Mishpatim

.וְדָל, לֹא תֶהְדַּר בְּרִיבוֹ

neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.

This week’s parshah is packed with mitzvot and is a fine parshah to study if you wish to understand what Judaism is truly about in form and essence.
Thus you can’t fully understand the whole meaning and spectrum of these laws if you ignore the Oral Law and might quickly dismiss them as outdated; after all who owns a slave or even an ox nowadays?

A closer examination of the mitzvot will soon show you that numerous laws which are part and parcel of Jewish ethicq have derived from laws that were given to the Jewish people thousands of years ago. For more about this, check Rachel’s post.

One that particularly appeals to me as a teacher is found at 23:3. In the educational field I find that we often favor the “poor” (either literally or academically) to the detriment of other students with the disastrous effect that the latter find the system unfair with those who more or less respect the rules most of the time. In the end it makes them distrustful of both adults and the Law. Not exactly the kind of message a school is supposed to send.

I don’t mean that students with very particular circumstances should never receive special treatment but that, in the end, they should be helped to be held liable just like their peers. It is a narrow path for a school administration and for teachers but one that responsible grown-upss should feel it is their duty to follow.

No Need for Change

The Octopus card is one of the most clever tools I know as far as money is concerned. It was first introduced in Hong Kong in 1997 for fare payment on the MTR (the local transit system), but the use of the card quickly expanded for multiple other purposes. It can now be used to pay fares for majority of public transport in Hong Kong and to make purchases for consumer products at many stores in the territory. In addition it can be used in many soft drink vending machines, pay phones, photo booths, parking meters, and car parks.

Monetary value can be added to the card through a number of ways and you can add as much or as little as you wish. In MTR stations, enquiry machines can be found where cardholders may place their Octopus cards on the machines and the machines will display the balances along with a history of last 10 usages. You also know how much is left on the card (but without the last 10 usages) whenever you use the card.

It is widely popular in Hong Kong where it is estimated that 95 percent of the population aged 16 to 65 own at least one card and generates over 10 million daily transactions worth a total of about HK$29 billion (US$3.7 billion) a year. (edited and personalized from Wikipedia)