"WHEN YOU ACQUIRE A HEBREW SLAVE,
HE SHALL SERVE SIX YEARS; IN THE SEVENTH YEAR HE SHALL GO FREE, WITHOUT
PAYMENT.
BUT
IF THE SLAVE DECLARES, "I LOVE MY MASTER, AND MY WIFE AND CHILDREN;
I
DO NOT WISH TO GO FREE",
HIS
MASTER SHALL TAKE HIM BEFORE GOD.
HE
SHALL BE BROUGHT TO THE DOOR OR THE DOORPOST,
AND
HIS MASTER SHALL PIERCE HIS EAR WITH AN AWL;
AND
HE SHALL THEN REMAIN HIS SLAVE FOR LIFE."
Temporal servants are servants of servants - The servant of
God alone is free.
(Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi)
Why was the ear chosen over
all other organs of the body for piercing? Said Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai (Kiddushin 22b): This ear, which heard at Sinai "You
shall not steal" - yet went and stole - let it be pierced. And
if the person chose to sell himself into servitude, that ear which heard at
Sinai (Vayikra
25:55) "For the
Children of Israel are servants unto Me" - yet went and
acquired a master for himself - let it be pierced.
Rabbi Shimon expounded this
verse, deriving a 'precious stone" [i.e., an important ethical principle]:
Why were the door and the doorposts chosen from among all parts of the
house? Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: Door and doorposts who were witnesses
when I passed over the lintel and the two doorposts and I said "For the
Children of Israel shall be servants unto Me, they are My servants - and
not servants to servants - yet this person went and acquired a master for
himself, let him be pierced in front of them.
(Rashi,
Shemot 21:6)
"And he shall
serve him forever" - for
the period of a Jubilee - there being no longer period of time in the Jewish
calendar. Exodus to freedom, is like a new world. Or another possible
explanation: He shall return to his original status of freedom.
(Ibn
Ezra, Shemot Ibid., ibid.)
If the laborer had already
begun to work, but changed his mind in the middle of the day, he may leave;
even if he already received his wages and has not the money to repay the hirer,
he may still retract and the wages [to be returned] are converted into a debt,
as is written: "For the Children of Israel are servants unto
Me" (Vayikra
25:55) - not servants to
servants.
(Shulchan
Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 333:3).
Bible
commentators, beginning with Chazal, frequently tended to refer to "juxtaposition
of parshiot", seeking significance in the adjacency of Torah parshiyot.
Well-known is the question (which has become proverbial) "What is
Shmitta doing near Mt. Sinai?" Rashi, commenting on the beginning of our parasha,
asks, as per the Mechilta: "And why was the parasha of
adjudication (dinim) placed next to the laws pertaining to the alter
[found at the end of Parashat Yitro]" Rashi's answer: "To inform you
that you should place the Sanhedrin near the altar [Alternate reading
"near the Temple"]."
One
can, of course, relate literally to this drasha quoted by Rashi, seeing it as
concrete instruction to place the Sanhedrin in the Office of Hewn Stone. But
even this topographical explication, which interprets textual juxtaposition
into geographical proximity, invites us to investigate the significance of this
proximity, in the sense of "Expound, and reap reward."
The
Mechilta - apparently the source for Rashi's midrashic interpretation - brings
additional support for the placement of the Sanhedrin near the altar:
"That
your nakedness may not be exposed upon it - These are the rules that you shall
set before them". From this we learn that the Sanhedrin is found
alongside the altar. Even though there exists no proof for this, there is an
allusion to it, as is written: "And Yoav fled and held on to the
corners of the altar" (I Kings, 28).
This
midrash ostensibly relates to the geographical proximity of the place where
Yoav ben Tsruya was judged ("the Sanhedrin") to the place to which he
fled for safety. If, however, we relate to the Biblical context and to
additional Talmudic contexts, we can discern an addition plane connecting the
story of Yoav to our parasha.
In
one of the opening passages of our parasha (21:14), we read: "When a man schemes
against another and kills him treacherously, you shall take him from My very
altar to be put to death."
Chazal
and other commentators on the Bible noted the connection between the Biblical
law and the story of Yoav; they found in it the Halakhic justification for the
slaying of Yoav despite the fact that he held on to the corners of the
altar. Similarly they derived from this tie that a priest who murdered and
desires to participate in the Temple service, is prevented from approaching the
altar; he is put to death. The altar cannot protect one who has intentionally
murdered.
This exegetical approach,
too, is anchored in Shemot 20:21 (also at the end of Yitro):
"If
you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it of hewn stones; for by
wielding your sword upon them you have profaned them".
The
Tanchuma expounds: "for by wielding your sword upon them you have
profaned them' - From this our rabbis derived: The altar was created to
prolong man's life, iron was created to shorten his life; it is not right that
that which shortens be raised against that which lengthens."
The
altar, then, cannot tolerate bloodshed and cannot serve as protection against
punishment for murder.
Rabbi
Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, commenting on the first passage of our parasha,
elaborates upon Rashi's midrashic commentary:
"And
these" - Immediately preceding, in the construction
of the altar, the symbolic expression of the fundamental basic principle was
given, viz., that our whole relationship to God is to be taken as one through
which justice and humanness for building up human society and morality and
decency for the work of each individual on himself, are to be gained and
formed, on a firm unshatterable basis. To that principle, the 'vav' ('and')
adds the Mishpatim, the legal laws by which the building up of Jewish society
on the basis of justice and humanness is first of all ordered. "Cherev"
- the 'sword', force and harshness are thereby to be banned from the Jewish
State, only then can they be worthy to erect an altar to God in their midst.
That is why these Mishpatim come before the building of the Mishkan." (Translated from
the original by Isaac Levy).
Rabbi
Hirsch, then, sees in the establishment of a just and ethical society, sans
force and brutality, an essential stage which must precede the erection of
the altar.
Additional study of the order in which laws are arranged in Chapter 21, teaches us that this chapter deals with:
1.
The laws of the
Hebrew servant and maidservant (1-11).
2.
Various gradations
of violence, intentional and unintentional, and resulting physical damage
(11-27).
3.
Damage to body and
possessions perpetrated by one's property (28-37).
Ibn
Ezra (in his short
commentary on Shemot) was mindful of this order:
"The
main lesson is that man should not employ violence, coercing one less
capable than himself. It [Scripture] begins with coercion affecting the
body, i.e., enslaving a servant; following this it mentions the
maidservant..."
This
parasha regarding the Hebrew servant which opens the chapter and the order of
"mishpatim" provides the ethical foundation for a just and moral
society.
We
cannot divorce the concept of the "eved Ivri", the
Hebrew servant, from its historical context, a period in which slavery was
accepted; we cannot evaluate the phenomenon with the criteria of modern times.
But, even so, Chazal look upon the desire of the servant to remain indentured
to his master after six years with a disapproving eye, as is evidenced by
different midrashim ("For the Children of Israel are servants unto
Me' - but not servants unto servants.")
In
other words, Chazal already understood that the Torah itself does not approve
of the phenomenon of servitude. The wording "should you
purchase a Hebrew servant" and other passages similarly worded ("Should
you go out to wage war on your enemies... and see among the captives a
beautiful woman"; "Should a man have a wayward and defiant son" and
numerous other examples) does not describe an ideal situation, but rather an existing
reality, sometimes even an undesirable reality. If we continue to
expound the juxtaposition of passages and parshiot, we can deduce that the
Torah wanted to each us that a just society must base itself upon freemen, upon
servants of God, not upon "servants of servants." A situation in
which the servant is dependent upon the institution of slavery - or
alternatively, in which the master creates a situation of dependency and cannot
free himself of the situation in which he enslaves others - this is a debased
and corrupt social situation which gives rise to violence, murder, and
disrespect for man's person and property. In such an environment, no wonder we
find men having a dispute injuring a pregnant woman (21:20), or people killing their fellows
unwittingly or by design (21:12-13)
It may be that the root of the evil is a
double one, and transgression drags transgression:
1.
Failure to
execute faithfully the details of construction of the "altar" without
raising a sword (20:22)
2.
The
illusion that one can erect an altar not in the framework of an enlightened,
well-run society, based on the rule of law and on basic rules of morality in
interpersonal relations.
It
may be that in our times the rules of the eved Ivri have few direct
ramifications, but the moral and ideological principles which we are able to
deduce from the proximity of the parshiot of the alter and of mishpatim
and the parasha of the Hebrew servant are most important.
A society that strives for spirituality is based first and foremost upon the absolute negation of subjugation of man by man, upon absence of violence, upon rule of law, and upon respect for all men created in the image of God.
Pinchas
Leiser, editor of "Shabbat Shalom" is a psychologist
It is correct, in my opinion,
that it should say "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him"
and you should think "for he has none to save him from your hand:, for you
know that you were strangers in the land of Egypt, and you witnessed the
oppression with which Egypt oppressed you, and I wreaked vengeance upon them,
because I see the tear of the oppressed who have none to comfort
them... and I save every man from those stronger than he, and also the
widow and the orphan shall you not oppress, because I shall hear their
cries, for all these live in uncertainty, and they depend on Me, and in
another passage another reason is added; "For you know the feelings of
the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.", in
other words, you know that every stranger, whose spirit is low, and he groans
and scrams and his eyes are always towards God and He will have mercy on them
as he had mercy on you, as is written (2:23),
"The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and
their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God," that is to say,
not in their own merit, but rather that He had pity on them because of the
labor.
(Ramban,
Shemot 22:20)
A life he pays; he does not
pay money for life.
Rebbi says: Life for life -
money. Do you say 'money' or is it 'death'? We expound: Here we read "shita"
- 'impose", and elsewhere we read "shita" - just as
there the reference is to monetary compensation, so here, too, it is monetary
compensation.
"Eye for eye"
- money. Do you say 'money', or is it really an eye? Rabbi El'azar used to
say: "One who strikes the life an animal is to pay for it" "but
one who strikes down a human is to be put to death" - Scripture
juxtaposes damages to a human with damages to an animal; just damage to an
animal is punished by monetary fine, so damage to a human is punished by
monetary fine.
(Mechilta,
Mishpatim Parasha 8: 90-91)
"An Eye"
- Said Rav Saadya, we cannot interpret this passage literally. For if a
person struck his fellow's eye, causing him to lose a third of his eyesight,
how can he possibly be smitten in an identical degree, neither more nor less?
Perhaps he will lose all his sight. Even more difficult would be cases of
burns, open wounds, and bruises; if they are in a critical place he may die, and
this would be unacceptable to reason.
Said to him Ben Zuta: Is it
not written elsewhere, "As he has rendered a defect in another human,
thus is to be rendered in him" (Vayikra 24:20)?!
The Gaon replied to him: The
Torah places [the letter] "bet" instead of the word
"al" - "on"; the meaning is "so shall he
be punished". [Saadya's argument is that whereas 'al' would
imply punishment 'on' the person's body, the letter 'bet'
implies 'so'].
Answers Ben Zuta: "As
he has done, thus is to be done to him" (Ibid., ibid.)
Replied the Gaon: Shimshon
said - "As they did to me, so I did to them." (Judges 15:11), and Shimshon did not take their women and
give them to others, he extracted remuneration.
Replied Ben Zuta: And if the
attacker was poor, [if punishment is monetary] what would his punishment be?
Answered the Gaon: If a
blind man blinds the eye of one who has sight, what can be done to him? A poor
man may, in time, become wealthy and pay, but the blind man will never be able
to pay.
The general rule is: We
cannot interpret the Torah perfectly without recourse to Chazal. For when we
received Torah from our ancestors, we also received the Oral Law, and there is
no difference between them. If so, the meaning of "eye for eye"
is that he is deserving of losing an eye for an eye, should he not pay
compensation.
(Ibn Ezra on Shemot [the extended version], 21:24)
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Translation: Kadish Goldberg
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