Dvar Torah for Parshas Mishpatim: When failure calls for compassion

“You shall throw the treifa to the dog.” (Mishpatim 22:30)

Chazal explain the reason that the dog is rewarded with a piece of meat. The dog is entrusted with guarding the sheep from marauding wolves. Even with guard dogs, sometimes a wolf manages to get to a sheep and tear his flesh. This piece of meat we give to the dogs.

Clearly the dog views the piece of meat as a reward. However the timing of this reward is perplexing. The reason that this sheep became a treifa, is precisely because the dog failed to do his job and guard this sheep. Why does the Torah reward the dog for failure?

Perhaps the torah wishes to teach us a valuable lesson. The dog does his job diligently day in and day out. Occasional failure is inevitable. It is precisely at this time of failure that he needs the most encouragement and appreciation. One failure does not obliterate past success, nor the hope for a better future.

This applies even more so with human beings. By eating from the Eitz Hadaas Chava causes the biggest calamity in the history of mankind. Hashem informs Adam and Chava that now death will become part of life. And Chava is to blame. At this low point Adam bestows upon her the ultimate honor. He names her Chava, “the mother of all living things.” Again we ask, is this the appropriate time to reward Chava with the ultimate accolade “the mother of life?”

Here too, the answer is - yes. No doubt Chava knows that she has sinned the ultimate sin. Hashem has just informed her that she has introduced death to mankind.. She is surely feeling worthless and hopeless. Admonishing her now would only throw her into irreparable despair. Adam understands that what she needs now is encouragement and hope. Indeed through her sin, she has introduced death into the human cycle, but at the same time she brings about the continuity and perpetuation of life through her descendents. Chava is the mother of all life,

All is not lost.

Rabbi Yosef Sorotzkin is the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivas Me’or Eliyohu in Telz Stone, Eretz Yisrael. He is the author of Meged Yosef al haTorah.