Freedom is what you make of it

When the U.S. Army liberated Buchenwald concentration camp and began administering to the survivors, Rabbi Herschel Schachter, then chaplain of the U.S. Eighth army, stayed in the camp to attempt to create a Jewish experience for them.

Rabbi Schechter requisitioned one of the barracks and set it up as a synagogue. Noticing one of the survivors standing on the side watching the prayers, Rabbi Schechter invited him to join. The man refused.

Realizing he had seen this fellow there before, Rabbi Schechter approached him again, offering him a siddur (prayer book). He refused again, and said:

“One day, one of the men in our barracks succeeded in smuggling a siddur into the camp. I was amazed that someone was willing to risk torture and certain death simply for the opportunity to pray. That a Jew, even in this hell, was willing to defy the Germans, and continue to believe in G-d, was a testament to the power of the human spirit, and to the Jewish people’s survival, against all odds. And I resolved that if a Jew could continue to pray under such circumstances, then maybe G-d was still out there, hidden in the indomitable spirit of the human soul, and I, too, would pray.

“I was in awe of this fellow, until I discovered what he was doing with the prayer book he had smuggled in: he refused to lend the siddur to anyone unless they first handed over their meager daily food ration. He was renting the prayer book out for rations, and Jews in the barracks, desperate to hold a siddur in their hands after all this time, were forced to give up their only food for a few minutes with the prayer book.

“At that moment I decided that if a human being could sink that low, then there was no G-d, and I resolved never to pray again.”

Rabbi Schechter responded with a simple question: “Instead of looking at the fellow who refused to give away his siddur without first taking the food of his fellow prisoners, why don’t you look at all the Jews who were willing to give up the only food they had for a chance to pray with a siddur?”

There was a moment of silence between the two, and something glimmered in those vacant eyes. And then, quietly, Simon Wiesenthal, took a siddur, and began to pray.

What does it mean to be a slave, and are we ever truly free?This week’s portion, Mishpatim, begins with a very challenging and almost incomprehensible concept: the idea of a Jewish slave, serving his Jewish master.

“And these are the judgments (or rules) that you must set before them (the Jewish people): If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but in the seventh year, he is to be set free… And if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife and my children; I do not want to go free,” his master must bring him to the courts… and the slave shall then serve his master forever.” (Exodus, 21:1-6)

Is this the reason we left Egypt behind us, to create our own system of slavery? Three thousand years before the American Declaration of Independence, in a world steeped in paganism and the belief that might makes right, the Jewish people came forward with the belief that all men are created equal.

How can the Torah now be telling us about Jewish slaves, in a Jewish slave system? Perhaps a closer look will help us understand.

A slave remains a slave for only six years. When he is set free, he only takes with him what he had when he came in. If he marries a woman who is a fellow slave, she doesn’t go with him when he leaves; she is the property of her master, and remains enslaved!

What sort of a slave loves his master? (And what sort of a husband loves his master more than his wife?) The Talmud tells us: “Kanah Eved Kanah Rav”; “He who acquires a slave, has really acquired a master.” The laws regarding slaves are incredible: If one has a Jewish slave, and there is only one pillow in the house, or if there is only enough food for one meal or if there is only one bed in the house, the slave gets them! If the master hits his slave, and injures him in any way, the slave immediately goes free! (See 21:26)

The term slave, with all of its negative connotations, should probably be replaced by ‘indentured servant.’ To understand this, we need to learn how a Jew becomes an indentured servant in the first place.

A Jewish ‘slave’ is someone who was, for example, caught stealing. Today, a thief is imprisoned. In Judaism punishment never involves prison. Judaism has a simpler system: If a person makes a mistake, there is a consequence, and that is the responsibility of the person who made the mistake.

First a person must repay what he took. He has to then try to again become the person he was before he stole. This is why Judaism’s word for this process is not ‘repentance’ but Teshuvah, from the root Shuv, to return.

What if a person stole, but has long since disposed of what he stole or spent the money and can’t repay his victim?

In Judaism, when a person has nothing, the Jewish court evaluates this person’s worth and sells his services to someone to enable him to repay what he stole.

When a person has hit bottom and feels he is worthless, the judges effectively say to him: ‘We will show you that you have value; you are worth much more than you think you are.’ He goes into service, and discovers all that he can contribute. He is part of a family, very different from convicts of our era who are shunned by society and hidden away.

Now it is easy to understand why a person would want to stay in such a reality. No bills or worries, a sense of purpose and belonging.

But the purpose of his experience is to teach him that he has only one master. We are put in this world to make a difference; G-d never wanted slaves. We are meant to be partners with G-d in building the world.

Our challenge is to embrace our freedom and decide what to do with it, and how best to use it to serve the world, by making this world a better place. Like those Jews in Buchenwald, whether we are free or living as slaves is really up to us. Ultimately, we all serve something; and the only freedom we really have is the ability to choose what we wish to serve: the pot of soup at the end of the day, or the higher purpose we are willing sometimes to give it up for.

Shabbat Shalom,

Binny Freedman

Rav Binny Freedman, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City is a Company Commander in the IDF reserves, and lives in Efrat with his wife Doreet and their four children. His  weekly Internet ‘Parsha Bytes’ can be found at www.orayta.org