Slaves & servants – Mishpatim
Sinai was the scene of a great event. No-one could forget the awesomeness of the moment. It was not simply the Ten Commandments that Israel received at the mountain. With them came the detailed laws that would make Israel into a community.
Hence the rabbis say that when this week’s sidra begins, “and these are the judgments which you shall set before them”, the “and” implies, “Just as the Decalogue came from Sinai, so were these laws from Sinai”.
What is first on the agenda of detailed laws? Significantly, the rules about the treatment of slaves. “When you acquire a Hebrew slave, six years shall he serve…”
A people must never forget where it has been. A people that suffered long and bitterly as slaves must resolve that it will never be guilty of making others suffer. Precisely because the Israelite slaves were degraded, they must commit themselves to treating slaves with dignity and compassion.
But how, one wonders, would Jews ever consider enslaving other Jews (“When you acquire a Hebrew slave… “) or allowing themselves to be slaves to Jewish masters?
There are two reasons why it might happen. A Jew in reduced circumstances might sell his services to raise funds (see Lev. 25:39). Or if guilty of robbery he might be sold as a slave to enable the victim of the robbery to be compensated. In either case he retained his human dignity and served only for the term of years specified by the Torah.
We might have thought, despite these provisions, it was still no pleasure to be a slave and the moment he was entitled to his freedom he would be off. Some, however, were apparently reluctant to leave and preferred to remain in servitude after the use-by date. But the Torah is not impressed. It commands the master to bring such a slave to the court; his punishment was to be pinned to the door by his ear and to remain a slave until the jubilee year.
The doorpost and the ear figure in this procedure because the blood placed on the Egyptian doorposts symbolised the rejection of slavery, and the ear heard God proclaim that freedom was a human right.
But how could any right-thinking person really prefer to be a slave and not to take his freedom? An answer is suggested by Chaim Greenberg, who writes:
“Not every man who has been captured and sold into slavery becomes a slave… The natural slave is not he from whom the freedom to determine the way of life according to his own desire and tradition has been forcibly taken away. The slave is he who comes to terms with and accepts the position, who renounces his will and his right to make independent decisions and evaluations, who nullifies his individuality and his independence.”
Freedom is a difficult gift. It requires you to think for yourself, not to think as others command. It requires you to make decisions, not to have decisions made for you. It demands responsibility and courage. No wonder some find being slaves is easier.
But the Torah is insistent. To want to be a slave is the greatest abdication of all. To be human is to learn to think for yourself.
And it is not only in literal terms that a person must not come to terms with enslavement. When you blindly follow fashions, vote as others tell you and not because you have thought it out for yourself, and are frightened to be distinctive, you need to be reminded that there are messages about being yourself that you ignore at your peril.
