Freedom in the Land
Behar 5776
Shmuel Herzfeld
I recently took part in a manifestation of activism that I am very proud of. When I found out that the Republican Primary in DC was scheduled for Shabbat and when I found out that the DC Democratic Caucus was scheduled for Shabbat, I worked with the leadership of these parties and asked them to accommodate Shabbat observers. And both parties were very willing to accommodate. (I think it helped that in 2011 we sued the DC Board of Elections and Ethics over a similar matter.)
But that wasn’t the act of activism that I am referring to. I am referring to actually voting. That is an act of activism. I went to both the Republican Primary and the Democratic Caucus in order to support those members of our shul who went down to vote. This past Saturday night it meant traveling downtown at 10:30 pm in order to Caucus. I even took my 8-year-old son with me in order to teach him about the importance of voting.
I once had the opportunity to talk with Dolores Huerta, a world famous labor leader and civil rights activist, who founded United Farm Workers. She has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her courageous activism. She has been beaten so badly at rallies that she has had her ribs broken and she even lost her spleen. She told me that simply voting is the single biggest act of activism one can do.
When we vote for President or for our publicly elected officials, it is an act of freedom that we should not take for granted. This weekend on Memorial Day we will remember those who gave their lives in service of the United States, so that we could have the freedom to vote for whomever we want.
Freedom is a major theme in this week’s portion as we are commanded to call out for freedom in the land.
Every fiftieth year is the Jubilee year—the Yovel. We are supposed to free our slaves and blast a shofar and declare, “Freedom in the Land.”
Ve-haavarta shofar teruah bachodesh hashevei be-asor lachodesh taaviru shofar bekhol artzechem…u-keratem deror baaretz lekhol yoshvehah…. And you shall blast a shofar throughout the land in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month. And you shall declare, ‘Let there be freedom in the land!” (25:9-10)
This verse has had a beautiful impact upon the world and especially on this very country that we live in. It is the only verse that is engraved on the Liberty Bell and so it stands forever in the United States as a stark reminder of the biblical imperative for all of humanity to have the right of freedom.
Around 10 years ago, I visited Cuba with a group from our shul. As we were driving along in our bus I became overwhelmed with emotion at seeing the poverty around me. When we passed Castro’s office, I asked the driver to stop the car. I got out of the car, put my tallit on, went up to the Cuban soldier, blasted my shofar and declared, “U-keratem Deror Ba-aretz Lekhol Yoshvehah.”
This portion is a bedrock portion of our existence today. It speaks of freedom, freeing our slaves (25:10), feeding the poor by opening the fields in the Sabbatical year (25:11), not overcharging (25:14,17), not lending money on interest (25:36), and literally lending a hand to the poor amongst us (25:25).
Yet, if that is the only theme we notice in this portion then we are being disingenuous and skipping some key verses.
This same portion that speaks with such beautiful and inspiring rhetoric about freedom also contains within it a deflating and haunting commandment.
The same portion that tells us that we must free our slaves in the Jubilee year makes it clear that this freedom applies only to the Israelites and not to the other nations in our midst. On the contrary, it commands us to enslave the other nations around us.
There are two types of slaves in the Torah, Hebrew slaves and non-Hebrew slaves. Hebrew slaves are Jews who are basically indentured servants. But non-Hebrew slaves are indeed slaves in the more traditional sense of the term.
The same Torah that commands us to free our Hebrew slaves also orders us not to free our non-Hebrew slaves!
Says the Torah about non-Hebrew slaves: “Meihem tiknu, you shall acquire them” (25:45). “Vehetnichaltem livneichem achareichem, and you shall bequeath them to your offspring as an inheritance” (25:46). And even more troubling, “leolam bahem taavodu, you must always enslave them” (25:46).
The Talmud cites this last verse and tells us, “hameshachrer avdo over be-aseh,” whoever frees a non-Hebrew slave violates a positive commandment of the Torah!
There can be nothing more repugnant to us than the institution of slavery. Freedom is the most glorious of all rights and taking away another person’s freedom and enslaving them is the ultimate violation of those rights.
How can our glorious and beautiful Torah (which is so concerned about the freedom of our fellow brethren) allow for the institution of slavery? More than that, how can there actually be a commandment telling us that we are not allowed to free our non-Hebrew slaves?
This issue is deeply troubling and disturbing. At the same time, rather than simply avoiding this problematic aspect of our faith, if we embrace it and wrestle with the troubling elements we can find a path forward not only in this area but in other areas as well.
Rather than view this passage as a sign of the insularity and irrelevance of the most sacred text in our tradition, we should view it as a glorious opportunity to see how our rabbis and our tradition dealt with such challenging texts.
Immediately after the Talmud tells us that whoever frees their slave violates a biblical commandment, the Talmud in Gittin raises a contradiction from a Beraita:
“There was an incident in which Rabbi Eliezer entered into a synagogue and did not find ten. He freed his slave and this completed the ten.” (Gittin, 38b.)
Thus, the Talmud is wondering how could R. Elizer free his slave and thereby violate the biblical commandment.
The Talmud answers, “mitzvah shani, for a mitzvah it is different.” In other words, one is allowed to free their slave for the purpose of a mitzvah and therefore even though in general one cannot free a slave, in this case it was allowed for the sake of a mitzvah of making a minyan.
This answer of the Talmud is problematic.
The commandment not to free your slaves is biblical, while the idea of making a minyan of ten for prayer is only rabbinic. How could Rabbi Eliezer violate a biblical commandment in order to fulfill a rabbinic commandment?
There are many answers to this question.
We are only going to survey three medieval answers briefly in order to make a larger point.
One answer to this question is the answer of the Talmud itself. This story is also told in Berachot (47b) and there the Talmud asks a similar question and explains that the mitzvah of making a minyan is not just a regular mitzvah but a mitzvah for the entire community—mitzvah derabim shani. Since it is such an important communal mitzvah, even the rabbinic commandment can override the biblical commandment.
So there is an easy answer to this question, but nevertheless many medieval commentators chose to go in a different direction.
One answer is that of R. Eliezer of Metz (d. 1175) in his work Yereim(section, 423). The Yereim offers a novel interpretation of this biblical commandment not to free one’s slaves. He notes that the words leolam bahem tavodu are placed next to the words be-acheichem benei yisrael (and your brothers the Children of Israel). He therefore argues that just like one is only allowed to enslave their fellow Jews when they are bad people (based upon Bava Metziah 73b) so too, this applies to other nations as well. In other words, the commandment to enslave others only applies to bad people from the other nations. In the case of R. Eliezer, the slave was a good person and so Rabbi Eliezer was permitted to free him.
This is a radical explanation in that it offers a totally new interpretation and novel limitation of a biblical commandment. Nowhere in the Torah does it put any qualifications on this commandment.
A second approach appears in Meiri (Provence, 1249 - c. 1310). Meiri (ad. loc. s.v. mei-attah) argues that the reason why R. Eliezer was able to free his slave is that the commandment to enslave is a fundamentally unique commandment. In rabbinic terminology it is a mitzvah that is not shaveh le-kol -- it doesn’t apply equally. Not everyone owns a slave and therefore the commandment not to free a slave, is not a universal commandment. Therefore, the commandment is less intense and R. Eliezer was able to be lenient. This too, is a radical revolution in the intellectual history of this law. No one else had suggested this idea and we could think of many other commandments, which are not shaveh le-kol, and yet we do not have the right to override those commandments.
A third approach is that of R. Nissim of Gerona (1320-1376), known as the Ran. Ran (s.v. kol) writes that this is not a real biblical commandment (lav aseh gamur hu) and therefore a rabbinic commandment can override it.
Ran is one of the greatest talmudists in our entire tradition and yet it is a radical statement. How can he argue that this is not a “real commandment”? This is a strange and new category that strikes me as without precedent.
This is a just sampling of the many answers that our commentators give to this problematic story of R. Eliezer freeing his slave.
These are radical answers by very traditional commentators. There are ways to deal with this Talmudic question in less radical ways (e.g. see the answer of the Talmud in Berachot and also the answers of Ramban, Rashba, Rosh, and Sefer Hachinukh). So why do they choose such radical approaches?
My theory is that the very fact that these medieval commentaries offered such a radical reinterpretation of the biblical commandment speaks to their discomfort with this challenging biblical commandment to enslave another people. Slavery is a morally repugnant concept that sounds way off to our modern ears. Apparently, not just to our modern ears, but also to the medieval ears of these great scholars.
We started off today speaking about freedom as it relates to voting and self-government.
But there is another concept of freedom.
Freedom doesn’t only mean political freedom. Freedom can also mean the freedom to claim ownership of our faith and our tradition.
These commentaries –these sages in the Talmud—felt the freedom to legislate a mitzvah from the Torah out of existence and turn it into a dead letter law.
Of course, this was done by the greatest scholars in our history. And it was done, in an extremely rare situation. But it was done because they felt freedom as it relates to their own tradition.
Lets do a mind experiment. Lets say that we skipped the middle ages and our scholars today were wrestling with this concept of leolam bahe tavodu.
What would people today do with this commandment? The majority would say, it is our mesorah, do not violate it. Moreover, they would say, the fact that it is in the Torah means that it is the most moral law in existence.
And in 99% of the cases they would be correct.
But as it relates to this law of slavery we know better.
There was a public debate in 1920 between the Chief Sefardic rabbi of Tzfat, R. BenZion Uziel, the author of Mishpetei Uziel, and Rav Avraham Isaac Hakohen Kook. (See here: .) They were arguing over whether women could vote in the elections in the early yishuv. Rabbi Kook said women cannot vote. They must stay home. It is against our Mesorah.
The Mishpatei Uziel took a different approach. He said that sometimes there is something even more important than Mesorah—it is called logic! In this case women eventually got to vote in the elections and today women everywhere vote. Logic won out.
I am convinced that a religion cannot survive without a strong commitment to our tradition. But a religion can also not survive without the freedom to feel ownership over our faith.
This is the challenge that we must face in order to come closer to Hashem!
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