THE HE GOAT SHALL THUS CARRY UPON ITSELF ALL THEIR SINS TO A PRECIPITOUS LAND, AND HE SHALL SEND OFF THE HE GOAT INTO THE DESERT.

(Vayikra 16:22)

 

The Scape Goat

Since the scapegoat, was an atonement for all Israel, the High Priest made confession over it in the name of all Israel... The scapegoat atoned for all transgressions mentioned in the Torah, both light and grave, whether committed presumptuously or in error, whether the offender became aware of his transgression, or did not become aware of it; for all sins the scapegoat atoned, provided that the offender repented. But if he did not repent, then the scapegoat only secures forgiveness for the light transgression. Which are the light and which are the grave transgressions? The grave transgressions are those that make the offender liable to a judicial sentence of death or to excision [karet]. Likewise, oaths taken in vain or to support a falsehood, though not involving the penalty of excision, are classed among the grave transgressions. Violations of other prohibitions and of affirmative precepts, the neglect of which is not punished by excision, constitute the light transgressions.

(RaMBaM Hilkhot Teshuva 1:2, Hyamson translation).

 

Our fathers taught us in their teachings how awesome the Lord's deed is, and that is the matter of Azazel that is written above, for that word contains a matter that is found in our teachings, that the word aza [strong] describes a wind, as in ruah kadim aza [a strong east wind] (Shemot 14:21).

Since the letter hey cannot appear in the middle of a word, it is replaced with an alef, and the word zel also describes a sudden and very powerful wind that can demolish human buildings in a moment. This wind is found in Arabia, and of it it is said a scorching wind is their lot (Psalms 11:6). It flies and kills in a moment. If this is what happens naturally, all the more so when it occurs wondrously. If this is so, then Azazel is composed of aza and zel, that is to say, a strong zel wind. It [the goat] is pushed away from before the Lord by a powerful wind which breaks the goat's bones apart, leaving no two bones connected. This is a wondrous sign of the obliteration of the sins of the House of Israel. And so Yonatan ben Uziel translated: A powerful wind pushes it from before the Lord and it dies.

(Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio on Vayikra 16:22)

 

And you shall remember that you were a slave

Menachem Klein

And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Like all other Jewish holidays, Passover is a holiday of remembrance. As a community of memory on Passover we recall the enslavement in Egypt and the liberation from it: "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God took us out from there." Slavery seems to us a kind of existence belonging to the very distant past, an institution of no relevance to our lives. In fact, it continues to exist today in parts of the third world. It was gradually eradicated in the West only about two hundred years ago. The end of slavery in the enlightened world was accompanied by normative changes and by changes in attitudes towards the institution of slavery. Slavery and its remnants are despised phenomena. The story of the Exodus from Egypt took a crucial role in the shaping of those new norms. The normative shift preceded the change in practice. The American Declaration of Independence opens with the proclamation that all men are created equal, but the realization of that sentiment came only decades later and was accompanied by the Civil War. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man is a document signed by all the countries of the world, but many of them, including western countries, still violate it on a regular basis. Nonetheless, without a change of norms there is no hope for a change of behavior.

In order to change the norm set for us by the Exodus story into reality, we must go back and consider what slavery actually is. Slavery is not a private matter between the slave and his master but rather an established social and political system that encompasses the realms of law, society, economics, and security. These areas establish the statuses of master and slave while opening a great gap between them. The work and services supplied by the slave to the master are not willingly given. The slave lacks his own will; the master's will has replaced his own. The slave is just another of the master's belongings. He may be sold, used as collateral, given as a gift, or lent out. Even the slave's body belongs to his master. The master may physically brand his skin or beat him. The slave has no rights or family ties of his own. His family ties derive from the master's authority. The slave lacks all rights. He only bears obligations towards his master.

Throughout history, the institution of slavery has been associated with the founding of empires and their territorial expansion. Slavery did not only occur in agricultural societies in need of extensive labor power; it appears in mercantile societies as well. For the latter, the slaves were not human beings but rather a commodity to be traded. Pirates were not the only ones hunting slaves; imperialist mechanisms were also involved. They needed slaves in order to preserve the empire.

What is Judaism's attitude towards slavery? Halakhically speaking, the Hebrew slave [eved ivri] was more of a servant than a slave. The Hebrew slave had a personality, he had rights, and the differences between him and his master were temporary. In contrast, the difference between the Canaanite slave and his master were fundamental. The Torah's leading motif involving slavery is the distinction between Israel's enslavement in Egypt and its service to God; that is to say, the difference between servitude to humans and servitude to God. The laws of slavery are not as developed in Judaism as are, for instances, the laws of torts. This is so because we spent most of our history in exile, and when we were independent we lacked an empire. However, that does not mean that the Jewish People never kept slaves or that it remained uninfluenced by cultures that allowed slavery.

In his interesting book, HaYahafokh Kushi Oro? [Can the Kushite Change His Skin?], Avraham Melamed discusses Jewish attitudes towards people of color. He points out the transformation regarding Canaan and Kush that occurred from the period of the Sages and into the Middle Ages. In Scripture, Kush and Canaan are brothers. Canaan is punished with eternal enslavement as punishment for his father. Ham's sin against his grandfather Noah. Canaan and Kush are also places. Scripture identifies Canaan with the land that the Israelites had to inherit. Kush, however, was a faraway place in what is now known as Africa; it had no association with slavery. In contrast to the biblical view, the Sages and the medieval commentators thought that people of color - the descendants of Kush - were naturally disposed to enslavement. The Canaanite slave was identified as a Kushite. Avraham Melamed believes that this change reflects the world in which the Sages and medievals lived, a world in which slaves were dark-skinned. Apparently, Jews were also served by such slaves.

This brings us to the justifications offered for the institution of slavery. In the Torah we find the Egyptians justifying the enslavement of the Israelites in terms of security and demographics. Lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies. An economic motive was certainly added to this foundation - the desire to exploit the enslaved labor force in building projects and the expansion of the kingdom.

However, other justifications for slavery have been offered in the course of history. The identification of slaves with the dark-skinned peoples is an extreme expression of another justification of slavery: that the slaves are naturally inferior. The racist apology for slavery is the extreme form of the notion that it is natural for the slave to be under his master's control. A slave regime is built upon the essential distinction between master and slave, which views the slave's inferiority and the master's mastery as natural and necessary. It should be emphasized that this is not only a matter of relations between the individual slave and his individual master, but rather also a mater of collective relationships. A slave nation was seen as essentially inferior to a nation of masters. The distinction between slaves and masters usually goes beyond the merely cultural; it is a matter of ethnicity and race.

The Torah forbids Israelites to enslave their brothers; at most they can be used as servants [=eved ivri]. The Exodus from Egypt, which, as a living memory, serves as the foundation for religious and communal life and for the Jewish conception of time, prohibits the enslavement of Jews. Does this mean that Jews are allowed to enslave members of other nations and become a nation of masters vis-à-vis a nation of slaves?

Because of this, the Lord did [this] for me when I went out of Egypt. There is something for whose sake the Lord took us out of Egypt. RaMBaN and Ibn Ezra explain that the word this [zeh] refers to the observance of commandments by which we merited being taken out of Egypt. We are free to offer an additional interpretation of the verse, making use of the word zeh's present meaning: the word zeh refers to something that is present in the here and now. Today, when slavery is prohibited by accepted norms and remaining practices that bear similarity to it (such as forced prostitution) is widely condemned, we can remove the ethnic and essentialist label that distinguishes between the Canaanite and the Hebrew slave, and leave only the functional difference [a servant still possessing his own rights and personality as against a slave]. Since the enlightened world recognizes the injustice of slavery there is no place left for the institution of the "Canaanite slave" with all of its ramifications. The Hebrew slave is also different from what he was in the past; today we speak of a kind of laborer bearing rights. The term "Hebrew slave" can only refer to a functional category, i.e., a kind of servant who sells his labor and supplies services but who does not sell his body or self. Obviously we do not have the right to set ourselves up as expropriators vis-à-vis others, taking away from them their personalities or their bodies.

Dr. Menachem Klein teaches in the department of political science of the Bar Ilan University

 

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not fully reap the corner of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.

And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you collect the [fallen] individual grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord, your God.

(Vayikra 19:9-10)

 

Whoever gives, gleanings, forgotten sheaves, and the corners to the poor in the appropriate manner, is deemed as if he had built the Holy Temple and offered up his sacrifices within it.

(Rashi on Vayikra 23:22, Judaica Press translation)

 

Do Gifts for the Poor Serve the Interests of the Giver? Of the Receiver? Of the World?

For God wants his Chosen People to be bedecked with every good and precious virtue, and that they possess blessed souls and magnanimous spirit. I have already written that deeds influence the soul, making it good and allowing God's blessing to rest upon it. There is no doubt that when someone leaves part of his produce out in the field so that the needy may take it freely, his soul shall be satisfied and his spirit blessed and proper, and that God will satisfy him with His bounty and his soul shall dwell in goodness.

(Sefer Ha-Hinukh Mitzvah #213)

 

You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger - It is evident that these laws are not made for the direct purpose of the actual maintenance of the poor. Even the poor man himself has to leave his gleanings, the forgotten sheaf, and the edge of the field from his own field for other poor people! It is clear that, at once at the harvest, at the moment when a person takes home that which Nature and his own hard-work has yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching words "my own" in his mouth, these laws are to remind every member of the Nation, and to demand an act of recognition from him, of the fact that this "my own" includes for everybody the duty of caring for others who are needy... that in God's holy state the care for the poor and the stranger without property is not a matter which is left to the greater or lesser soft-hearted feelings of sympathy... but is raised to a God-given right to the poor, and a God-ordained duty to the owners of property from God.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 19:10, Isaac Levy translation)

 

Pesach - Our Time of Freedom?

This goal ["Our Time of Freedom"] of the Exodus from Egypt was not achieved; the mission of "Our Time of Freedom" received a semblance of freedom, something which may perhaps be a primary condition for freedom, but is not yet true freedom. The people who left Egypt did not accept upon themselves the Kingdom of God, and therefore we do not recite the complete Hallel on a festival on which the attempt to realize our freedom fell short. True, we read how, after the crossing of the Reed Sea, the people: ...trusted in God and in His servant Moses, but immediately afterwards the Torah relates how that trust was only temporary - spontaneous faith born out of being powerfully impressed by what had happened - but not faith which derives from awareness of God's divinity. Therefore it did not last even three days; the people call out to Moses, "Is the Lord present among us or not?"

Even though this appointed time is a holiday for Israel who was delivered from the hands of its torturers and freed from the yoke of its oppressors, there is still no justification for recitation of the "Complete Hallel." We have yet to be redeemed from our enslavement to human nature. This fact teaches us that primary thanks for redemption is not related to what happens to the Jewish people in history, but to what the Jewish people do in history. After all, everything that happens is indifferent because it is an act of God in His world, whether we - from our perspective - call certain events "redemptions" and "deliverances" and other events "misfortunes" "pogroms" or "holocaust."

(Y. Leibowitz: Sihot al Haggei Yisrael U'Moadav, p. 74)

 

"The avenging of a small child..." as against "My creations are drowning": Emotions and Values.

Now go work and straw will not be supplied to you: The Israelites would gather the straw in the wilderness and trample it together with mortar, and the straw would puncture their heels and blood would mix into the mortar. Rachel, the daughter of Tushalah's son, was pregnant. She trampled the mortar together with her husband and the infant came out and was mixed into the brick. Then Michael came down and brought up the child before the Throne of Glory. On that very night He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, as it is said, And it happened at midnight.

(Yalkut Shimoni Shemot 4, 176)

 

And we recite, Thank the Lord, for his goodness endures forever. Rabbi Yohanan said, Why is for He is good not included in this praise? Because the Holy One, Blessed Be He, does not rejoice in the fall of the wicked, as Shemuel bar Nachman said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: What is the meaning of, And they did not approach each other all through the night? The ministering angels desired to chant songs of praise. Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: My creations are drowning in the sea, and you recite song before me?! Yossi bar Hanina said: He does not rejoice, but He causes others to rejoice, and this is deduced from the fact that it is written, so he causes (others) to rejoice and not "he rejoices".

(Yalkut Shimoni, II Chronicles 2:20)

 

 

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