Grappling with Slavery in Parashat Behar
Parashat Behar is filled with powerful messages about building a just and compassionate society, emphasizing commandments to care for the land, support the poor, and treat hired workers with fairness and dignity. However, I find that Parashat Behar stirs up more discomfort than ethical inspiration. I am always struck by the difficult distinction it makes between Israelites and non-Israelites with regard to slavery. With the themes of Passover and the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian bondage in my mind, I find it hard to reconcile that Leviticus 25 permits the enslavement of non-Israelites while protecting Israelites from such a fate.
Leviticus 25:39 informs us that impoverished Israelites are the responsibility of their kinsmen. The Israelite community is required to take in those who are destitute, integrating them into their households as hired or bound laborers (כְּשָׂכִ֥יר כְּתוֹשָׁ֖ב יִהְיֶ֣ה עִמָּ֑ךְ), but not as slaves. Ties are broken between them and their Israelite masters during the Jubilee year when these servants (who I reiterate, are not slaves according to Leviticus) are set free. Leviticus 25:43 insists upon humane treatment, expressly prohibiting ruthless behavior toward them. Fittingly, as a reminder that God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Leviticus 25:42), no Israelite is permitted to enslave a fellow Israelite who is indigent. This is in marked contrast to the Israelite debt and chattel slaves referred to in Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12 who can be bought and sold by other Israelites.
Disturbingly, the historical memory of the Exodus does not forbid Israelite ownership of Israelite and non-Israelite slaves. But more unsettling is Parashat Behar’s insistence that Israelites take care of their impoverished kinsmen turning them into hired laborers (Leviticus 25:39), while non-Israelites can be purchased as slaves and held in perpetuity with no recourse to freedom (Lev. 25:45). This dichotomy forces us to confront an unacceptable ethnic distinction whereby Israelites experiencing hardship are taken in and employed as hired workers; non-Israelites are enslaved, whatever the circumstances. Memories of the Egyptian taskmasters reverberate for me here in an inverted image of Israelites lording themselves over their non-Israelite neighbors in allowable relationships of master-slave. And while there is no narrative material in Behar to flesh out what this master-slave relationship actually looked like after the Exodus, the mere fact that the biblical account in Leviticus permits Israelites to enslave anyone at all feels utterly unjust. Shouldn’t our liberation from Egypt teach us that we must never enslave others, no matter who they are? Are we doing enough to confront this passage in Behar and acknowledge that the Israelites participated in maintaining the institution of slavery?
No doubt, it is difficult for us to come to terms with a biblical text that draws stark distinctions between the treatment of Israelites and non-Israelites, not to mention its allowance of slavery. Indeed, this has led some commentators to overlook references to slavery in this parashah, or to rationalize these references as representative of a type of slavery entirely distinct from Egyptian slavery. Some have even gone so far as to say that the practice of Israelite slavery ceased to exist, that is, despite the absence of any clear biblical prohibition. But where does that that leave us?
Recently, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, for Shabbat morning services at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest synagogues in the United States, where I had the opportunity to think about these verses in Behar and contemplate how they might speak to us today. The congregation dates to 1749 and the synagogue structure to 1792. Rebuilt after a fire in Charleston in 1838 and replaced in 1840 by the structure that remains in use, the colonnaded majestic building on Hassel Street in the heart of downtown Charleston is an architectural marvel and a testament to a Jewish community with deep roots in the South. At the rededication ceremony in 1840 the head rabbi, Reverend Gustavus Poznanski, said, “This synagogue is our Temple, this city our Jerusalem.”[1] And yet, as I was soon to learn, the building and rebuilding of this edifice, as is the case with many buildings in Charleston, was built by slaves.[2]
In recent years Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim has publicly acknowledged its complex and painful connection to Black slavery in America. During the 18th and 19th centuries Charleston’s Jews owned slaves, fought with the Confederacy against the Union, and preached from their pulpits that the Bible supported the ownership of slaves. Such recognition led to the display of a plaque outside the synagogue in 2021 that begins with a quote from Mishnah Yoma 8:9 about the necessity of reconciliation between peoples. Drawn from the ritual framework of Yom Kippur that is centered around atonement, the reference defines ethical harmony as rooted in the restoration of relationships born through a process of acknowledging our errors in the hope that forgiveness ensues from those we have wronged.
So too with our verses in Leviticus. Like the community of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, we need to name the injustices and moral shortcomings of biblical passages that made way for the institution of slavery to continue long after the Exodus. Remembering the Exodus should not only be linked to the idea of freedom, but also to the memory of our own misdeeds. To be ethical readers of the Torah entails a critical recognition of the unsettling texts within it in the hope that we can then acknowledge our own imperfections. Reflective engagement with our biblical texts makes us better human beings. It allows us to see our own moral shortcomings so that we can live in productive relationships with those we may have harmed.
Shabbat Shalom
[2]Barry Stiefel, “David Lopez Jr.: Builder, Industrialist, and Defender of the Confederacy,” American Jewish Archives Journal, 2012. https://www.academia.edu/8022275/David_Lopez_Jr_Builder_Industrialist_and_Defender_of_the_Confederacy
