Shnayim Yomi - Mishpatim - Sheni - #2 - Rabbi Akiva Zweig - If You Were on the Receiving End

Here in the second aliyah of paraspim, the Torah teaches us the famous law of an eye for an eye. Now the have always understood ever since the Torah was given on that an eye for an eye is not meant literally. The legal definition of Shane an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth is to pay the damage of the value that it would cost to have a servant with an eye versus a servant without an eye. A servant having the tooth or missing the tooth. So it's always defined in terms of monetary compensation for the damage that was done by a person to another person's eye, another person's tooth or any other limb, etc. Now the obvious question is that the Torah could have easily found a way to say pay for the damage that you do to a human being. Like the Torah says for example by an animal, one who damages an animal needs to pay. Why does the Torah go out of its way to teach something that is not literally true? We do not require that a eye be knocked out by a person who knocked out someone else's eye. And perhaps the Torah is teaching us that we need to be so careful in our understanding of damage that we cause other people. Sometimes we might think, okay, so we hit another person's car. How much did that really damage them? We can pay for it. or god forbid we injured bodily another person. What the Torah is telling us is that the perspective of every Jew needs to be that if that damage happened to me, how would I feel? What would I be willing to pay that that damage should never happen to me? Usually, it's going to be significantly more than the cost of the actual damage. So even though we try to make the other person whole by paying monetarily for the damages, the Torah is telling you that on a metaphysical level, the damager really does deserve as if to lose his own eye if he knocked out someone's eye. And the same would be true of all damages. This is how careful we need to be not to damage other people. How much would we want to avoid such a damage happening to our own eye?