Q&A: Laws of the Hebrew Slave
Laws of the Hebrew Slave
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael,
After reading this week’s Torah portion, I found myself thinking about the laws of the Hebrew slave, and especially about the ruling in Mishneh Torah:
For every Hebrew slave or Hebrew maidservant, the master is obligated to treat them as equal to himself in food and drink, clothing and dwelling, as it says, “for it is good for him with you” (Deuteronomy 15:16): you should not eat fine bread while he eats coarse bread, you drink aged wine while he drinks new wine, you sleep on cushions while he sleeps on straw, you live in the city while he lives in the village, or you in the village while he in the city—as it says, “and he shall go out from with you” (Leviticus 25:41). From here the Sages said: whoever acquires a Hebrew slave is like acquiring a master for himself.
But this is a law that seems very puzzling to me. Fine, if they required giving the slave basic living conditions, that would make sense, but to require the slave owner to treat him as an equal, and even more than that, seems very excessive. Why would anyone even want a Hebrew slave if he has to give up his better room/bed/clothes/food for him? He’d be better off just giving up on the slave and managing on his own (or buying a Canaanite slave instead).
Answer
First, it may indeed be the point. Most of the laws of the Hebrew slave were meant to restrict. For example, the slave goes free after six years. The Torah does not like the idea of people being sold as slaves, and in fact there is a prohibition involved: “They are My servants”—and not servants to servants.
Second, it is hard to set a minimal threshold for proper treatment of a slave, so perhaps the standard is set by comparison to the master himself. Someone who buys a slave presumably has more than one pillow or more than one slice of fine bread. The slave should be like a member of the family, receiving the same treatment as everyone else living in the household.
Third, some have suggested seeing the laws of slavery as rehabilitation for a thief or another person sold into slavery, by having him live within a normative family, and perhaps for that reason he must be received as part of the family.
Fourth, some interpreted the verse “Love your fellow as yourself” as meaning literally like yourself. There is a demand to make him equal to you.
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Questioner:
- From the sheer volume of the slave laws in the Torah, it seems that the Torah did not come to neuter or completely prohibit Hebrew slavery, but to regulate it, just as labor laws regulate the employment of workers in the economy without trying to prevent their employment altogether (otherwise, why go on at length with all sorts of laws when it could simply prohibit everything in one verse?).
- If they managed to set a minimal threshold of proper treatment for a wife—”he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights”—why should that be so difficult in the case of a slave? And why should we give a slave better treatment than a wife or the other members of the household, toward whom these obligations do not exist?
- Even if he has more than one pillow or more than one slice of fine bread, it is still quite common for him to have several bedrooms in the house, and one of them is, say, the largest, where the master sleeps. It seems ridiculous to require him to vacate his largest bedroom for his Hebrew slave. The same goes for a mattress: it is quite common for the parents to have a high-quality mattress and, say, the children a simple one. There are many more examples along these lines.
- Even if it is a rehabilitative institution, why should the institution be required from the outset to treat those being rehabilitated there the way it treats itself? It is enough to give them basic conditions.
- Even if there is a requirement to make him equal to you, that requirement applies equally to everyone, so there is no reason I should give better treatment to my Hebrew slave than to an ordinary friend staying with me, by virtue of the rule “Love your fellow as yourself.”
- Rabbi Akiva derived an interpretation from a verse with a structure similar to our verse (“for it is good for him with you”): from the verse “and your brother shall live with you,” he understood that your life takes precedence. Maybe one could likewise say that your own welfare takes precedence over that of your slave?
- From the context of the verse from which this interpretation is derived (“And it shall be, if he says to you: I will not go out from with you, because he loves you and your household, because it is good for him with you”), it seems that not all slaves think it is good for them with their masters, but only some of them—and they are apparently the ones who ask to have their ear pierced. Beyond that, it does not say, “for it is good for him like you,” but rather, “for it is good for him with you.”
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Rabbi:
Obviously it does not come to prevent it entirely, otherwise it would simply have written that it is forbidden. Under the circumstances that prevailed then, slavery was a vital necessity and also a common practice, so the Torah only restricts and qualifies it. But in our time it is certainly reasonable not to long for its return. We find a similar passage in the Torah, at the beginning of the portion of Ki Tetzei, about the beautiful captive woman. There the Sages interpret that the Torah spoke only in response to the evil inclination (but ideally one should not be doing any of this).
The requirement is not to make him fully equal in every sense. Clearly this should be understood somewhat figuratively. You must provide for his minimum needs before your own. But beyond the minimum, you are not obligated to give to him. When you travel abroad, you do not have to take him with you.