law, daily affairs, property rights, indentured servants, regulating business, and penalties (murder, kidnapping, assault, and theft, damages, and loans). Civil law and religious
laws are intertwined.
We will focus on these verses in the parsha through the lens of Mussar, connecting the
weekly portion to our lived experience through the middah of Achrayut/Responsibility/ אחריות
- The first laws are for those who are enslaved.
- Responsibilities are outlined for God’s Messengers.
- Laws warn against mistreatment of foreigners; the observance of the seasonal festivals, offerings that are to be brought to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem; the prohibition against cooking meat with milk; the mitzvah of prayer.
- God promises to bring Am Yisrael to the Holy Land, warning them against assuming the pagan ways of the ones who live there.
- The people’s response: “We will do and we will hear all that God commands us.”
- Aaron and Hur are in charge of the camp while Moses ascends Mount Sinai.
- Moses remains there for forty days and forty nights to receive the Torah from God.
Nahum Sarna, Exploring Exodus, p.174
These are the rules that you shall set before them: When you acquire a Hebrew serf, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment.
(יד) הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
(14) He [also] used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self [only], what am I? And if not now, when?
(כ) וְגֵ֥ר לֹא־תוֹנֶ֖ה וְלֹ֣א תִלְחָצֶ֑נּוּ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
(20) You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
An individual has the ability to throw off the yoke of Heaven; a community does not.
~Sefer HaMiddot, Fear of God, Yirah Part II:5
Let us take the case of the Jewish slave. That a Jew should buy another Jew as a slave is an intolerable thought which is rejected by everything that the teaching of the Torah in its religious and ethical significance stands for, yet it was a fact accepted and incorporated in a law. Obviously slavery was an institution that in biblical times, given human nature, social and economic conditions, could not have been abolished by any law. So the law limited the duration of the slavery. The slave had to be set free after six years of service. The Bible insists on calling the slave “thy brother,” and prescribes how he is to be treated: “Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.” The rabbis in the Talmud then went on to explain that the slave’s standard of living had to be equal to that of the master. “Do not yourself eat fine bread and give him the coarse one. Do not you drink old wine and let him have only new wine. Sleep not on a soft bed, while he has to sleep on straw. So much so that people would say: ‘He who buys himself a Jewish slave buys a master for himself.’
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.
Our injuring of others... results from our failure to know them... The human capacity to injure other people has always been much greater than its ability to imagine other people. Or perhaps we should say, the human capacity to injure other people is very great precisely because our capacity to imagine other people is very small.
~ Elaine Scarry, The Difficulty of Imagining Other People
(ג) עֲ֭שֹׂה צְדָקָ֣ה וּמִשְׁפָּ֑ט נִבְחָ֖ר לַיהֹוָ֣ה מִזָּֽבַח׃
To do what is right and just is more desired by the LORD than sacrifice.
The Torah frowns on excessive pursuit of material goods. Therefore we read "if you will listen to My commandments...you will gather in your harvest." This means you engage in necessary activities to assure yourself of your livelihood. Selling oneself to another person in order to gain financial security, and to escape one's responsibilities, is frowned on. The fact that even the most private possessions such as wife and children acquired during servitude, continue to belong to the master, demonstrates that the Torah's message to us is to rely on G'd and not on man. After all, it is He who has commanded the children of Israel "for to Me are the children of Israel servants." He did not take us out of Egypt in order for us to become slaves again. The pursuit of worldly goods is a waste of time, since we leave the world as naked as we came into it. (Job 1, 21, "I came naked out of my mother's womb, and naked will I return there.") The whole paragraph dealing with the Jewish servant can be understood allegorically as reflecting man's experience in this world. He enters alone, leaves alone, leaves his acquisitions behind, and when he expresses the desire to attach himself to a human master, he is brought to elohim, to be forcefully reminded of his error. In the seventh decade of his life, his vitality ebbs, and as he approaches his death, i.e. the time he returns to the grave, he does so chinam, chofshi, without any encumbrance. This is either due to physical decline or because of lack of energy to go on living. The wheel has turned, as a wheel is always apt to do. What had once been thought to be a continuous upward curve, has peaked and become a downward movement. (compare Exodus 21, 2-6) Man will wind up as a servant "forever" to his "Master" in the world of infinity. The purpose of the Torah has always been to liberate mortal man from the inevitable and depressingly terminal state of merely physical existence here on earth. Accepting the yoke of Torah is an incomparably easier burden than living with the thought of the futility of all earthly existence. One of the ways to achieve freedom from the obsessive character of the greed to amass more and more material, i.e. useless wealth, is the Torah's emphasis that one should be satisfied with the necessities of life. All the Torah's promises of reward for performing G'ds commandments are of this nature. "I will grant you rain at the appropriate time;" "you will gather in your grain harvest." "You will eat, be sated and bless the Lord." Performance of G'ds commandments will enable us to feel "satiated" when we have eaten. The greatest lesson in this respect was the experience of man, the heavenly bread the Israelites ate in the desert. This taught reliance on G'd, the futility of amassing for the future as long as one is under the loving care of G'ds Personal Providence.
ורצע אדניו את אזנו במרצע AND HIS LORD SHALL BORE HIS EAR THROUGH WITH THE AWL — “His ear” means his right ear....What is the reason that the ear had to be pierced rather than any other limb of the servant’s body? Rabban Jochanan ben Zaccai said: That ear which heard on Mount Sinai, (Exodus 20:13) “Thou shalt not steal” and yet its owner went and stole and was therefore sold as a slave — let it be pierced! Or, in the case of him who sold himself from destitution, having committed no theft, the reason is: That ear which heard on Mount Sinai what I said, (Leviticus 25:55) “For unto Me the children Israel are servants” and yet its owner went and procured for himself another master — let it be pierced! (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 21:6:3; Kiddushin 22b). Rabbi Simeon interpreted this verse like a jewel (i. e. giving it an ethical signification): In what respect are door and doorpost different from all other objects in the house that they should be singled out for this purpose? God, in effect, said: door and doorpost that were eye-witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and the two doorposts, freeing Israel from slavery, and when I said, (Leviticus 25:55) “For unto Me the children of Israel are servants” — servants to Me but not servants of servants (of human beings), and yet this man went and procured another master for himself — let him be pieced in their presence (i. e. let them be eye-witnesses now when this man voluntarily prolongs his state of slavery)! (Kiddushin 22b.)
It appears that what Moses wanted with this new covenant was to make the Israelites responsible for one another in their מצוה-performance. Each Jew has to see to it that his fellow Jew does not stumble and commit sins. The proof that this is what Moses had in mind here is to be found in verse 28 of our chapter where the Israelites are relieved of their responsibility when the nature of the sin committed is one that is secret. The Torah emphasises הנגלות, "publicly committed sins," must be dealt with by ourselves. It is clear that that verse speaks of the mutual responsibility of one Jew for the conduct of another. Naturally, the degree to which we have to carry out this responsibility varies with our position in the community.
The Gemara asks: And with regard to all of the other transgressions in the Torah, is punishment not exacted from the entire world? But isn’t it written: “And they shall stumble one upon another” (Leviticus 26:37)? This verse is homiletically interpreted to mean that they shall stumble spiritually, one due to the iniquity of another, which teaches that the entire Jewish people are considered guarantors for one another. Apparently, any transgression makes the entire world liable to be punished.
Communal prayer is always heard. Even when there are transgressors among [the congregation], the Holy One, blessed be He, does not reject the prayers of the many. Therefore, a person should include himself in the community and should not pray alone whenever he is able to pray with the community.
One should always spend the early morning and evening [hours] in the synagogue, for prayer will not be heard at all times except [when recited] in the synagogue.
Anyone who has a synagogue in his city and does not pray [together] with the congregation in it is called a bad neighbor.
~Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler writing about himself, as quoted in Michtav M’Eliyahu, volume 3, p. 292
וכשלו איש באחיו, “they will stumble over one another, etc.” According to Sanhedrin 27 the Torah means that they will stumble each over the sins committed by the other, i.e. their reciprocal responsibility which they disregarded became their undoing. This is also what Moses had in mind in Deut. 29,9 when he described each Israelite as “standing upright” at that time, (i.e. not stumbling over his fellow’s sins). The example for this reciprocal responsibility was illustrated most powerfully when because of failure to admonish Achan who had taken money from the loot of Jericho declared sacred for the Temple, this sin became the cause of Israel losing its first campaign after the capture of Jericho. (compare Joshua chapter seven with special emphasis on verse 11) [Contrary to Moses who had asked G’d in connection with Korach why the sin of one man should cause G’d’s anger against a whole nation, in Achan’s case G’d spelled out that it did. Ed.] G’d tells Joshua that “Israel has sinned;” He did not tell him that “an Israelite had sinned.” The whole nation was held responsible for the sin of an individual. An accessory after the fact, i.e. someone who does not admonish the sinner has made himself his partner. Seeing that what Achan had done could not have been concealed completely, there had already been many accessories.
This incident prompted the sages in Shir Hashirim Rabbah 6,16 to comment that the use of the word "nut” in אל גנת האגוז ירדתי, “I went down to the nut-grove” (Song of Songs 6,11), describes that just as it is impossible to pluck one walnut without making the whole tree shake, so it is impossible for an individual to commit a sin without ripples of what he did affecting the entire Jewish people. This is what had bothered Moses in Numbers 16,22: “one man sinned and You are angry at the whole congregation!”
Now theologians and religious thinkers may disagree with Maimonides’ interpretation of the meaning of the sacrificial service in the Temple, but the principle of interpretation that he uses will still have his authority. For one who believes in the eternal validity of the Torah, the divinely revealed teaching, Maimonides’ principle is vital to safeguard his faith. Is it not possible for a believing Jew to make peace with certain biblical laws without applying to them Maimonides’ principle of interpretation? This is not the place to discuss the subject comprehensively, but let us consider one or two examples. Let us take the case of the Jewish slave. That a Jew should buy another Jew as a slave is an intolerable thought which is rejected by everything that the teaching of the Torah in its religious and ethical significance stands for, yet it was a fact accepted and incorporated in a law. Obviously slavery was an institution that in biblical times, given human nature, social and economic conditions, could not have been abolished by any law. So the law limited the duration of the slavery. The slave had to be set free after six years of service. The Bible insists on calling the slave “thy brother,” and prescribes how he is to be treated: “Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.” The rabbis in the Talmud then went on to explain that the slave’s standard of living had to be equal to that of the master. “Do not yourself eat fine bread and give him the coarse one. Do not you drink old wine and let him have only new wine. Sleep not on a soft bed, while he has to sleep on straw. So much so that people would say: ‘He who buys himself a Jewish slave buys a master for himself.’ ” The biblical law regarding a father selling his minor daughter (less than 12 years and a day old) to be a maid-servant is similar in essence. It is inconceivable that today the most orthodox of orthodox Jews would allow such a practice. Even if the State of Israel were established in full conformity with Torah and Jewish law, it is inconceivable that both these laws should not be completely abolished and with the full approval of the orthodox rabbinate. Both cases are examples of time-conditioned practices, which could not be abolished by the law abruptly, but which were, however, legally limited, modified, humanized. They were absorbed by a net of laws and regulations that incorporated the thrust of the transcending ethos of the Torah, thus educating the people and guiding their moral development along lines which would lead to the complete abolition of the objectionable practices. What we learn from Maimonides’ principle of Torah interpretation is that no matter what the meaning and the truth of the teaching may be sub specie aeternitatis, when the ethos of the teaching is incorporated in the legalized and institutionalized forms of social organization, one cannot disregard the capacities of human nature to understand and to implement the imperative of the teaching. This is the root cause of the tension that often prevails between the law and the transcending spirit that formulates the law, which has been responsible for the process within the halakhah.