Bo – Freedom is Complicated

Please note: This d’var Torah, originally for Parashat Bo is also listed under Vaetchanan as a major source text is from that parashah.

This week we continue the story of God’s liberating the Israelites from Egypt.  We get a clear sense from these readings that God had a strong disdain for Pharaoh and his immoral enslaving of the Israelites.  It is therefore surprising to find the following matter-of-fact statement in the Torah’s description of the institution of the Passover sacrifice:

וְכׇל־עֶ֥בֶד אִ֖ישׁ מִקְנַת־כָּ֑סֶף וּמַלְתָּ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ אָ֖ז יֹ֥אכַל בּֽוֹ׃

All a person’s slaves, purchased for money shall be circumcised and then they may eat of it.[1]

Perhaps the world was not yet ready to grasp the concept of a world without slavery, in much the way that Maimonides postulates that the Torah accepts a sacrificial cult because the Israelites were not ready to abandon such practices.[2]

Lest we get the idea that the Exodus story is merely a story of nationalistic significance entirely ignorant of the plight of enslaved persons, we do well to remember, as my teacher Hakham Isaac Sasson writes in an essay[3], that the Torah uses the memory and commemoration of the exodus to “ameliorate[ ] some of the perpetual drudgery that slaves suffered.”

שָׁמ֛֣וֹר אֶת־י֥וֹם֩ הַשַּׁבָּ֖֨ת לְקַדְּשׁ֑֜וֹ כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוְּךָ֖֣ ׀ ה’ אֱ-לֹהֶֽ֗יךָ׃ שֵׁ֤֣שֶׁת יָמִ֣ים֙ תַּֽעֲבֹ֔ד֮ וְעָשִׂ֖֣יתָ כׇּֿל־מְלַאכְתֶּֽךָ֒׃ וְי֨וֹם֙ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔֜י שַׁבָּ֖֣ת ׀ לַה’ אֱ-לֹהֶ֑֗יךָ לֹ֣א תַעֲשֶׂ֣ה כׇל־מְלָאכָ֡ה אַתָּ֣ה וּבִנְךָֽ־וּבִתֶּ֣ךָ וְעַבְדְּךָֽ־וַ֠אֲמָתֶ֠ךָ וְשׁוֹרְךָ֨ וַחֲמֹֽרְךָ֜ וְכׇל־בְּהֶמְתֶּ֗ךָ וְגֵֽרְךָ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בִּשְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ לְמַ֗עַן יָנ֛וּחַ עַבְדְּךָ֥ וַאֲמָתְךָ֖ כָּמֽ֑וֹךָ׃ וְזָכַרְתָּ֗֞ כִּ֣י־עֶ֤֥בֶד הָיִ֣֙יתָ֙ ׀ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔֗יִם וַיֹּצִ֨אֲךָ֜֩ ה’ אֱ-לֹהֶ֤֙יךָ֙ מִשָּׁ֔ם֙ בְּיָ֥֤ד חֲזָקָ֖ה֙ וּבִזְרֹ֣עַ נְטוּיָ֑֔ה עַל־כֵּ֗ן צִוְּךָ֙ ה’ אֱ-לֹהֶ֔יךָ לַעֲשׂ֖וֹת אֶת־י֥וֹם הַשַּׁבָּֽת׃

Observe the Shabbat day to sanctify it as the LORD your God commanded you.  Six days shall you work and do all your labor; but the Seventh day shall be a Shabbat for the LORD your God – do not do any labor, neither you nor your sons, daughters, servants, maidservants, ox, donkey, any of your animals, nor the stranger with in your gates so that your servant and maidservant rest like you.  And you shall remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the LORD your God took you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm wherefore the LORD your God commanded you to make the Sabbath day.[4]

Strikingly, Shabbat commemorates our exodus not so much through our own rest, but through our “ameliorat[ing] some of the perpetual drudgery that slaves suffered by enacting a Sabbath of equality for the slave and his/her owner,” in Hakham Sasson’s words.

Thank God, we live in a reality where slavery is not part of our regular experience (which is not to devalue the plight of people who are still enslaved in the world).  Does this lessen the significance of the Shabbat and its commemoration of the exodus for us?   I don’t think so.  And to get to this point, let me share a thought from Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, which she shared on one of my favorite podcasts, the Ezra Klien Show.[5]  She says that Shabbat is

… a giant mutual noncompete clause or a solution to the problem of collective action. … If I run a store and everyone else is going to keep their store open on Saturday or on Sunday, it’s very hard for me to shut my store down. I’m not going to be able to compete. I’m going to lose business to someone else.

But if everyone’s shutting their store down, then I’m cool. I’m good. I can just go do my thing, whatever it is. Go to church, or stay home with my stack of books, or just hang out with my family, whatever it is.

Shulevitz’s observation calls to mind many Jews who immigrated to America, “the land of the free” only to find that they could not keep Shabbat and make ends meet.

There are a number of lessons to be learned here.  First is that freedom and slavery are not binary functions.  One can be “free” in the sense of not having a task master telling one what to do all the time, but if a person is in a situation where, for reasons beyond their control, they have to work a crazy amount of hours just to put food on the table, how “free” is that person?  Famously, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four types of freedom, one of which was the “freedom of want.”[6]  In his 1944 State of the Union, he spoke of an Economic Bill of Rights and said that:

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.  “Necessitous men are not free men.”[7]

Similarly, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we celebrated this week, dedicated much of the later years of his life to fighting against poverty,^[8] supporting for instance a “Freedom Budget for All Americans.^[9]

The second lesson is that our freedoms are often at tension with each other.  One person’s “freedom to work as hard as she wants” might be another person’s being forced to work too many hours just to keep up.  Shabbat teaches us that in order to maximize freedom across society, sometimes you have to put restrictions on individual members of society or even on the entirety of society.

What’s true about work hours is also true about other facets of economic reality.  One person’s freedom to hire workers at any wage can result in another person’s desperation to accept starvation wages.  One person’s ability to sell any product at any price is another person’s need to purchase a substandard product that is all that person can afford, and so on.  And so, when modern society, much like the Torah, provides many rules and restrictions on economic activity ranging from money lending[10] to fraud[11] to requiring that some part of one’s wealth be given to those in need[12], it is in some ways restricting individual freedom but in other ways granting others the ability to be free from economic desperation and exploitation.

And balancing these interests is by no means easy.  Setting some ground rules for economic activity can certainly help protect people from the exploitation born of desperation.  But at the same time, telling someone they can’t get the full benefit of their own work or property certainly is a restriction on their freedom, and, what’s more, could reduce economic incentives for work and investment, hurting the economic prospects – and the possibilities of economic freedom – for everyone.  If you were looking to find easy answers, you’re going to have to find another dvar Torah.  The important thing to note is that the Torah asks us to consider how we as a people were once enslaved and encourages us to behave in ways that promote the freedom of others.  Relatedly, the exodus story is quite clear that the Israelites were not headed into a free-for-all life.  Rather, they were freed so that they could create a society based on God’s just guidance.  A constant mantra in the story is “שלח את-עמי ויעבדני – let my people go that they may serve me,” and almost immediately upon their exodus the Israelites stand at Sinai to receive God’s commandments.

Even for the Israelites who were freed from Egyptian bondage and received a Torah that would ultimately advance the cause of freedom, true freedom, as we understand it, was not yet on the agenda, as the Israelites contemplated Passover celebrations which their own enslaved people might attend.  But the dream of universal freedom lives on, as does our responsibility to work toward the fulfilment of that dream, as we read in that most beautiful of haftorot on Yom Kippur morning:

הֲל֣וֹא זֶה֮ צ֣וֹם אֶבְחָרֵ֒הוּ֒ פַּתֵּ֙חַ֙ חַרְצֻבּ֣וֹת רֶ֔שַׁע הַתֵּ֖ר אֲגֻדּ֣וֹת מוֹטָ֑ה וְשַׁלַּ֤ח רְצוּצִים֙ חׇפְשִׁ֔ים וְכׇל־מוֹטָ֖ה תְּנַתֵּֽקוּ׃

Is the following not the fast that I desire: loosen the chains of evil, untie the cords of the yoke, set free all who are being crushed and snap every yoke.[13]

[1] Exodus 12:44.

[2] Maimonides Guide to the Perplexed 3:32.

[3] https://www.thetorah.com/article/did-israel-celebrate-their-freedom-while-owning-slaves

[4] Deuteronomy 5:12-15.

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-judith-shulevitz.html? (quoted text from the transcript available on this page).

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms

[7] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/state-the-union-message-congress,  quoting Lord Henley in Vernon v. Bethell.

[8] See e.g. https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/poverty.

[9] https://www.prrac.org/pdf/FreedomBudget.pdf

[10] See e.g. Leviticus 25:35-38, Deuteronomy 15:1-11.

[11] See e.g. Leviticus 19:35-36.

[12] See e.g. Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 14:22-29.

[13] Isaiah 58:6.  Translation of the latter part of the verse per Hakham Sasson at https://www.thetorah.com/article/did-israel-celebrate-their-freedom-while-owning-slaves.