In this discussion of Parshat Mishpatim (Ex. 21:1-24:18), we will explore workers’ rights in the Torah and as queer people today. What can we learn from Shabbat? Where do we see room for growth? Possible trigger warnings: homophobia, transphobia
Blessing for Torah Study
Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la'asok b’divrei Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who sanctifies us with mitzvot, charging us to engage with words of Torah.
Beginning with Our Own Torah
1) What rights and rules do you want in place as a worker or employer? What do you want in place for queer people specifically? 2) Imagine a time when you felt truly at rest. What did your body, spirit, and mind feel like?
Workers' Rights
Questions to consider
What does it mean to love one's work? What happens when someone is harmed by work?
"Revolution is the Easy Part (Parashat Mishpatim)," Kerrick Lucker, Keshet (2008)
What does it mean to you to treat others justly? Much of Mishpatim deals with how one treats one’s subordinates; at the time, that meant servants indentured to pay off a debt. A parallel situation today is the employee-employer relationship. What are the obligations of an employer to their employees? I’m struck by how many LGBT advocacy organizations don’t provide domestic partner benefits or transgender-inclusive health care to their own employees. Does your congregation provide fully-inclusive benefits? And how about how people living in poverty are treated in the the Torah?
(1) These are the rules that you shall set before them: (2) When you acquire a Hebrew slave, that person shall serve six years—and shall go free in the seventh year, without payment. (3) If [a male slave] came single, he shall leave single; if he had a wife, his wife shall leave with him. (4) If his master gave him a wife, and she has borne him children, the wife and her children shall belong to the master, and he shall leave alone. (5) But if the slave declares, “I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free,” (6) his master shall take him before God.*before God Others “to the judges.” 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 master’s slave for life.
This Midrash asks: What does it mean for a slave to love their master?
Because the servant is well with [the employer]; i.e., well with food and well with drinks with [the employer]. This means that [the employer] should not eat white bread while [his] servant eats dark bread; that [the employer] should not drink old wine while [his] servant drinks fresh wine; that [the employer] should not sleep upon cushions while [his] servant sleeps on straw. From this, remarked our Rabbis, we may infer that whoever buys a Hebrew slave, it is as if he were buying a master over himself.
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(20) When a slave-owning party strikes a slave, male or female, with a rod, who dies there and then,*there and then Lit. “under his hand.” this must be avenged. (21) But if the victim survives a day or two, this is not to be avenged, since the one is the other’s property.
Cease from Work
Questions to consider
What is gained or lost when the land, animals, and people rest? What is the significance of one day or one year of rest? How does the text position the land, people, and animals in relationship with each other?
(10) Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; (11) but in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave let the wild beasts eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive groves. (12) Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor, in order that your ox and your ass may rest, and that your home-born slave and the stranger may be refreshed.
"Not All Time Is For Sale: Keeping Shabbat Under Capitalism," Ezra Lebovitz, New Voices, (2021)
Under time discipline, time becomes a commodity, a currency—as [E.P.] Thompson says, “time is money”. But not all time is for sale. Even under industrial capitalism, there is still Shabbat. There are still 25 hours of the week where time holds still, makes room for something quiet and eternal. It is, by its very nature, a world designed to exist outside of capital. In Heschel’s words, “He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil… He must say farewell to manual work.”
Working for God
Questions to consider
What work has been done or is being done? How or why is doing more work a reward for good work? How do queer people do the work of instructing?
(1) Then [God] said to Moses, “Come up to YHVH, with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel, and bow low from afar. (2) Moses alone shall come near YHVH; but the others shall not come near, nor shall the people come up with him.” (3) Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of YHVH and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, “All the things that YHVH has commanded we will do!”
(7) Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said,“We will hear and we will do all that YHVH has spoken!” (8) Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that YHVH now makes with you concerning all these commands.” (9) Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascended; (10) and they saw the God of Israel—under whose feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity. (11) Yet [God] did not raise a hand against the leaders* of the Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank. (12) YHVH said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them.” (13) So Moses and his attendant Joshua arose, and Moses ascended the mountain of God.
*leaders = Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.
Returning to Our Own Torah
1) How can we extend our desire for our own rights as a worker to everyone? 2) How can we think expansively about rest? What is queer about workers' rights and rest?
Reference
“Household Pulse Survey Shows LGBT Adults More Likely to Report Living in Households With Food and Economic Insecurity Than Non-LGBT Respondents,” United States Census Bureau (2021)
19.8% of LGBT adults lived in a household with lost employment income in the past four weeks, compared to 16.8% of non-LGBT adults.
"State Maps," Human Rights Campaign (2023)
