Slavery

If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite polity and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permitting this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a compromise to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ claim that the Torah allows divorce as a compromise to humanity’s “hard heart.”

Like many traditions with a long historical pedigree, Judaism has inherited its share of texts with racial bias. Failure to acknowledge this is one reason for prevalent conscious and subconscious racist views that can be found in the American Orthodox Jewish community—the community of which I am a part—which sometimes reveal themselves in overt statements and actions.

Leviticus 25 legislates a multi-tiered system of rights and requirements that act as a corrective to a market in which even human beings can be sold. This system preserves the dignified status of Israelite brothers as free persons with their own ancestral agricultural land, ensuring that no Israelites become a permanent lower class.

A classic example of source criticism applied to Torah legislation.

19th century Anglo-Jewish translators defended the Israelites’ behavior against the King James translation’s perceived accusation that the Jews “borrowed” the Egyptians belongings and never returned them.

The Bible already expresses ambivalence about Hebrew slavery, the rabbis expand upon it and Maimonides takes the next step, applying the negative evaluation of slavery even to non-Israelites.

Doing history one better

. . . and the Challenges of Putting it into Practice.

Egyptian sources shed light on the nature of the work described in the Torah.