Parshat Shavua Mishpatim, עבד "Evved," Slave or Just Employee?

 

פרשת משפטים Parshat Shavua Mishpatim

Shmot Chapter 21:1

"And these ae the laws..."

Parshat Shavua Mishpatim begins with laws about employment, the rights of the employee. OK, I know that everybody else translates עֶ֣בֶד as "slave." But last week as I read over the chapters before attending our local zoom parsha class, the meaning seemed very clear. The avaddim aren't slaves like the Africans who had been brought to America to work for the Europeans were until Abraham Lincoln had them freed. 

What's called the evved Ivri, Jewish/Hebrew slave wasn't a slave "imported" from another location bought at an auction or from some agent. He/She was someone who was poverty stricken and couldn't live off of his land. Remember that the Land of Israel had just been divided among the tribes, and each tribe had gotten its portion and each portion was to be divided among the clans. The laws here had been designed by Gd for the Jewish People in their Holy Land. I like to try to understand the Tanach and Hebrew according to how life was at the time.

Some of us have worked at jobs with difficult conditions. Many Sabbath observers who made it to America had to start new jobs every week, since they were automatically fired when they left early on Friday after announcing that they wouldn't be showing up on Saturday. I don't now about you, but employment conditions at some of my old jobs gave me a choice of very difficult hours/conditions or being fired. 

Few jobs allow employees to take vacation whenever they want and for however long they want. Keep that in your head when Moshe and Aharon demand that all the workers should leave at the same time.

And changing work conditions... I remember when the high school where I had been teaching English suddenly gave us fewer hours per week to teach the same material to the same number of students. After that they gave two double lessons on consecutive days instead of spreading out the teaching hours to give the students, especially my weak ones, a chance to really absorb the curriculum. Yes, that's like how Pharaoh told them to make bricks without providing the necessary straw.

Here Gd is demanding humane working conditions for employees. Proof that there's nothing slave-like in being an "evved" is that their employment contract is mandated by Gd to end after a maximum of six years. 

Think about it. That's not slavery!

We Were Not Illegal Migrants in Egypt!

It is a total distortion of history and theology to claim that we must sympathize with and help the illegals, because we "were foreigners in Egypt."

“‘Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt,’ Exodus 22:21 — How should we treat our refugees?”
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s insights into the Holiday of Passover 

Biblical Jacob and family had been invited by the Pharaoh of the time to sit out the famine in Egypt where, due to Joseph's phenomenal administration, there was enough food. When the situation got better, our ancestors didn't rush back to the Holy Land. They felt too comfortable, and then afterwards, there was a new administration in Egypt. That new Pharaoh had forgotten that Jacob and family were privileged as a thank-you to all that Joseph had done. He enslaved them. And then the Jewish People were forbidden to leave. That's where the Passover Story begins.

I don't see how illegal migrants have anything in common with Jacob and family thousands of years ago. It pains me to see respected rabbis, like Rabbi Shlomo Riskin adopting Leftist ideology to Jewish History and Theology.



The illegal migrants come to Israel attracted by our high standard of living, a chance to live in a secure society with excellent healthcare and sympathetic, kind citizens, such as Rabbi Riskin. They know that they will be protected, their children educated and cared for. That's the type of society we have here in Israel. The illegals are also willing to take on jobs that very few Israelis want to do. But we didn't invite them and we don't owe them anything. The illegals are in no rush to leave Israel, because they know that they won't be enslaved.

We are not like the Egyptian Pharaoh. And the illegals are not like the Jews who were enslaved in Egypt. The neighborhoods in Israel in which the illegals live have become high crime areas. Veteran Israelis are in danger, and they are the ones we should be worrying about and caring for. Why don't I hear the rabbis, like Riskin, and politicians preaching that we must care for and protect Israelis from the dangers caused by the illegals?

Real History: USA Wasn't Founded/Established by "Immigrants"

I hate to break to to you, but the truth is that the United States of America was founded/established by invaders and colonialists. They vanquished the native locals in every way possible. The surviving natives were then brainwashed by Christian missionaries. And to this day their descendants are second or third class citizens.

The immigrants came later, after the colonialists and adventurers. And don't forget the unfortunate black African slaves sold to the Europeans by the Arab muslims. The Europeans needed workers for the agriculture in the "new" land they had taken over.

Manifest Destiny was the rationale/green light for the new country to take over/populate all the land from sea to sea.

Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, expressed the philosophy that drove 19th-century U.S. territorial expansion. Manifest Destiny held that the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.

And that's when immigrants became necessary.

Sorry, but what I wrote is the truth, and it doesn't sound all that pretty. And reading recent news, it's clear that Europeans still think themselves as "rulers" of the world. The Arab terrorist Abbas, whom they set up to run the PA, has gone davka to the European Union to ask their help in forcing Israel to kowtow to his terrorist demands.

The Jewish People have a much longer history here in the Holy Land, and we never completely left it. Now we are back where we belong. We've outsurvived our ancient enemies, and we'll be around long after the EU and the USA, Gd willing.

Passover Story, Jewish Slaves, Nothing Like Pre-Civil War America

a very typical depiction of what is known as Jewish slavery in Egypt

Some of you may remember that a few weeks ago I posted a series of articles about the true meaning of the Hebrew word חרות HERUT.

חרות Cherut/Herut is Not Freedom!

Guest Post by Atara Snowbell on חרות Herut

For a Good Jewish Theological Discussion, You Need Hebrew!

In a sense this is a continuation of my quest to properly understand the Hebrew terminology and not get it confused with modern, or more recent history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.

It has always seemed that people, when growing up in New York and here in Israel, have made some confusing and most probably totally inaccurate image of what both "series" were.

black slaves hard at work

That's because both in Hebrew and in English the same word is used for the status of both, slaves and עבדים avadim. The lack of choice and personal freedom may have been very similar, but their status and how they became slaves were totally differnt.

I had tried to explain that to my neighbors at our weekly Shabbat class, the shiur nashim, many of you have read about. Please remember that the black slaves in America and other parts of the world were human beings who had been (or their parents/grandparents etc) rounded up and captured like animals from their native Africa and then sold as "work animals" to those looking for servants/workers etc. Because of their dark, unfamiliar color and the fact that they had been captured in the jungle, the "white men" considered them as trainable apes who were non or sub-human. And that is one of the reasons the discrimination against them continued long after the American Civil War when it became illegal to own a human being.

In Biblical Egypt the Jews were not slaves in that sense. The history of how they arrived in Egypt is well-known. During a time of famine, Jacob's children and grandchildren accepted the generous offer of the Pharaoh of the time to move lock, stock and barrel to Goshen, a very fertile area in Egypt, because Pharaoh's Viceroy was Jacob's son Joseph. As explained in the Bible, after a few decades "there was a new Pharaoh who didn't know/remember Josef" and didn't remember/recognize the promise/contract that had been made with Jacob way back when.

The result was more like Hitler's antisemitic laws that discriminated against Jews and forced them from their homes in pre-World War Two Germany. Life in a Concentration Camp, or especially a Forced Labor Camp could be considered more like the Jewish slaves in Egypt during the time of the Bible.

I will end this here to give you some food for thought and sincerely appreciate your comments about it.

For a Good Jewish Theological Discussion, You Need Hebrew!

Last night I had a very frustrating time at our monthly Shabbat Mevorchim Melava Malka, Post Shabbat study and nosh event, that we've been having on the Saturday nights after the Shabbat when the upcoming new Jewish Month has been announced in shul.

The rabbi who led it conducted a discussion, not a lecture, which he began by summarizing the story Chazal (our sages) say that before birth we have all the knowledge possible about Torah and Judaism, but as we're being born an angel kisses us and seals it or removes it. Then he asked us for our personal opinions about Passover and חרות Cherut, Freedom. Yes, he defined it as "freedom." Now that bothered me a lot. By defining חרות Cherut as Freedom, he was giving חרות Cherut  a meaning, which it may not really have.

Israel's old Right newspaper had been called חרות

Most of the participants were of the generation raised and came to age in the late 1960's, when "freedom" had all sorts of political connotations, and they tried to get those to mesh with Passover. I felt that the discussion was totally off-track, because I wanted it to be based on the linguistic meaning in Hebrew of חרות, but I guess I was in the minority on this.

I don't see any "freedom" in the way we celebrate and prepare for Passover. Actually it's the opposite. The way most of us prepare is so anti-Freedom, so pathologically OCD, it drives people from religion.

That's why I insisted on getting to the root of חרות. That brought me to what to me is the most crucial and important line in the entire Passover Hagaddah:

עבדים היינו לפרעה במצרים עתה עתה בני חורין
Avodim hayinu liparoh bamitzrayim; atta bnai chorinWe were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt ; now we are "free?"

It's the statement that expresses opposite status. "Avodim liparoh bamitzrayim" versus "bnai chorin." which is commonly translated as "slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt" versus "free." Pretty much everybody stresses the "slavery" part and then gives the opposite of slavery as freedom, but I keep thinking, yes for years, that the crucial aspect of this is not the economic slavery but the fact that we had to obey the whims of the Egyptian leader and the opposite "bnai chorin" would mean that we now must obey Gd.

This would take the entire story someplace else and not at all to "freedom" as commonly depicted. This brings us to the Torah and Gd's commandments. It makes more sense and then all the kitchen cleaning and special ways of cooking mean that instead of the readily available food (chametz) given to the Jewish slaves by Pharaoh, we Jews have to rid ourselves and our homes of that and eat the food Gd commands us to eat and prepare. In the Wilderness when transitioning between slavery in Egypt and building a new Jewish society in the HolyLand, after we prepared the quick matzot, spelled like Mitzvot, Gd gave us the mahn.

Passover is not a matter of slavery versus freedom at all! Passover is the transition from following man's law to following G'd's Laws.

It took me a whole night of sleep for this to jell or "leaven." What do you think?

Here's the Atara Snowbell response to the question:  Guest Post by Atara Snowbell on חרות Herut

Succot, More than Just a Leaky Roof

One of the key requirements for a kosher succah is that light can come in and rain, too from the roof.

Tonight the Jewish world will begin to celebrate the week-long Holiday of Succot. In some ways this is the strangest, most peculiar Jewish Holiday in the Jewish Calendar. There's a mitzvah, a Torah commandment to move out of our homes to "hut," aka succah.

At least we're not commanded to move far away and go camping. The succah can be attached to our home, on a deck or terrace or in the backyard or nearby sidewalk.

OK, I don't know of any place that allows them on sidewalks or have large public succot all over besides Israel.

For many, the succah becomes our livingroom, dining-room and bedroom. Though, we are not supposed to stay in the succah if it's raining or snowing, storming etc. Judaism believes in life, not suffering.

Succot is the Holiday of Joy, of praising G-d and thanking G-d for all of the wonderful things He has done for us. It's an anti-materialist holiday to remind us that we don't need a fancy building to worship G-d. Succot commemorates when the Jewish People left the slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt. It was a very traumatic time for the Jewish People. Slavery has the advantage of dependence. The slave owners provide food and shelter, because their slaves are financial assets. Suddenly after generations of slavery, of the ready-made food, replacement clothing (thanks to Atara Snowbell who taught me in Matan)  and no need to worry about money, the Jewish People had to learn how to cope as independent individuals and as G-d's People.

Constructing a succah which commemorates the huts the Jewish People lived in while wandering forty years in the desert, we learn to take responsibility for ourselves as G-d's Chosen People.

Chag Succot Sameach!

Are We Still Slaves?

In the Passover Hagaddah it's written:

עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ לְפַרְעֹה בְּמִצְרָיִם
Avodim hayinu lipharoh bamitzrayim
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt

Most people concentrate on the first two words:

עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ
Avodim hayinu
We were slaves

They think of the physical drudgery and suffering and celebrate its cessation on Passover.  But G-d was more concerned with the emotional, ideological, religious slavery to Pharoah, his mentality and values.  That's why:

וַיּוֹצִיאֵנוּ יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מִשָּׁם בְּיָד חֲזָקָה וּבִזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה.

...veyotzi'ainu Adoshem Elokeinu misham biyad chazakah uvezroah nituya.
...and Our G-d Almighty took us out with a strong hand and outstretched arm.

This is not the famous Dayenu "It Would Have Been Enough" song.

אִלּוּ הוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִצְרַים וְלֹא עָשָׂה בָּהֶם שְׁפָטִים, דַּיֵינוּ.

If He had brought us out from Egypt, Ilu hotzianu mimitzrayim, אִלּוּ הוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם
and had not carried out judgments against them v'lo asah bahem sh'fatim, וְלֹא עָשָׂה בָּהֶם שְׁפָטִים
— Dayenu, it would have sufficed! dayeinu! דַּיֵּנוּ

The physical part was the easy part.  If it was just the physical aspect of slavery that worried G-d, then just His Hand would have had been sufficient to extradite us from Egypt.  In the Bible, the use of the word יד yad hand connotates "strength."  But we needed more than a one dimentional, physical removal.  We needed to remove the Egyptian values and morals, the slavery to Pharoah from our minds and hearts.  G-d also had to embrace us with His וּבִזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה z'roah nituya, outstretched arm.

This process of freeing ourselves from foreign influence is an ongoing process.  The חמץ chametz chametz of our minds and hearts are the hardest to remove.

חג כשר ושמח

Chag Kasher v'Same'ach

Have a Happy & Kosher Holiday