When the Laws on Slavery are Shaped by Ex-Slaves

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, February 13, 2010

When a person or group of people has been mistreated, there are many different ways they can react. They might seek vengeance, having a desire to retaliate against those who have done them wrong. Even where that is not possible, or where this initial impulse has been overcome, they may take the attitude that since they suffered, why should others get off easier.

This can be true even for things which are not great hardships. When our religious school lifted a particularly onerous assignment from the 7th grade curriculum, the 8th graders complained: we had to do it, why don’t they have to suffer? Perhaps you can think of the analogy in your own life, where suffering leads to resentment when others do not have to suffer as well.

Because these are some very human ways of reacting, the Torah gives us explicit instructions on what it is that we should learn as a people from our experience of Egyptian enslavement. Do not mistreat the stranger, we are told, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Over and over, and in a variety of ways, we are instructed to learn empathy and compassion from our own experience of hardship.

Since the phrase “because you were slaves in the land of Egypt” is used so often to teach kindness, we might be surprised in this week’s Torah portion to find that the code of Israelite law put forth here, begins with the laws concerning slavery. Many of our Bar and Bat Mitzvah students over the years have been shocked by this. How could former slaves come to enslave other people? For that reason I was really interested in an article I found recently in the Forward by Gary Rendsburg, a professor at Cornell University, on the Biblical laws of slavery.

Professor Rendsburg points out that we have evidence from archeological excavations of many codes of law from the ancient Middle East. We have the laws of the Sumerians and Babylonians, Assyrians and Hittites. In many ways these law codes are very similar. One can see clearly how much the Bible parallels other law codes of its time. However with regard to the laws concerning slaves there are some interesting differences.

First of all in most law codes, the laws about slavery are put towards the end, and not where they appear in Parashat Mishpatim, right at the beginning of the code.

Secondly, Israelite law is the only system that provides a provision for an automatic end to the period of enslavement, “six years shall he work and in the seventh he shall go free.”

Third, the punishments for killing or hurting a slave are unique to the Biblical text. Parashat Mishpatim imposes the death penalty for killing a slave, and if a slave is injured, the slave is set free. Professor Rensburg states:” Here a sharp distinction is seen, for nowhere else in the entire corpus of ancient Near Eastern legal texts do slaves gain protection from abusive masters.”

Finally, the Bible commands that a runaway slave not be turned over to his master. In the parallel passage to our weekly Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tetze in Deuteronomy, we find: “You shall not turn over to his master a slave who has taken refuge from him with you. Let him live with you wherever he chooses, in any one of your communities that pleases him. Do not molest him.” In other law codes helping a runaway slave is punishable by death, as it is considered a particularly pernicious form of theft. Biblical law does not consider slaves as property.

The outlook of the Bible is picked up and expanded in rabbinic law as well. The Talmud allows the use of indentured servitude as punishment for failure to pay debts, there was no prison in Jewish law, but limits it to economic purposes. An indentured servant must be allowed to work in his trade or profession and cannot be forced to do other work. He may be told to work during normal working hours in the day but not at night. He is not to be put to personal service. Just because he is working off his debt, he is not at your beck and call for any kind of labor. The Talmud specifies that , “you may not ask him to wash your freet, or put on your shoes, or carry your personal items to the bathhouse.” (Mechilta Tractate Nezikin) He is to retain his dignity.

Finally, the Talmud provides a very contemporary answer to a question asked about this week’s Haftarah portion. How did the people re-enslave those slaves who had been set free in Jeremiah’s day? Did they do it by force? The Talmud suggests that they did it in a way that offers some social commentary for our own society. They point out that at that time the type of bondage that existed was indentured servitude for those who could not pay their debts. What the people did was to mislead the poor into willingly going back into debt. They promised that they would extend credit to the poor on very easy terms and pushed material goods on them, as if acquiring goods was more important than staying free. This led to a reversal of the Exodus that enraged God, for it was a reversal of all that the covenantal relationships had offered.

In an imperfect world the Biblical and Talmudic law attempt to inject respect and compassion. Though circumstances change, similar issues continue to challenge our own society. May we continue to be, as the Jewish people have been described through history, rachmanim ben rachmanin, the merciful children of a merciful parent.