Shalom Brothers: Men Who “Didn’t Know” (Parshat Mishpatim)

Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International

Shalom Brothers, Mishpatim – Men Who “Didn’t Know”

Parashat Mishpatim is Torah at its most unglamorous—and most urgent. No miracles. No spectacle. Just case law after case law about harm, liability, and repair. It’s as if the Torah is saying: if you want a holy society, stop talking only about ideals and start building a culture where power is restrained and harm is answered with consequences.

The text is blunt about what it means to be a human in a body with impulses. “When men quarrel and one strikes the other…” the Torah says, the aggressor doesn’t get to call it “an accident” and move on; he must cover “loss of time and medical expenses” (Ex. 21:18–19). And when harm reaches the vulnerable—“when men fight and they strike a pregnant woman”—the Torah treats it with special gravity, demanding accountability for damage done (Ex. 21:22–23). Even theft is framed as needing repair: “If a man steals… he shall pay” (Ex. 22:1–3). The Torah’s obsession is not punishment for its own sake. It’s the refusal to let harm evaporate into “misunderstandings,” “boys being boys,” or “we didn’t mean it like that.”

This parsha should resonate deeply with men because it is a men’s problem: what do we do with power and impulse before they become violence?

Mishpatim assumes something many communities still resist: harm is not rare. It’s predictable. That’s why the Torah builds fences—boundaries, consequences, restitution—because holiness isn’t a feeling. It’s a system that prevents damage and forces repair when damage happens.

Now hold that next to the moral wreckage of Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was a convicted sex offender and later faced federal sex-trafficking charges; his abuse was not a rumor and not a “complicated situation.” It was exploitation enabled by wealth, access, and a social world that prized proximity to power over protection of the vulnerable.

And here is where Mishpatim turns from “ancient law” into a mirror: the tragedy is not only the predator. It’s the ecosystem that made predation easy and accountability expensive.

That’s why Jewish men have to look directly at the public record of who circulated around Epstein—before and after his 2008 conviction—without turning this into either conspiracy or denial. We have learned about prominent Jewish figures appearing in Epstein’s social and scheduling world and broader documentation such as the widely reported “birthday book.” Reporting has recently brought up questions of transparency around names in Epstein files, including Leslie Wexner being publicly named in a set of previously redacted documents—while also emphasizing that being named is not proof of wrongdoing and that Wexner has not been charged.

And then there are other prominent Jewish men whose names have surfaced in Epstein’s world—figures like Noam Chomsky, Alan Dershowitz, and Ehud Barak. The point here is not to declare guilt where it hasn’t been proven. It’s to insist on Mishpatim’s moral standard: when powerful people choose closeness to someone credibly accused—and later convicted—of sexual predation, the community has the right to ask accountability questions out loud: What did you know? When did you know it? What did you do with what you knew? What did you fail to do? And what repair, if any, is now owed?

Because Mishpatim does not permit the powerful to hide behind the oldest excuse in the book: I didn’t personally strike anyone. Torah’s ethics are wider than that. If you create cover, confer legitimacy, provide access, fund lifestyles, offer endorsements, or treat warning signs as inconveniences—then you are participating in the conditions that allow harm to spread. The Torah’s category isn’t only “the one who struck.” It’s the one who is responsible for outcomes.

This is exactly what strong-men cultures refuse—but it’s also exactly what healthy Jewish leadership can choose instead. That’s why I’m proud of FJMC International for instituting a new Code of Conduct for our Central Leadership Development Institute: to make the environment not merely “professional,” but sacred—and to keep it sacred through a simple commitment that every participant is accountable to everyone else’s safety, respect, and dignity. A sacred space doesn’t happen by accident; it happens when adults agree that boundaries matter more than bravado.

And that’s Mishpatim’s invitation to every Jewish man: don’t wait for a policy to tell you who to be—live by a personal code of conduct. If you need one rule—simple, powerful, and straight from this parsha—take the Torah’s insistence that harm triggers responsibility: “he shall pay for his loss of time and shall provide for his healing” (Exodus 21:19). Make it your standard in advance, not only after the fact: Use whatever means you have to prevent harm to the vulnerable, and if you ever cause harm, don’t minimize, spin, or disappear—own it, repair it, and change so it doesn’t happen again.