The Jewish People receive a series of laws concerning social justice. Topics include: Proper treatment of Jewish servants; a husband's obligations to his wife; penalties for hitting people and for cursing parents, judges, and leaders; financial responsibilities for damaging people or their property, either by oneself or by one's animate or inanimate property, or by pitfalls that one created; payments for theft; not returning an object that one accepted responsibility to guard; the right to self-defense of a person being robbed.

Other topics include: Prohibitions against seduction; witchcraft, bestiality and sacrifices to idols. The Torah warns us to treat the convert, widow and orphan with dignity, and to avoid lying. Usury is forbidden and the rights over collateral are limited. Payment of obligations to the Temple should not be delayed, and the Jewish People must be Holy, even concerning food. The Torah teaches the proper conduct for judges in court proceedings. The commandments of Shabbat and the Sabbatical year are outlined. Three times a year — for Pesach, Shavuot and Succot — we are to come to the Temple. The Torah concludes this listing of laws with a law of kashrut to not cook or mix meat and milk.

PARSHA INSIGHTS

A Burnt Papyrus and a Living Scroll

“And these are the ordinances…” (21:1)

The BBC reports that a badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum has been digitally "unwrapped", providing the first look inside for 2,000 years. The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to unfurl it “virtually.”

Hundreds of carbonized scrolls were discovered in Herculaneum, which like its neighbor Pompeii was buried beneath meters of volcanic ash. In the past, some of the documents, which are made from papyrus, were prized open but they crumbled into pieces. The University of Oxford's Bodleian Library holds several of the scrolls. Thought to be unreadable, they had been left untouched for decades.

But the promise of a hi-tech solution prompted the team to get one of the precious scrolls out of storage. It was placed in a specially made case and taken to Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire. Inside this huge machine, which is called a synchrotron, electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to produce a powerful X-ray beam that can probe the scroll without damaging it.

The scan is used to create a 3D reconstruction, then the layers inside the scroll - it contains about 10m of papyrus - have to be identified. After that, artificial intelligence is used to detect the ink. It's easier said than done. Both the papyrus and ink are made from carbon and they're almost indistinguishable from each other. So, the AI hunts for the tiniest signals that ink might be there, and then this ink is painted on digitally, bringing the letters to light.

Last year, a similar team managed to read about 5% of another Herculaneum scroll.

Its subject was Greek Epicurean philosophy, which teaches that fulfilment can be found through the pleasure of everyday things.

It struck me as ironic that an ancient scroll, which is now lifeless carbon, should glorify the pleasures of this world, whereas another ancient scroll, our holy Torah, which doesn’t need electrons accelerated to near the speed of light to make out its message, should teach that fulfilment is be found by the elevating everyday things to a level of transcendence and G-dliness.