The Behar Portion (5760)

By God’s grace, on the eve of the holy Sabbath of the Behar portion, 5760

“The servant of God alone is free”

In our portion, among other things, the Torah deals with the law of the Hebrew slave. A Hebrew slave is a person who stole and has nothing

with which to pay for what he stole. In such a case the court sells him into slavery, and in return he repays his debt

to the owner of the stolen property. In the following remarks I will briefly discuss a principle that arises almost incidentally in the passage about the Hebrew

slave. The Torah states: “For the Israelites are servants to Me; they are My servants, whom I brought out …” There is

here a principle that every Jew is a servant of God, and of Him alone. From here we learn that it is forbidden

for a slave owner to lord it over his slave, to the point that the Sages say: “One who acquires a slave acquires a master

for himself.” Beyond this, the Sages rule that it is forbidden for a person to sell himself into slavery. Some

halakhic authorities forbid a Jew even to be someone else’s employee for a period of more

than three years. This too is an infringement of his basic freedoms and of his servitude to God alone.

A better-known implication of this principle appears in the law of the slave whose ear is pierced. A Hebrew slave who chooses of his own

free will to remain a slave to his master even after the period for which he was sold (six years), has

his ear pierced. And the Gemara explains (Kiddushin 22b):

It was taught: Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai would expound: Why is the ear different from all the limbs of the body, that it is pierced? The Holy One, blessed be He, said:

The ear that heard at Mount Sinai, “For the Israelites are servants to Me,” and not servants to servants, yet this man went

and acquired a master for himself—for that reason it shall be pierced.

We see here a fundamental principle: a Jew is the servant of God alone, and of no

one else.

Sometimes Jews embrace this principle with great enthusiasm—perhaps too much. Amos Oz,

in his essay ‘A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon?’, describes it as follows:

The Jews have no pope. If a Jewish pope were ever to arise, everyone would come and pat him on the shoulder

and say: Come here, listen, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but your grandfather and my uncle

once did business together, in Zhytomyr or in Marrakech, so give me two minutes to explain to you

once and for all what God really wants from us…

Throughout its history, the people of Israel have not liked obeying. Ask Moses our teacher, ask the

prophets. God Himself complains all the time that the people of Israel are not disciplined but argue about

everything: the people argue with Moses. Moses argues with God, and even submits his resignation, and in the end

Moses withdraws his resignation—but only after negotiations, only after God yields and accepts the

main substance of his demands (Exodus 32–33). Abraham bargains with God over Sodom like

a used-car dealer—fifty righteous, forty, thirty—and even hurls at God the sharp accusation,

“Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” Yet we have not heard that fire came down from heaven and consumed

him for these terrible words of heresy. The people quarreled with the prophets, the prophets quarreled with God,

the kings quarreled with the people and with the prophets, Job railed against heaven… Even in recent generations

there were Hasidic rebbes who put God on trial in a court of Torah law.

Jewish culture has a certain anarchic core: it does not want discipline. It does not simply carry out orders.

It wants justice. A seeker of donkeys and a shepherd upon whom the spirit has come to rest can rule over Israel or

compose the Psalms. A dresser of sycamore figs rises and prophesies. The shepherd of Kalba Savua’s flock, or some

cobbler, or blacksmith, teaches Torah, offers interpretations, and leaves his mark on the daily life

of every Jew. And yet—always, or almost always—the question hovered around them: Who appointed you?

How do we know that you are the right person? Perhaps you truly are a great Torah scholar, but on the next street there lives another great

scholar, and he disagrees with you and offers the opposite conclusion, and not infrequently, “Both these and those are the words of

the living God.”

There is no point in competing with Amos Oz’s power of expression, and the words speak for themselves.

One point, however, is important for me to add. That same Abraham our father, the ‘used-car dealer’ who argues

with God Himself over principles of morality, binds all principles of morality upon the altar

of the divine command to slaughter his son. Here he is revealed as obedient and compliant, like a slave whose ear is pierced, and does not

raise any argument against the divine command. This despite the fact that the Sages, and following them

the Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (in his wonderful essay on the Binding of Isaac, ‘Fear and Trembling’),

point to many powerful and persuasive arguments that could have been raised in this context.

Perhaps the explanation is that when the matter concerns me myself, I accept with absolute obedience the commands

of God, even when they appear to be a terrible injustice. When the matter concerns others, here there must

appear autonomy, the anarchic core. Here a Jew argues even with God Himself

in person.

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that only one whose relationship with God resembles that of Abraham

our father with his Creator, one who is prepared to bind all that he has for the sake of God’s will, is the one who can also

be an anarchist. One who wishes, like Amos Oz himself and his companions, to take only the anarchic element,

and to forgo the commitment that is its necessary background, should not rely on Abraham our father. True,

we are forbidden to be slaves to anyone, but such a condition can be derived only from the fact that we are

servants of God: “They are My servants, and not servants to servants.”

This is what Rabbi Yehuda Halevi expressed in his well-known epigram: “The servants of time are servants of servants. The servant of God is

alone free.”

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be deposited for respectful disposal in any synagogue or house of study. Comments and responses are welcome.

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