We tend to think of slavery as something belonging entirely to the past. On the Seder Night, we will talk about slavery going back thousands of years and think of it abstractly as a feature of a barbaric world long gone. We will be asked to imagine what it was like to be a slave and then imagine experiencing freedom from slavery. Remembering slavery is a repeated theme in the Torah. As is gratitude for being brought out of Egypt. Remembering that we were slaves is one of the fundamental concepts of our ethical tradition of being sensitive to suffering or disadvantage. Yet in practice, it is something that we pay lip service to because we think that slavery no longer exists when in fact slavery does exist all around the world in one form or another.
In ancient times, all societies and powers used slaves as disposable tools to build their edifices and cared not at all for their welfare. They worked them to death. Yet there were different kinds of slaves. One can think of Abraham’s Eliezer of Damascus who was not only the manager of his estate but also his potential heir. On the other hand, Joseph was a slave suffering all the indignities that were common in the Greek and Roman worlds. And so were the Children of Israel in Egypt.
The Torah distinguishes between types of slavery. It lays down a series of limitations on how one can treat slaves. It differentiates between Hebrew slaves, people who had to pay for certain crimes or defaults, or those who had fallen on very hard times and could not support themselves and their families. They became indentured servants. They were full citizens with the same civil and religious rights, protections, and obligations as everyone else. It was frowned upon if they wanted to extend their servitude and they had their ear pierced because as the rabbis said, “ It was the ear that heard on Mount Sinai that we are slaves to God, not slaves to other slaves” ( TB Kiddushin 22b). The Torah laid down very specifically how one had to treat Hebrew slaves according to Jewish law and that they should live how the master or mistress lived.
But then there was the Canaanite slave, someone bought on the open market, who was regarded as property and could be passed on from one generation to the next. Even they had a deal of protection under the law. They could not be physically disfigured. If one ran away from an abusive master, he or she could not be returned. Serious damages were grounds for freedom and when slaves were freed, he or she would immediately become full members of the Jewish religious community. The Talmud records a case where R, Eliezer freed a slave to make up a minyan ( TB Brachot 47b). R. Gamliel insisted on full mourning custom for a Canaanite slave Tavi whom he described as “kosher” (TB Brachot16b). So that it was clear that even Canaanite slaves could be important and respected valued members of Jewish society.
Greek and Roman slaves played a very important part as secretaries scribes administrators. slaves could often rise to senior positions in government administration and even on occasion to royalty and they played a very important role both in the Roman government and military. Nevertheless, technically speaking the slave was a slave in every respect and subject to his or her master to the point of life or death. Roman historians did not shy away from recounting the horrors imposed on male and female slaves.
There are still survivors of the Holocaust who knew what slavery was like. To be in the hands of barbarians who could torture and kill them at will or work them to death. Men, women, and children who experienced the horrors of dehumanization. When they celebrate freedom, they really know what it means.in
Since October 7th most of us have come to realize painfully and personally what slavery means. Where one can be deprived of any control over what happens to our bodies. The hostages that Hamas took from Israel have experienced and continue to experience slavery at its very worst. Not only because their lives could be taken at any moment, and they were tortured raped and starved, and made to live like animals humiliated every moment of their lives. And there was no respite, no possibility of amelioration, and certainly not of being given an opportunity as Roman slaves had of playing a significant part in the barbaric culture that enslaved them. Under some primitive cultures, the more one can impose one’s dominance and cruelty on non-believers the prouder they are and asserting what they believe is their superiority.
Jews were exiled and sold into slavery for thousands of years. One knew what was going to happen. Sometimes one had the choice to escape the horrors either by conversion or martyrdom. It was one of the greatest mitzvot of communities around the Christian and Muslim worlds to try to free and redeem them, Pidyon Shevuim. The Talmud records rabbis going into brothels to redeem captives.
What we have witnessed now in Hamas’s ongoing inhumanity, is a tragedy beyond imagination and a fate worse than death.
And this is going to make the Seder night this year, more meaningful more painful more personal than anything we have experienced since the Holocaust. And when I say and sing this year LeShanah HaBaah BiYerushalayim, Next Year in Jerusalem, I will pray with all my heart not just that I will be there, but that Israel will still be there for me. Because I realize never more than ever before in my life, that without Israel, we Jews will not be able to rely on anyone else!
I wish you all as Happy a Pesach as possible.
Jeremy Rosen
New York 2024.
