daf bit: Gittin 38

[cellio]

According to the torah Jews can become slaves to other Jews, but not permanently -- Jewish slaves go free after some time. Heathen slaves, however, are permanent slaves.¹ Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel that whoever emancipates his heathen slave violates a positive commandment, as it is written: they shall be your bondsmen forever (Lev 25:46). An objection is raised: once R' Eliezer came into the synagogue and they were one short for a minyan, and he immediately emancipated his slave to make up the ten. (So apparently an emancipated slave could immediately convert?) An objection is raised to the objection: where a religious duty has to be performed we set aside the rule, but otherwise it's still a rule.

Rabbah said: for these three offenses men become impoverished: for emancipating their heathen slaves, for inspecting their property on Shabbat, and for taking their Shabbat meal at the time when the discourse is given in the Beit Midrash (study hall). The g'mara relates a case where two families in Jerusalem did this last and became extinct. (38b)

I bet a lot of people don't know about the heavenly penalty for skipping out on the rabbi's talk! :-)

¹ We are not talking about slavery like in the US's terrible history; slaves are still human beings made in the image of God and must be treated well under Jewish law.

(Today's daf is 39.)

Comments

[siderea]

We are not talking about slavery like in the US's terrible history; slaves are still human beings made in the image of God and must be treated well under Jewish law.

Er, we aren't? While it is absolutely true that American-style slavery was apparently vastly worse than most forms of slavery in the Old World, I was under the hazy impression that there were Jews who participated in the New World slave trade. Googling provides.

This bit of Torah is news to me, and the first thing that lept to mind is that presumably it was (is) used to justify the enslavement and trade in humans practiced right up to the present day, including not just "like" the US's terrible history of slavery, but the actual US terrible history of slavery.

[cellio]

Here in the talmud we're not talking about that. It was not my intention to imply that Jews were never engaged in the New World slave trade.

According to the torah, yes you can own a foreign slave forever (Jewish slave for no more than six years unless he specifically demands to stay), but if you injure him (per the torah, knock out a tooth or blind an eye; the rabbis generalize this to other permanent injuries) he goes free, and if you kill him you are just as liable for murder as if you had killed anyone else. You own his work, his production, his service -- but not his body.

I would not be surprised if both Christians and Jews used the biblical passages about slavery to justify the slave trade in our more-recent history. Those verses don't support the cruel treatment that slaves in US history -- and slaves elsewhere in the ancient world -- suffered, and that some still suffer today.

You might find this rabbinic discussion interesting. It's long; sections D and E seem most on-point for this discussion. (Biblical citations that just use chapter and verse are in Exodus.)