In today’s day and age, even talking about slavery makes us cringe. It so baffles our minds that we have a difficult time imagining how it was once possible for people to think that it was acceptable behavior to be a slave owner. Yet, the Torah talks about it as if it is a normal thing to do. How do we reconcile our modern-day feelings with the Torah’s age-old teachings?
The truth is, it is misleading to frame the question this way. All you have to do is a take a closer look in the Torah and you will see that the emphasis is not on the rights of the master, but on the rights of the slave. There is a big “if” here, though. If you want to be a master, then you must treat your slave kindly. Instructions on how to be kind are so detailed that the message becomes very clear: The Torah is not advocating slavery; just the opposite is true—the Torah sees slave ownership as a weakness of the master. The master thinks that the world spins around him. The Torah, however, teaches us that this is not so. What makes you a “big” person is not the fact that you have many slaves, but the fact that you think about other people before yourself. You put other people’s needs first. The more you focus on the needs of another person, the better person you become. Clearly the Torah is trying to move us toward not having slaves.
To top it off, the Torah says that when you finally set your slave free, you have to give him or her many gifts. This is to teach you the importance of leading a life based on what you do for others, not what you do for yourself.
Granted, slavery was abolished long ago, but the lesson for us lives on. How often do we think about another person’s need before we think about our own need? If we think about our own needs first, then we still have a “master” mentality – which might not be as bad as actually having a slave – but it is still a far cry from what we should achieve to succeed.
This week, let’s put other people’s needs first.
Edited by geminiwordsmiths.com