Parshat Mishpatim - פרשת משפטים

" כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי, שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד; וּבַשְּׁבִעִת--יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי, חִנָּם - When you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing."
(שמות כא:ב)

Growing up as a religious Jew, I never thought to question the ethics and morals of slavery within Judaism. Of course I knew that slavery was "wrong," but I never stopped to consider how it could be that a Jew could be a slave to his fellow Jew. Now that I think about it, the question seems glaring; how could such a thing be defensible on any level?

One of my favourite books, the Yalkut Leckach Tov, quotes Rav Simcha Zissel of Kelm, Lithuania, who explains that we must pay attention to the circumstance of these slaves. He points out that it wasn't possible to simply elect to become a slave; slaves were people who had been found to be thieves but didn't have the means to pay back the victim of their crime. Instead, they would have to effectively loan themselves out n a long-term contract so that they may repay their debt. This raises another question, though - who would take in a thief? It was a distinct possibility that this person would take the opportunity to pilfer from his house. What kind of homeowner would willingly take buy a slave who was liable to steal?

We learn something more interesting. Torah law does not condone incarceration as a punitive measure. As Rabbi Naftali Silberberg writes, (click here for the full text,) "A person who does not deserve to die must be allowed to be productive in the fullest sense, a prospect which is impossible when confined in prison.

Indeed, it can conceivably be argued that long term incarceration violates the Eighth Amendment of the [American] Constitution which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishment.' Is robbing an individual of the most basic human desire/need--freedom--less cruel than inflicting physical pain? I believe that any prison inmate will answer that question in a nanosecond."

The Jewish way of thinking dictates that we don't want a thief to be in prison for a number of reasons. First of all, there is a very real chance that he may be influenced and learn from the other inmates. Moreover, be being an environment such as a prison, he is never able to get away from his crime - the stark surroundings are a constant reminder to his mistake. After leaving the prison, it is a well-document a phenomenon that criminals have trouble adjusting to a new way of life and find it hard to go back to work. In addition to all this, a prisoner's family will be left to fend for themselves for the time that he is locked up. If the going gets tough for them, it is eminently possible that they will also turn to a life of crime. All in all, prison has many negative effects and so it seems quite understandable that Jewish law doesn't utilise this option.

Instead, in our case, the thief is taken into somebody else's home. When he is in close proximity to decent, honest people, it is almost assured that he will learn from their proper conduct. Moreover, many laws govern how a homeowner may treat his slave. Indeed, "slave" is hardly a fitting description for the position the former thief fulfills. For example, we learn in the Talmud Yerushalmi that if the homeowner only has one pillow available between the two of them, he is commanded to give it to his "guest" and sleep a little rougher than he usually might.

Yes, all this sounds rather altruistic, but apparently it worked to good effect in days gone by. It is also interesting to think now that the slavery described above is actually a good and moral way of correcting a person's character instead of forcing them through the purgatory that is prison.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!