. These are not distractions from spirituality – they are its safeguard. True closeness is not proven by how high we rise in vision, but by how faithfully we remain grounded in humility, serving Hashem precisely where life places us.
