Letting Our People Go
Bringing Us All Out of Egypt.
Reprinted with permission of SocialAction.com
After the Ten Commandments, ParashatMishpatim seems like a letdown. One week we read of God's thundering voice,of mountains ablaze and trembling listeners, of the fundamental laws of theTorah. The next, it's the most everyday of worlds--donkeys and sheep, lostobjects and paid guardians, fistfights and insulted parents.
But we should read Mishpatim morecarefully, because it's here that we learn what God really meant by makingthese words the prologue to the Ten Commandments: I am Adonai your God, the onewho brought you out from the land of Egypt, the house of slaves. By looking attwo sets of laws which structure this parasha, we can uncover what itmeans for us to live our everyday lives with the awareness of former slaves.
The very first law in Mishpatimseems at first glance to be built on the opposite idea. It begins: "Whenyou buy a Hebrew slave. . . " Stop right there!--how can the Israelites,so fresh out of Egypt, be buying each other as slaves?
To answer the question we have tocontinue reading. "Six years he shall work, and in the seventh you shalllet him go, free, without payment." A couple of things catch ourattention. One is surely the numbers, six and seven, which remind us of theweekly cycle of work and rest characteristic of free people. The other is mostapparent in Hebrew. The word "y'shalchenu, he shall let him go," isbuilt from the same root as Moses' famous demand of Pharaoh, uttered in God'sname: "Shalach et ami, Let My people go!"
We are being told here that theact of freeing a personal slave is really the same as God's act of freeing anentire nation from slavery. And the parallel builds: "But if the slavedeclares, 'I love my master...I do not wish to go free,' his master shall takehim before God. He shall be brought to the door [or the doorpost; mezuzah,in Hebrew] and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl--and he shall thenremain his slave for life."
My teacher Rabbi Ed Greensteinexplains that if you pierce an ear at the doorpost, what is left behind is aspot of blood. That detail completes the parallel between the slave owner inIsrael and the Blessed Holy One in Egypt. The master who wishes to free hisslave recreates the scene of the last night in Egypt. There, the slavesperformed their first act as free people, defying the Egyptians by smearingblood on their doorposts from the sacrifice of a lamb, an animal sacred to theoppressors. In Mishpatim, by contrast, the master in effect says to the slave:"I want you free. You could walk out this door into freedom. If you don't,it's not because I didn't try, not because I held you back, not because Idesired to oppress you."
This law, in the end, is notreally about permission to keep slaves. In its historical time, the Torahpresumed a society where there were slaves, who had sold themselves because ofdebts or poverty. The law emphasizes instead the freeing. The very first thingthese former slaves are being told is not to become like their Egyptianoppressors. They are being told to free their slaves--not only to offerfreedom, but to sing it loud, to pull out all the stops, even to the point ofcreating a mini-drama about oppression and freedom.
The lesson is the same for ourtime and our society. We do not own slaves anymore, but as a society wetolerate oppression and participate in it. We tolerate a two-tiered society,where some have access to education and encouragement, to wealth and the meansto make it, and others far less so. We tolerate the attitudes that let thiscontinue--the lazy stereotypes about people of different colors and about"the poor," the lazy fatalist feeling that there are no realsolutions. This is, in our time, what it means to buy and keep a slave of ourown people.
The Torah commands us, livingtoday, to free the oppressed around us. To set a limit to the time we arewilling to tolerate the inequities and injustices before we rid ourselves ofslavery. The first law set down by the God who brought us out of slavery is togo back, split the sea, and rescue those for whom life among us is still lifein Egypt.
The law of the Hebrew slave freedin the seventh year begins the law code of Mishpatim. The code ends with afinal series of laws, and the laws that open that this final section each evokeand extend one aspect of the law of the slave. "Do not oppress thestranger--because you know what it is like to be a slave. Six years you shallsow the land and gather its produce, but in the seventh you shall let itrest--so that your wealth belongs for one year to the needy."
And finally, "six days youshall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor." Itis significant that Shabbat, the command to rest each week in celebration ofour own freedom, is at the end of the list. Only when the strangers are welcomedoes our freedom have any meaning. Only when the hungry are fed does Shabbat,the pinnacle of Jewish spiritual life, have any significance.
And it works the other way,too--Shabbat is a daylong meditation on the responsibilities of free people ina society not yet rid of the suffering made by human beings. We must enter eachnew week like the master in Mishpatim, unsatisfied to see that sufferingcontinues, blood on the door but the people still trapped inside.
The Blessed Holy One wentfirst--"I am Adonai your God, the One who brought you out of the land ofEgypt, the house of slaves." The laws of Mishpatim teach us to go next, tokeep on going, to be like God, so that we too can say that we have broughtevery last person out of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.
Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett is the founder and director of MACHAR, a national project in the United States involving Jewish youth in service that promotes self-sufficiency and economic empowerment and in study of Jewish and American "texts" on wealth, success, and social responsibility.
