We approach Mishpatim with Pride and Perplexity.
Pride because the Torah realized that the ideals of Sinai couldn’t be achieved without a Legal System; Perplexity, “When you buy a slave.” Slavery in the Torah?
A Hebrew slave was a worker, working off a debt or a theft. His master had to treat him so well that it is said: He who purchases a Hebrew slave is really buying a master over himself.
But we know that there were also Canaanite slaves, of whom the Torah says: “You shall work them forever” (Leviticus 25:46).
Our conscience is alleviated when we learn that the Halakhah surrounds slavery with the following process:
It is permissible to subject the gentile slave to hard labor. Even though this is the law, it is a pious trait and the way of wisdom that a person should be compassionate and pursue justice, and should not burden his slave overmuch. … he should not abuse him with his hand or his words. Scripture has given them into slavery, not for shame. He should speak softly to the slave, listen to his complaints. So is it specified in Job …: “Did I contemn the justice of my slave … For He made me in the womb as He did him.” Cruel behavior is found but in the star worshippers, but the seed of Abraham, Israel, who were influenced by the goodness of Torah, are merciful, and so it is with the attributes of the Holy One blessed be He, who commanded us to emulate Him, he says: His mercy falls upon all His creatures (Maimonides, Laws of Slavery, chap. 9, sec. 8).
How do we deal with slavery without the mercy described in Maimonides’ Laws of Slavery? Do we say that this is now simply irrelevant? I don’t think so, for the laws of slavery are found not only in the Maimonidean Code, but also in Shulchan Arukh, which deals with practical Halakhah for post Temple days.
The Slave who is bought from gentiles, we say to him: Do you wish to be included as Jewish slaves? If he wishes, we teach him the fundamentals of the Faith, some simple and some hard mitzvot, their rewards and punishments, as we teach a convert…. If he circumcised his slave and immersed him as a slave, against his will, the action is invalid. (But if he acted willingly and behaved as an obligated slave, he can emancipate him against his will later) (Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh Deah, 267).
If the Shulchan Arukh is meant to serve as the Halakhah of today, does that mean that current Judaism accepts slavery?
Here is a passage from current Halakhah, if Rabbi Moshe Feinstein can be considered current:
Therefore, in the case of the slave, whose existence is possible even in these times, is to be treated like a resident alien, who was accepted at the time when the Jubilee, was in practice, and we are obligated to sustain him forever. And according to the Sages, also according to the Tosefot, there is an obligation to give charity and keep alive, actual slaves, as Israelites, with the application of all the negative and positive mitzvot, as is the opinion of Maimonides (Iggerot Moshe, Orah Hayyim, II, 33).
The Laws of Slavery do not apply today because governments do not permit Jews to buy slaves. What happened with Jews in the American South when the government did permit them to buy slaves? I do not know.
I am left with the Perplexity of Mishpatim.
“And these are the rules that you shall set before them” (Exodus 21:1)
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) wrote:
And these: In the immediately preceding verses, the Torah discussed the building of the altar, which symbolically expresses a fundamental principle: All of our relationship with God should be understood as saying that He will serve as a solid, dependable basis for the building of a just and humane society, and for the strengthening of the morality and modesty of each individual. For this purpose, the conjunction “and” connects the verses that establish the building of Jewish society upon the principle of justice and humanity through which “the sword,” namely violence and cruelty, will be kept away from the society of the Jewish State, and only then will it be appropriate to build an altar to God within it.
1. Hirsch offers a reason for the contiguity of the discussion of the laws in Mishpatim and that of the altar in Yitro. Is his explanation reasonable?
2. Why does Hirsch find it necessary to argue that God “will serve as a solid, dependable basis for the building of a just and humane society”?
3. Can’t “secular” humanism “serve as a solid, dependable basis for the building of a just and humane society”?
4. Is it possible that Hirsch is addressing a problem confronting him and his congregation? What might that problem be?
5. Jewish society will be premised upon “the principle of justice and humanity.” Is Hirsch deviating from the accepted view of his contemporary Orthodox society?
6. “Through which ‘the sword,’ namely violence and cruelty, will be kept away” – Is Hirsch referring to “the fiery ever-turning sword” (Genesis 3:24) that prevents a return to Eden? In other words, can we understand Hirsch to be saying that humanity is responsibility for the return to Eden?
7. “The society of the Jewish State” – How would Hirsch react to the modern Jewish State? Why was it necessary to refer to a state that did not then exist? Why didn’t Hirsch make a more realistic demand of his readers?
8. “Only then will it be appropriate to build an altar to God within it” – Is this not heretical? Why would the building of the altar depend upon achieving social justice?
