Taste of Torah
23 Sh'vat 5786 / February 11, 2026

Parashat Mishpatim / Repro Shabbat
Torah Portion: Exodus 21:1-24:18
Maftir Portion: Exodus 30: 11-16
Haftarah Portion: II Kings 12:1-17 [i]

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Shalom!

This weekend we commemorate the National Council of Jewish Women’s (NCJW) Repro Shabbat, which the organization describes as follows: “Repro Shabbat is a celebration that honors the Jewish value of reproductive freedom. It takes place annually on Parashat Mishpatim, the reading of which contains the verses commonly referenced as the foundation of Judaism’s approach to reproductive health, rights, and justice.”[ii] Included among this year’s partners for this special Shabbat are the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, American Jewish World Service, Hillel International, Hadassah, and many others.

The hard truth is that abortion access is a major crisis in our country, particularly in the South. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, many states (including 12 of the 13 that the ISJL serves) have passed outright bans on abortions or imposed draconian limits.[iii] As NCJW sums it up: “Abortion bans reflect a specific Christian definition of the beginning of life and limit the termination of pregnancy even in instances where Jewish law not only permits but requires it. Learning the sources that undergird Judaism’s approach to reproductive rights can help illuminate one of the major struggles of our day in new and sometimes surprising ways.”[iv]

Reproductive issues are of course among the more contentious in contemporary American discourse, but the conversation can be facilitated by basing it in our tradition. This is not to stake out a position on reproductive rights that is necessarily right or necessarily wrong. Rather, a closer look at Jewish sources reveals the multivocal nature of religious views on the issue, essential to a well-functioning democracy and a country that holds separation of church and state as foundational.

As its name suggests, parashat Mishpatim (“Laws”) recounts a series of statutes God gives to Moses. The topics covered include damages, lost property, enslaved persons, loans, Shabbat, and holidays. Within these verses, we also quite specifically learn some biblical “case law” about what happens when a miscarriage is unintentionally caused:

When two or more parties fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-25)

An accidental miscarriage calls for financial reparations only. The case is not considered manslaughter or murder, charges that would occasion the death penalty in ancient Israelite law. That is, causing the termination of a pregnancy is not, in the Torah, treated as the killing of a person.
The Talmud, the foundational text of rabbinic law and culture, expands on this principle by looking more closely at the status of the fetus. Once source declares: “And if she is pregnant, until forty [days from conception the fetus] is merely water. [It is not yet considered a living being …]”[v] In another section, a great authority holds that “a fetus is [considered as] its mother’s thigh, [i.e., a part of its mother’s body] …”[vi] 

These texts might be jarring in their frankness, and in their contrast to much of the current rhetoric in our country around the private medical decision of abortion. As Rabbi Becky Silverstein writes of another Talmudic passage, the understanding of reproductive choice as deeply personal is also a key Jewish value. Rabbi Silverstein notes: “The text of the Talmud … says that nobody can possess more expertise on such a question than the … person themself … In this way, Judaism … authorizes as experts pregnant people who want to end a pregnancy … It demands that we honor the self-knowledge of those individuals.”[vii]

May our study this week of our Torah portion and other associated texts help guide our understanding of the issues, while also centering real-world people today, and their needs, self-knowledge, and reasons for abortion. May we also be able, in the spirit of Jewish tradition, to listen deeply to one another in the process.

You and your community can study further sources here, compiled by the National Council of Jewish Women’s “Jews for Abortion Access.”

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Salem Pearce
​Director of Spirituality

[i] This week there is an addition to the Torah reading, a special maftir (“additional reading”) and a special haftarah, because this Shabbat is Shabbat Sh’kalim (“The Shabbat of Shekels,” read in preparation for the holiday of the Purim).
[ii] NCJW’s Jews for Abortion Access webpage, accessed at https://www.jewsforabortionaccess.org/repro-shabbat-2026.
[iii] After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State,” Center for Reproductive Rights, accessed at https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/.
[iv] “The Torah of Reproductive Freedom,” NCJW’s Jews for Abortion Access, accessed at https://www.jewsforabortionaccess.org/all-resources/the-torah-of-reproductive-freedom.
[v] Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 69b, Koren-Steinstaltz translation, with explanatory additions in brackets.
[vi] Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 23b, Koren-Steinstaltz translation, with explanatory additions in brackets.
[vii] “The Torah of Reproductive Freedom,” NCJW’s Jews for Abortion Access, accessed at https://www.jewsforabortionaccess.org/all-resources/the-torah-of-reproductive-freedom
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