Love is Expressed Through Guidelines for Living

Sometimes I am amazed when I meet young children who appear to lack an adult in their life who is willing to tell them how to dress when it is freezing outside.  When they show up to school in weather that is 10 degrees below zero wearing shorts and tank tops, I wonder, “Does the child’s parent really love them? Why are they not instructing them in ways of dressing that are safe for the environmental conditions?” When a child falls asleep in my class because he has been up until midnight watching movies in his bedroom, I wonder whether the adult in the home is aware that the child’s well-being is not best served by having a hands-off policy after the lights go out!  I am convinced that the trend to profess love without establishing guidelines for one’s child to follow is not actually love in its highest form. 

Judaism, as we see in parashat Mishpatim, takes the approach that love in its highest form is demonstrated by G-d providing us mitzvoth which are meant to guide our steps.  We do have rules, there are detailed explanations about how we are to act.  Judaism isn’t just about theology and feeling, it is about ways of acting.

The list of civil and legal obligations mentioned in the parasha are designed to help us create a society in which morality is not left up to the individual.  How we are to treat others is prescribed and part of

G-d’s way of showing love and concern for us and all of G-d’s creation. 

Judaism not only provides us with lofty ideals, but also structures the ways in which we must actually go about pursuing those ideals through action. 

I want to take a look at just one injunction mentioned in Shemot 21:2

“When you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall work for six years; and in the seventh year he shall go to freedom without charge.  If he shall come alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a woman, his wife shall go with him.

Rashi’s commentary on these lines suggests that the Hebrew servant under discussion had been bought from the hand of the court (the beit din) because he robbed and did not have the money to repay his theft. The Torah’s solution to the problem of theft in society, was not to put the thief in prison “where he would be punished but not corrected.”  The solution was to put the offender in the home of a “decent family until he had readjusted.”

 According to Rav Kook, “The thief was thus exposed to a different type of family than he was used to and learned to take his role and responsibility to the rest of society more seriously…..This stage was always intended to be temporary, and the slave was compelled to see it as such.”    The master was not allowed to give the thief difficult or dirty work to do, nor to force him to work at night.  The idea of letting a Hebrew servant go after 6 years is related to the idea that G-d created the world in 6 days and then rested.  Going free was seen as a commemoration of the Shabbat. 

In Tzena Urena, a Yiddish commentary on the Torah, it is suggested that parashat Mishpatim starts out with this particular code of law about buying a Jewish servant because “it is related to the first commandment ‘I am the Lord your G-d, Who bought you out of the land of Egypt’. Why is it related?  We were brought out of slavery not to work as servants for one another, but to serve G-d.  Therefore, there were limits to the ways in which the Israelites could treat a Hebrew bondman and those conditions were stated first.

When the Jewish servant was released after 6 years, it was without charge.  The commentary on that line mentions that even if the servant had been sick during his servitude and the master had incurred expense on his behalf, the money could not be deducted for the time in which he was unable to work or for the medical expenses paid by the master.

Why does the passage mention the servant having a wife who also must be let free?  Rashi suggests that this shows that “one who purchases a Jewish servant is obligated to feed the servant’s wife and children for the entire period of servitude.” 

Is there anything we can learn from a line of Torah about Hebrew slaves that could possibly have meaning for us today?  Admittedly the idea of owning another individual is not with in our realm of thought, yet we are reminded that we too have a responsibility because of our past to treat others with respect, even those who have been deprived of their rights of freedom temporarily while they acclimate to a new way of interacting with society.  We cannot take advantage of their unfortunate situation, nor can we ignore the attitude in Judaism that freedom is the true means needed for having a relationship with G-d.