The Dignity of the "Self-Made Man"
and the Contributing Member of Society
Noam Zion
Hartman Institute, Jerusalem
– excerpted from:
Jewish Giving in Comparative Perspectives: History and Story, Law and
Theology, Anthropology and Psychology
Book Two:
To Each according to one’s Social Needs:
The Dignity of the Needy from Talmudic Tzedakah to Human Rights
Previous Books:
A DIFFERENT NIGHT: The Family Participation Haggadah
By Noam Zion and David Dishon
LEADER'S GUIDE to "A DIFFERENT NIGHT"
By Noam Zion and David Dishon
A DIFFERENT LIGHT: Hanukkah Seder and Anthology
including Profiles in Contemporary Jewish Courage By Noam Zion
A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home
By Noam Zion and Shawn Fields-Meyer
A Night to Remember: Haggadah of Contemporary Voices
By Mishael and Noam Zion
www.haggadahsrus.com
[email protected]
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The Dignities of Labor
A. The Dignities of Relative Independence and Relative Respect
The Dignity of Productive Labor and the Honor of Independence
The Dignity of Independence versus the Dignity of Domination
The Dignity and the Indignity of Labor
The Dignity and the Indignity of Labor Relations
The Dignity of Slave Labor and The Preservation of Respect
The Dignity of the Slave "Other" and the Slave "Brother" (The Hebrew Slave)
Solidarity with the Assimilated Slave: From Racial Other to Cultural Brother to
Fellow Creature
B. The Dignities of Meaningful Labor
The Dignity of Creative Labor:
The Modern Reinvigoration of Rabbinic Values of Labor as a Divine Calling
The Dignity of Responsibility
The Dignity of Making a Contribution:
A Labor of Love – Providing for the Good of one's Neighbor
"We will do much more for the happiness of the lower classes, for their real emancipation and
true progress, in guaranteeing these classes well-remunerated work, than in winning political rights
and a meaningless sovereignty for them. The most important of the people's rights is the right to
work." - Victor Considerant, utopian French socialist, 19th C. i
"One who establishes a very big factory not for the sake of making money … but to provide a place
of employment for the poor, so they will not lose their honor by accepting charity and tzedakah –
will not cause them moral damage by encouraging habits of laziness. ..The factory owner will help
them be creatures who benefit from their own labor and they will utilize the latent forces and cause
them joy from their labor." - Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (Ain Aya to TB Berakhot 7, 53)
" The goal of tzedakah is to set the recipients up to support themselves from the work of their
hands." - Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (Peah #4)
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A. The Dignities of Relative Independence and Relative Respect
The Dignity of Productive Labor and the Honor of Independence
“Man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters.
First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the human
personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and further, was given to him for his
advantage.
Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey.
Now, were we to consider labor merely insofar as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the
workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work
or not, so he is free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very
different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is
also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought but not in
reality. ... It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to what is required in order to live”
- Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891)
Pope Leo has correctly identified two sides to labor – its expressive quality as human freedom, a labor
of love that is voluntary like an avocation, and its necessity as a source for physical survival. In the
Hebrew Bible two terms for work express that dichotomy: on one hand, work is called melakha, a
“craft,” performed by God and celebrated on Shabbat as day of the completion of creation (Gen. 2:1-3)
and, on the other hand, avodah, a “service,” often a curse, by the sweat of one's brow to gather wheat
from the briars and thorns of an uncooperative earth (Gen. 3: 17-19). The need to eat makes us slaves
or at least dependents on our drives and often on our fellows who have resources we need. Thus labor
may be a source of dignity or of indignity, of freedom or of necessity.
Which aspect of work is at the heart of the "right to work" – a term used in UDHR but which
appeared in the West only with the French Revolution? The French Assembly's Comite de Mendicite
argued (1790- 1794):
“Charity was inefficient, condescending and outmoded. Poverty was an inescapable consequence of a
society based upon inequality and subject to economic change. The term charity - the discretionary
giving on the part of individuals, primarily for religious motives - should be replaced by the national
obligation to provide bienfaisance (beneficence) as a right. `Every man has the right to subsistence
through work, if he is able-bodied, and to free assistance if he is unable to work.’ Assistance previously regarded ‘as a favour rather than a duty’ should now be considered ‘a national responsibility.’" ii iii
The language of the French Assembly speaks of a nation's responsibility. After the Revolution,
Charles Fourier in France identifies the right to work as a natural right that precedes the foundation of
society and is more fundamental as a matter of survival than political abstractions like “political
rights":
"Our social compacts cannot provide the first of the natural rights, the right to work. By these words
'natural rights,' I do not mean the chimeras known as 'liberty' and 'equality.' .. Why does philosophy jest
with these poor creatures by offering them the rights of sovereignty when they demand only the rights of
servitude, and the right to work for the pleasure of the idle.''iv
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A generation later, utopian socialist Victor Considerant wrote, as we quoted above:
"We will do much more for the happiness of the lower classes, for their real emancipation and true
progress, in guaranteeing these classes well-remunerated work, than in winning political rights and a
meaningless sovereignty for them. The most important of the people's rights is the right to work.”v
These sources seem weighted toward the “labor as a necessity,” a natural need and hence a state
responsibility in the modern political economy where the states control the economy. Once God
determined whether productive labor would generate fruits by bringing or withholding rain. Now the
state has taken over that role and with proper regulation, like Joseph's in Egypt, can circumvent merely
natural obstacles to fertility. Yet work does more than provide food. It makes one independent of
others and thus enables one to avoid humiliation. Joseph the treasurer and grain czar of Egypt enslaved
all Egyptians to maintain their biological survival. The ability and opportunity to work, in less extreme
conditions than famine, can protect one’s freedom from such brutal dependence in employee-employer
relations.
The rabbinic correlate to the Western right to work is the duty to provide employment. In Rabbinic
tradition, a we have seen, the duty to employ is the highest level of tzedakah aiming to fulfill the
desire for dignity as well to satisfy the instrumental need to find a source of income and avoid
humiliating dependence on handouts. Giving someone a fishing hook rather than a fish is not only a
more efficient and longer term solution to economic problems, but it directly generates self-respect as
well as helping to avoid shaming situations. This insight, now taken for granted, has multiple
dimensions worth explicating.
In previous chapters we saw how during the era of the Elizabethan Poor Laws labor was used as a
punitive educational tool to which the unemployed were driven by extreme necessity – the pressure of
hunger. They submitted to the discipline of the poorhouse overseer who would give them food only if
they labored in the most demeaning way. Even in the 20th C. the “gift” of welfare granted by a state
bureaucrat may be conditional on having tried to obtain whatever job is available including “workfare”
which is considered by some liberal critics as intrinsically humiliating. By contrast advocates of
citizens’ and human rights insist that one's welfare must be rendered as a right, an unconditional
endowment, in order that the needy be truly liberated from shame and dependence. Then whatever
work they choose is a labor of love not of necessity. In Sweden, for example, a national safety net
allows any citizen very generous state subsidies and social insurance regardless of their holding a job,
yet most people choose to work anyway in an economy with close to full employment.
In this chapter we will explore multiple aspects that intersect between labor and dignity/indignity. It
deals with the value of labor but also with the exploitation often associated with being an employee. It
explores the possibility of moderating at least some of the more demeaning aspects of employeeemployer, and even slave-master, relationships, as well as promoting the positive, meaning-conferring
aspects of labor. What must be clear is that providing work as a source of dignity cannot be just any
“make-work” activity.
Labor helps one avoid indignity while offering an activity that enhances dignity, thus making it a
humanistic need which a tzedakah society seeks to provide, in the form of one’s right to work. Labor
then has both a negative and a positive relationship to dignity, it: (1) promotes the dignity of
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independence and (2) limits the indignities of economic dependence, maintaining one's "freedom
from" dependency.
(1) The dignity of independence has two senses. I am master of enough of the material of the world
that I can feed my own physiological needs, so I am independent of my body's embarrassing material
dependence, as long as my body functions in a healthy manner. Further the dignity of my economic
independence frees me from political and social dependence which are demeaning to one who wants
autonomy.1 Of course independence from the arbitrary will of others also presupposes democratic
political system to protect formal freedoms, but that is inadequate without a source of income - a
reliable job in stable economy. Then I will not have to fawn on others. Job security is as essential for
my dignity of independence, as possessing an income stream right now. Thus the right kind of
vocation makes me free from others.
On the more positive side, labor add the “freedom to,” the freedom for self-fulfillment: (3 ) the dignity
of the “self-made man;” (4) the dignity of creativity; (5) the dignity of responsibility; (6) the
dignity of making a contribution to society. These will be discussed below.
Having the right kind of a job won by skill and not by political crony-ism allows me to say: 'I have
gained and maintain my independence with my own meritorious efforts.' Just as those who serve in the
Israeli army can take pride and feel dignity as a people who have earned and defended their own
national and personal sovereignty, so too one who produces their own material resources may and
should take pride in their work. This is what I call, in an old-fashioned, gender-unequal way: the
dignity of the “self-made man.” In Chapter 14 above we examined the cultural ideal of America first
promoted by Benjamin Franklin who coined the adage, "God helps those who help themselves" (Poor
Richard's Almanac). Financial magnates, like Rockefeller, Carnegie and Rosenwald, who saw
themselves as self-made men, focused much of their philanthropy on helping other ambitious men rise
on their own efforts and talents when provided ladders of opportunity.
The cultural ideal of the self-made man is typical of America as we mentioned in chapter 14 which
described Carnegie and his commitment to aiding and empowering those interested in becoming
upwardly mobile. Since Benjamin Franklin this ethos has been celebrated. In his Autobiography,
Franklin portrays himself as the rags-to-riches hero of a social and economic mobility regardless of
aristocratic birth or family connections. Simply by the exercise of one’s economic and political
acumen one redefines one’s place in respectable society. That involves a program of self-improvement
through character education so as to develop virtues such as “industry” as well as pragmatic business
skills. The former African-American slave, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) gave a famous lecture
1
The assumption that dependence is demeaning and independence is crucial for dignity and adulthood is subject to a welljustified critique especially in feminist studies. They point out that this ethos expresses itself in a male pyschology in
which men feel they need to "disconnect" from nurturing/over-protective mothers and prove their material self sufficiency,
while women are always assumed to be less independent physically because they need men's physical protection.
Independence as an ideal may take two forms – anti-social and social. On one hand, a pursuit of utter independence is
likely to avoid "entangling alliances" with family or society – both emotional and material. That ideal of a-social dignity
will not lead to social responsibility and tzedakah. On the other hand, the cultivation of independence may find its greatest
manifestation in one-sidedly supporitng those who cannot achieve that ideal. Thus men often feel more manly and
dignified when they have dependents – women and children to protect and support – as long as the men themselves do not
betray any dependence, or even interdependence, on others. Here men would want to make a contribution to society to
prove their strength and capability. Paradoxically when women also serve to protect, nurture and care for others' physical
needs – including that of their husbands, the men who benefit from this nurturing may react with disgust at those women
associated with what is supposedly dirty, despicable, and low and denial of their dependence on them.
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called “Self-Made Men" (1859) in which he traces his low origins not to race but to oppression but he
attributes his rise to respectability not to luck, birth, white abolitionist benevolence, or collaborative
efforts, but to his own personal efforts without assistance from the outside:
“Self-made men … are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to
wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of
the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.”vi
Hard work, not the "good luck theory," is important: "Opportunity is important but exertion is
indispensable"; "There is nothing good, great or desirable, …that does not come by some kind of
labor.” Success is simply the result of "WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!" – honest work
without deception and theft. Thererfore he opposes indiscriminate benevolence: "The man who will
get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down." So too in
relation to the Negro slave he asks for fairness not affirmative action: "Give the negro fair play and let
him alone. If he lives, well. If he dies, equally well. If he cannot stand up, let him fall down."vii
Thus wealth that is earned is a source of dignity, while unearned wealth corrupts one's character and
deserves no honor. "As a general rule, where circumstances do most for men there man will do least
for himself; and where man does least, he himself is least. His doing makes or unmakes him."
“My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men
have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently
pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success.”2
Self-reliance is one aspect that turns labor into a virtue not just a pragmatic solution to hunger. A
further positive dimension of labor is the dignity of creativity for my labor has added value to the
world. But there is also adding value to the lives of other which generates the dignity of magnanimity
and dignity of having made a contribution to society. Thus while many 19th C. American champions
of self-reliance including Emerson3 and Thoreau reject all forms of charity and philanthropy, and
2
Nevertheless, Douglass, unlike Franklin, maintains a balance between self-made men and positive interdependence among
human beings. "Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men." “It must in truth be said though it
may not accord well with self-conscious individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native force of character, and no
depth or wealth of originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellow-men, and no generation of men can be
independent of the preceding generation.” Even as self-made men, we still need "brotherhood and inter-dependence of
mankind." (F. Douglass, “Self-Made Men,"549, 560)
3
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s self-centered notion of “Self-Reliance" reveals him struggling against “bad habits” and social
pressure to refuse to help the needy: “Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good
situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to
such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I
am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at
college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousand
fold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which
by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.”
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focus exclusively on their own self-development, the labor of love is also found in enabling others to
work and then make their own contributions to society.
Let us explore some of the narratives underwriting a hard-won economic dignity, and try to add more
nuance to their telling. Many of these aspects of dignified labor connect up with our earlier discussions
of various understandings of the image of God as endowing human life with value. Three
philosophical-theological minds will help us in this task – Rav J.B. Soloveitchik, John Locke and John
Calvin.
The Dignity of Independence versus the Dignity of Domination
"Everyone whose soul is healthy feels a certain humiliation from the benefit that comes to them not
from their own self-help and effort…So aid to the needy brings about inner malaise and failure by
weakening the power of the self's honor that was granted for the good of human beings and the
spiritual heroism necessary for it."4 - Rav Abraham Isaac Kookviii
As we saw above, Psalm 8 describes how God crowns the human species with glory or kavod in that
they dominate over animals and over God’s Creation. This was also God’s mandate for human beings
in Genesis 1 – to rule the animals and the world. Yet in his seminal essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith”,
Rav J.B. Soloveitchik interprets Psalm 8 and Genesis 1in such a way that this concept of honor by
dominion does not require the rule of one human being over another, but only one’s
environment, for dependence on brute nature is considered demeaning.
"What is Adam the first [Genesis 1] out to achieve? What is the objective toward which he incessantly
drives himself with enormous speed? ... The objective ... God put up before him: to be ‘man,’ to be
himself. Adam the first wants to be human, to discover his identity which is bound up with his humanity.
How does Adam find himself? He works with a simple equation introduced by the Psalmist who
proclaimed the singularity and unique station of man in nature: For You made him a little lower than
the angels and crowned him with glory and honor (dignity) (Psalm 8). Man is an honorable being.. ..
...The Psalmist .. termed man not only an honorable but also a glorious being, spelling out the essence of
glory in unmistakable terms: You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You
have put all things under his feet. In other words, dignity was equated by the Psalmist with man's
capability of dominating his environment and exercising control over it. Man acquires dignity
through glory, through his majestic posture vis a vis his environment.ix
"The brute's existence is an undignified one because it is a helpless existence. Human existence is a
dignified one because it is a glorious, majestic, powerful existence. Hence, dignity is unobtainable as long
as man has not reclaimed himself from co-existence with nature and has not risen from a-non-reflective,
degradingly helpless instinctive life to an intelligent, planned, and majestic one." 5 x
4
R. W. Emerson: "A charitable dollar is a mean dollar" because it is given to a person in a context of inequality, thus
maintaining the latter in a state of inferiority.
5
"The term kavod has a dual meaning in Hebrew: (1) majesty, as in the phrase kevod malkhuto; (2) dignity as in the
Halakhic phrase b’zuyim. That dignity is a criterion by which the worth of an individual is measured can be demonstrated
by the halakhah that self-abased persons, are disqualified from giving testimony. In particular, the phrase "whoever eats in
the street or at any public place acts like a dog" used by both the Talmud (Kiddushin 40b) and Maimonides (Mishne Torah,
Edut XI, 5) is characteristic of the attitude of the Halakhah toward a man who has lost his sense of dignity. Likewise, I
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To dominate nature is to turn its resources into human sources of satisfaction of needs. Thus for Rav
Soloveitchik all human beings strive to maximize independence from their natural dependence on
physical needs by mastering nature. In halakha the concern to protect human dignity is related to the
moment in life when one’s body betrays one’s vulnerability and hence reveal one’s “shameful
dependence.” Times of illness and even incontinence threaten one’s sense of self-respect because our
bodily needs rule us rather than the reverse. Gender scholars observe that the "true nature" of the body
is often understood as vulnerable and interconnected, porous and not self-contained, and messy and
fluid rather than orderly and solid. These dichotomous value-judgments color the bodily experience
negatively. Thus the rabbinic prayer after defecating remarks on the inability even to stand up before
God should the complex, wonderful plumbing system God implanted in us malfunction. Human
physiology, common to all, shames the poor even more often because they cannot control the means
necessary to provide for their own bodily needs. The most extreme case of physical dependence
follows death, since the not-yet buried corpse cannot even protect itself by chasing away a fly, mouse
or scavenger. The dignity of the human species was mandated by God to Noah when God promised
that “your fear and awe shall be upon all the animals of the earth ...” (Gen. 9:2). But at death even the
smallest creature may crawl over your face with impunity. Therefore Jewish law provides for a
shomer,xi an honor guard for an unburied corpse to protect its dignity, before it is safely returned to
earth by burial as soon as possible. Thus kevod hamet (honoring the dead) consists of protecting them
from the final insult since they have become utterly helpless and lost the majesty of human dominion
over God’s creatures. This is consistent with what we learned in previous chapters about the Biblical
and Rabbinic concern with maintaining human dignity after death by restricting exposure of the
criminal’s body to public shame and desecration.
Very closely connected to the dignity of domination is the Roman concept of dignitas, the honor of the
office holder who thereby has the authority to give commands to others. While slaves are born,
according to Aristotle and the Roman jurists, without honor or dignity because they are dependent on
the instruction of their hierarchical superiors, aristocrats possess honor precisely because slaves take
care of their physical needs and because the nobles are born to rule over inferior human beings. But for
Soloveitchik, human dignity is achieved rather than endowed by birth when one acquires maximal
independence from one’s physical needs by maximizing control of one’s natural environment.
Poverty too is a form of demeaning dependency on others to provide for one's own bodily needs. The
table of life, a place of celebration, a place to satisfy one's needs and praise God's goodness, becomes
the place of shame as one waits for scraps from another's table.
"Rav said: One who awaits [scraps] from the table of others – their world has darkened upon them, as it
says [of the fate of the wicked] he wanders about for bread – where is it? He knows that the day of
darkness is readied for him (Job 15:23).
Rav Hisda adds: Even their lives are not life. ["The poor are regarded as dead" – TB Nedarim 64b]
The Rabbis taught: There are three types of person for whom their life is no life:
wish to point out the law that the principle of human dignity overrides certain Halakhic injunctions." (see TB Berakhot l9b)
(J. B. Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, #7:2, summer, 1965, 15)
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One who awaits [scraps] from the table of others; one whose wife rules over him; one whose physical
suffering rules his body. Some add: Even one who possesses only one garment." (TB Beitza 32b)
Life ought to be not a mere physiological state, but a blessing. However life itself is not a blessing
when it lacks basic autonomy. The loss of control experienced by the poor over the means to satisfy
their body's demands is analogous to one's abject dependence when ill or when one is hen-pecked by a
spouse that controls one's every move. Thus the body may imprison its possessor by denying even a
modicum of self-determination necessary for human dignity.
Thus human dignity requires power. It is not a purely pacific trait to be associated with human
tranquility and world peace. It is a quality of rulership which nevertheless does not require domination
over others, but it does entail the power to defend against other’s incursions. Ehud Luz, the cultural
historian of Zionism, summarizes this connection between dignity and power:
“Honor is connected with power, the ability to dominate one's natural or social environment. Power gives
a person greater social weight and a greater claim to respect. Herein lies the connection between honor
and freedom: subjugation means being deprived of honor because it means being deprived of power, of
control over one's own fate. One who would be honored must be free. The slave has no personal identity
and only acquires one insofar as he struggles for his freedom.” xii
“One who is convinced that dignity is essential to humanity will defend it zealously against all who would
take it away. In the words of Benedetto Croce [liberal Italian philosopher, who was persecuted under
Mussolini]:
‘The sole practical guarantee that the liberty and dignity of men will be treated with the respect
and the regard which are its due is the readiness of men to fight for it.... There is no escape from
the duty to struggle.’” xiii
In explicating the importance for Jewish dignity in Jewish self-defense, Ehud Luz identifies the duty to
struggle with the source of empowerment for dignity. While the law may acknowledge one’s right to
dignity, it is only when one wins that right and defends oneself that one possesses it as one’s own.
“Since self-respect requires that one insist on his selfhood and independence, there is an inner connection
between dignity and freedom, on one hand, and power on the other. Power means the ability to defend
freedom and dignity. It is the tool that can be used to compel recognition of oneself as an equal. The use
of force by the oppressed against the oppressor not only serves as an outlet for rage and indignation; it
also places them on an equal footing, asserting their common humanity and mutual responsibility...
A person stripped of his dignity has lost his humanity, which is tantamount to spiritual death.”xiv
Just as Soloveitchik describes the dignity of controlling one’s body and of the resources for satisfying
one’s needs, so too fighting for one’s own political independence is analogous to laboring to satisfy
one’s physical needs. In both cases the struggle for independence, as much as the outcome, earns one
dignity.
The Dignity and the Indignity of Labor
Maimonides, Soloveitchik and John Locke also speak to the honorable standing of working with one’s
hands involved in material productivity. To do so is to revolutionize the classical relationship between
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work and honor in which the dishonor of menial labor is presupposed by the very Greco-Roman
society that coined the term dignitas. Originally dignitas only made sense if it excluded he toiling,
disenfranchised masses. Thus Maimonides preaches against the prevalent view that mundane work is
dishonorable by praising those scholars who do work for their own living. Maimonides sums up his
advice about living an honorable life and laboring in the Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:18:
"One should always strain oneself and live with suffering [deprivation] so as not to become dependent on
others and not cast oneself [as a burden] upon public support. Thus the Rabbis commanded and said:
Make your Shabbat like a weekday [in terms of the limited meals you can provide yourself], so as not to
become dependent on others. Even if one were a scholar and highly honored but became impoverished,
engage in a craft, even a disgusting one, so as not to become dependent on others. Better to work [as a
tanner] stripping animal carcasses [in the marketplace] than to say to the common people: I am a scholar!
I am a priest, so support me! The greatest scholars were engaged in hewing wood, carrying beams,
drawing water to irrigate gardens, making metal and coals, yet they did not ask the public for support nor
did they accept funds when offered."
The Rabbis realized that labor can be seen as a source of indignity and that dignity of labor is not to be
taken for granted as a characteristic of every society, certainly not an aristocratic one. But except for
very specific occupations, like a tanner for example, the most menial labors were honored and even
great scholars performed them in Talmudic times.
As Maimonides states: better engage in forms of labor not socially honored and curtail one's expensive
tastes even on Shabbat, rather than bringing upon oneself true dishonor – parasitic dependence on
the community for tzedakah.
Rav said to Rav Kahana: Become a tanner and strip hides off dead animals in the market and earn a
salary.
But do not say: "But I am a priest" or "I am a great man and that it is a disgrace for me to be so
employed!" (TB Baba Batra 110a).xv
By contrast, in the Greco-Roman world of aristocracy, any form of menial task like farming or trade
was considered demeaning and would disqualify one from aristocratic honor. Menial labor is shared by
lower forms of life like animals, who also labor to produce food and reproduce offspring. Only
occupations that are unique to the human species can render those involved in them dignity. Leisure6 is
the mark of honor, since inferior human beings like slaves provide one’s animal needs and create time
for leisure activities that are uniquely human.
6
Erich Fromm, humanist psychoanalyst, adopts the Greek idea that leisure and freedom from the necessity to work defines
humanity at its highest . he applies that to his explication of the value of Shabbat as day without labor.
“The Sabbath ritual has such a central place in the biblical religion because it is more than a "day of rest" in the modern
sense; it is a symbol of salvation and freedom. This is also the meaning of God's rest; this rest is not necessary for God
because he is tired, but it expresses the idea that great as creation is, greater and crowning creation is peace; God's work is
a condescension; he must really ‘rest,’ not because he is tired but because he is free and fully God only when he has ceased
to work. So is man fully man only when he does ' not work, when he is at peace with nature and his fellow man; that is why
the Sabbath commandment is at one time motivated by God's rest and at the other by liberation from Egypt. Both mean the
same and interpret each other; ‘rest’ is freedom.” (Erich Fromm, “The Forgotten Language,” 178)
10
Only very exceptionally did Roman society countenance demeaning work like commerce even though
one might earn a great deal of wealth from it. The exception that proves the rule is from the satirist
Juvenal:
“Juvenal urges trade as a profitable alternative to military service, he gives this advice (14. 200-205):
‘Buy what you can sell for half as much again: don't let feelings of fastidium [disgust] come over you for
wares that must be banished beyond Tiber, and don't believe that some distinction must be drawn
between fine perfumes and tanning: profit smells good, no matter what its source.’
Tanning was one of the smelly and polluting industries relegated to the far bank of the Tiber across from
the city center, and it is the absolutely repellent stench of the trade that Juvenal clearly invokes.”xvi
A change in the attitude to labor arose with the Reformation as we mentioned above. The greatest
philosopher to celebrate an artisan or a farmer’s labor was John Locke. He identifies dignity with
business, not leisure; activity, not sloth. Though he is often seen as the defender of the capitalist right
to own private property, he is an even more avid defender of the right to earn private property
based on labor of one’s own body. Not only is it “a right” but it is “a duty" to work, even if one does
not need to work to supply one’s own needs. Locke sees labor as a Divine calling revealed by nature.
Labor is itself a God-like occupation, so idleness is a destructive force to be rejected.xvii
“Nor indeed can man believe ... that all this equipment for action is bestowed on him by a most wise
creator in order that he may do nothing, and that he is fitted out with all these faculties in order that he
may thereby be more splendidly idle and sluggish."xviii
That commitment to labor as a moral good ordained by God the Creator meant that Locke could be
very harsh in insisting that all people work and teaching them that their idleness is a mark of
corruption of human nature for which they ought to be ashamed. Human dignity that is earned by
work – not simply by being endowed by the Creator – also entails shame for those who do not
work even though they are capable of working. xix
Unemployment was not a source of shame for the poor in the ancient world. For status-giving wealth
derived from land ownership, more than employment which was performed by slaves while the
aristocracy in great “civilizations” prided themselves on their leisure. As we have seen, while the
Greeks and the European upper classes celebrated their schola, their leisure, their unemployment, as a
blessing or even as their birthright, the Protestants viewed it as a loss of dignity for they conceived of
society as a community of workers called to their vocation by God.7
Thus John Locke promotes an ideal of human dignity deriving from labor which is fundamentally
different than the social honor of leisure enabled by others' work, so central to Greek self-respect. As a
theologian, Locke explains that difference between Greek dignity of ruling over others and the Biblical
dignity of working for oneself. That is how he interprets God's assignment that human beings labor by
the sweat of their brow which for him is a calling – not a curse.
7
“At every person's birth there comes into existence an eternal purpose for that person, for that person in particular.
Faithfulness to oneself with respect to this is the highest thing a person can do, and as that most profound poet has said,
"Worse than self-love is self-contempt." But in that case there is one guilt, one offense: unfaithfulness to oneself or a
disowning of one's own better nature. (Soren Kierkegaard, An Occasional Discourse, 93)
11
“God sets him to work for his living, and seems rather to give him a Spade into his hand, to subdue the
Earth, than a Sceptor to Rule over its inhabitants. In the Sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread,
says God to him. This was unavoidable, may it perhaps be answered, because he was yet without
Subjects, and had no body to work for him, but afterwards... he might have People enough, whom he
might command, to work for him. No, says God, not only whilst thou art without other help, save thy
Wife, but as thou livest shall thou live by thy Labour.” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689)Book II,45,190-191)
The dignity of the citizen – an achieved, not ascribed, status – derives from their productive
employment. Employment is then a social need, not merely an instrumental activity for feeding one’s
needs. In Western society that has often become the internalized self-understanding of the poor
themselves.
“How hard and humiliating it is to bear the name of an unemployed man. When I go out, I cast down my
eyes because I feel myself wholly inferior. When I go along the street, it seems to me that I can't be
compared with an average citizen, that everybody is pointing at me with his finger. I instinctively avoid
meeting anyone.”xx
Thus a society committed to remove shame and stigma from its members must provide employment
opportunities, not only basic needs and not only consumer goods typical of a respectable member of
society like a “linen shirt” which Adam Smith says is essential in his era even for a day laborer. xxi
Paradoxically, in the name of the human dignity of labor, John Locke, as a government official, urged
not only the provision of employment but its coercion for the sake of the dignity of the poor. He
mandated the violation of human dignity as freedom in calling for legislation to make sure the needy
would work and thereby enhance their dignity. Locke’s educational mission in his schools for the poor
was to teach people to behave in a “dignified way” – not to be parasites.
Rav Soloveitchik also insists on activism in satisfying one’s needs. The way to achieve independence
of material needs is not the way of asceticism nor the way of hoarding, but rather the way of productive
work, as a vocation.
"The doctrine of faith in God's charity, bitahon, is not to be equated with the folly of the mystical doctrine
of quietism which in its extreme form exempts man from his duty of attending to his own needs and
lets him wait in ‘holy’ idleness and indifference for God's intervention. This kind of repose is wholly
contrary to the repose which the Halakhah recommends: the one which follows human effort and
remedial action.
Man must first use his own skill and try to help himself as much as possible. Then, and only then,
man may find repose and quietude in God and be confident that his effort and action will be crowned with
success. The initiative, says the Halakhah, belongs to man; the successful realization, to God. Certainly,
except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it, but if those who labor stop building, there
will be no house. The Lord wants man to undertake the task which He, in His infinite grace,
completes."xxii
While in other places Rav Soloveitchik emphasizes the mitzvah of solidarity and compassion as a basis
of tzedakah, his appreciation for human productivity as the key to human dignity explains how he
understands Maimonides’ highest form of tzedakah that enables the poor to join in this dignity-granting
activity.
12
The Dignity and the Indignity of Labor Relations
Labor earns one the means by which to be independent, but most labor involves dependence on
employers, land owners, money lenders and investors. Therefore labor relations, relations of
production, often generate dependence and shame that hardens into fixed economic and hence social
class structures , even if the point of working is to become financially independent as a consumer. In
Karl Marx’s terminology, work can become alienated,8 so that in working for others and producing for
capitalist investors, one loses the ability to identify with one’s own productivity. In fact one becomes a
commodity in oneself and a means to others' ends. Ideally and naturally, “labor is supposed to be,” for
Marx, “man’s process of self-becoming because labor is man’s specific attribute” qua human.xxiii Labor
is man’s self-creation and his way of creating the whole world anew in the human image. When labor
becomes an alienated commodity not viewed as self-expression then human beings have become
alienated from themselves, from their labor and form their own products – property.
An attempt to translate Talmudic discussions about labor laws into Marxist categories is conducted by
Emanuel Levinas, the Jewish French philosopher, in his Nine Talmudic Lectures. In 1968, after the
neo-Marxist student and worker “revolution,” Levinas presented his understanding of the Talmud
sugya on human labor (TB Baba Metzia 83a), as part of his lectures on the Talmud. In his judgment,
work may be both a potential for granting human dignity but also an economic threat to human
freedom. He agrees with the Marxist tenet that labor is not a curse from which we must be liberated, as
the Greco-Roman world held, but a source of meaning. This is reinforced by the Talmudic reference to
Psalm 104.
“In Psalm 104, work is not associated with misfortune, a curse, meaninglessness. The psalm seems to
place the work of men amid the successes of creation. The meaning of human work is thus a reason for
the dignity of the worker: the rights of the worker are due to his function in the general economy of
creation, to his ontological role. The rights and dignity of man are derived from his condition as worker.
Work belongs to the order of light and reason. The time of work is not the time of frustration or
alienation, is not cursed time. In a [Greco-Roman] world in which work appeared as a mark of servitude
reserved for the slave, Resh Lakish wants to see it as the perfection of creation.” (Emmanuel Levinas,
Nine Talmudic Readings, 104).
However, the market place where workers ostensibly have the freedom to make whatever labor
contracts they wish, turns out to be a place where freedom of contract generates un-freedom. The
individual workers living on subsistence have little or no bargaining power against the employers.
Here the Talmud defends customary rights that restrict freedom for the sake of freedom:
8
Hegel is very concerned for the dignity of labor, but not to provide the individual with a sense of meaning, but to prevent
societal disorder. Hegel is most concerned with the emergence of the “rabble,” who without work lose the "feeling of right,
integrity, and honor which comes from supporting oneself by one's activity” (PR, #244). Then these alienated poor will
develop an "inward rebellion against the rich, the society and the government.”
Paul Franco adds: “Without a stake in society, and without the sense of honor or pride that comes from supporting
themselves, the members of a rabble become ever more shameless ‘frivolous and lazy.’ They no longer even try to support
themselves through work but, rather, demand that they be supported by society, on which they blame their impoverished
condition. It is a portrait of the culture of poverty.”(Paul Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom, 271)
13
“One who hires workers and tells them to begin early and finish late cannot force them to do so if
beginning early and finishing late does not conform to the custom of the place.” (Mishna in TB Baba
Metzia 83a)
Levinas explains how the employer must be concerned for his duty to his worker more than to his
freedom to do what one wills with one’s property. He shows that freedom is not a value higher than
human dignity:
“The Mishna affirms the rights of the other person, even if this person finds himself in the inferior
position, which is dangerous to his freedom, of a worker for hire. This position is dangerous to his
freedom because he runs the risk of losing his liberty without undergoing any violence; to be sure, the
person is still acting willingly since he engages himself and stays within the interpersonal commerce of an
exchange; but commerce is at the border line of alienation, and freedom easily turns into non-freedom.
Our text teaches that not everything can be bought and not everything can be sold. The freedom to
negotiate has limits which impose themselves in the name of freedom itself. It matters little that the limits
formulated here are not the same as those demanded by modern trade unions. What matters is the
principle of limits imposed on freedom for the greater glory of freedom. It is the spirit in which the
limits are set: they concern the material conditions of life, sleep and food. Sublime materialism! The
nature of the limits imposed is fixed by custom and evolves with custom. But custom is already a resistance against the arbitrary and against violence. It is a notion of a general principle, the root of the
universal and the Law.”xxiv
The UDHR establishes the right to a paid vacation, although this may seem at first glance a trivial
benefit negotiable under a labor contract, not a universal human right. But Levinas identifies the
deeper significance of such leisure in his analysis of the Talmudic sugya:
“If an employer were to pay a higher wage, it would be possible to think that he is saying to the workers: I
agreed to pay you a higher salary assuming that you would begin earlier and finish later.” (Gemara in TB
Baba Metzia 83a-b)
“It is in fact possible to foresee a raise in salary which would ‘force’ the worker to get up earlier and to go
to sleep later; the employer becomes generous and wants to acquire additional labor taken from the
leisure time of the worker. Isn't it possible to buy, if ‘price is no consideration,’ what the employer who
pays a normal wage cannot buy because of a concern for what is human? Isn't it possible to buy the
leisure time of workers on the black market? The Gemara would like the worker to answer the boss who
becomes ‘generous’ so as to obtain extra working hours thus: Sure, you have paid me more but that is so
that I should work better. The quality of my labor I am willing to discuss, but I will not bargain about
my human condition, which, in this particular case, expresses itself as my right t to get up and go to
sleep at the regular hours....
Revolution takes place when one frees man, that is, when one tears away from economic determinism.
To affirm that the working man is nonnegotiable, that he cannot be bargained about is to affirm
that which begins revolution.... the inalienable rights of the worker.”xxv
The UDHR which elevates economic rights to the level of human rights views one’s material
conditions as essential to one’s personhood and dignity. So too, Levinas demotes a spiritualized notion
of humanism based on rationality and on oneself and promotes the value of “materialistic humanism”
based on the other:
14
“Where the custom is that they [the workers] be fed, he [the employer] is obligated to feed them; where it
is that they be served dessert, he must serve them dessert. Everything goes according to the custom of the
place.” (Mishna in TB Baba Metzia 83a)
“Sublime materialism, concerned with dessert. Food is not the fuel necessary to the human machine;
food is a meal. No humanist eloquence comes to spoil this text, which really defends man. Authentic
humanism, materialistic humanism....Typical of Jewish humanism, the man whose rights must be
defended is in the first place - the other man; it is not initially myself. It is not the concept of man which is
the basis of this humanism, but the other man.... I am even inclined to believe that there are not many
other ways to love God than to establish these working hours correctly, no way that is more urgent.. - to
found justice for the toiling man.”xxvi
The concern for another’s needs, as exemplified in Abraham’s hospitality, is, for Levinas, not only a
mark of one’s Jewish origins, but also of universal humanity:
“What else could descent from Abraham mean? The one who knew how to receive and feed men: the one
whose tent was wide open on all sides. Through all these openings he looked out for passersby in order to
receive them. The meal offered by Abraham? We know especially of one meal, the one he offered to the
three angels - without suspecting their condition as angels. Abraham must have taken the three passersby
for three Bedouins, for three nomads from the Negev Desert - three Arabs, in other words! He runs
toward them. He calls them "Your Lordships."
The heirs of Abraham, men to whom their ancestor bequeathed a difficult tradition of duties toward the
other man, which one is never done with, an order in which one is never free. In this order, above all
else, duty takes the form of obligations toward the body, the obligation of feeding and sheltering. So
defined, the heirs of Abraham are of all nations: any man truly man is no doubt of the line of Abraham....
The extent of the obligation toward men ...has no limits.”xxvii
Levinas concludes his integration of neo-Marxism with Rabbinic Judaism by reaffirming that Marxist
and capitalist materialism are inadequate because of their dichotomous division between the spiritual
and the material, the humanitarian and the economic. He concludes with a quote from his fellow
countryman of an earlier generation, the Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Salanter, who said: “the material
needs of my neighbor are my spiritual needs.”
The Dignity of Slave Labor and The Preservation of Respect
What a strange notion – “The Dignity of Slave Labor!” How can slaves share honor? the Greeks would
say; and what indignity is greater than being deprived of freedom? the moderns would contend. Yet the
Rabbis chose to define their notion of human dignity and to seek to protect human beings' sense of
self-respect precisely in the problematic area of “freedom” left by restricting the master’s control over
his own slave, thus raising the slave above the status of pure chattel. Let us examine how even in
conditions of coerced labor one’s dignity may be husbanded.
For the Rabbis, menial labor is not work that by its very nature denigrates one’s dignity, but avodat
parekh, harsh embittering slave labor, does. Their point was not that work undertaken without freedom
is always demeaning, but that work under duress which is not aimed at any useful purpose lacks the
essential dignity of human activity. In the rabbinic legal system where slavery was permitted but
15
regulated, the Rabbis tried to distinguish between ordinary slavery as a universal economic system in
the ancient world, and the “harsh labor” imposed by a despot, like Pharaoh, who intentionally caused
such great suffering to the Children of Israel (Exodus 1:13). Therefore a Jewish master is forbidden to
impose this type of mindless labor on a Hebrew slave (Leviticus 25:46).
"It is forbidden to work a Hebrew slave harshly (befarekh) (Leviticus 25: 46; see Exodus 1:13) What is
the definition of “harsh labor”?
(1) work without end [without a pre-assigned time limit]
(2) work without purpose [useless work] whose only purpose is the master’s desire to keep the slave
working and prevent idleness.
For example, the master should not say: rake under these vines until I come back,” for that is a task
without a set quota [in time or product].
For example, the master should not say: “dig here,” when the master has no need of this labor, nor even
“heat up this cup of food or cool it off,” when there is no need for it. "
(Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 1:6; Sifra Section #6:2)
Even when the slave-owner is a non-Jew, it is the Jew's responsibility to actively intervene to prevent
such indignities inflicted on the Hebrew slave.xxviii A modern example of arbitrary discipline used as a
tool of planned dehumanization is found in Primo Levi’s Holocaust memoir.9
"Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within a hand's reach. I opened the window and
broke off the icicle but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away from me.
"Warum?" I asked him in my poor German. "Hier ist kein warum" (there is no why here), he replied,
pushing me inside with a shove."xxix
What Primo Levi had naively assumed is that order make sense, just as Maimonides defines
meaningful labor as “an intentional activity” with a telos. The Rabbis’ definition of the form of labor
forbidden on Shabbat is also characterized by productive intentionality implicit in the term melakha.
That kind of labor is not merely work or physical exertion but craftsmanship. It commemorates the
Divine craftsmanship of the Creation (Gen. 2: 1-3) and the highest form of human craftsmanship
exemplified by Bezalel in constructing the tabernacle (mishkan) (Exodus 35:30-32). In both texts the
Torah speaks not of avodah, generic work, but of melakha, craft which is planned in advance (Ex.
35:32). The Rabbis therefore prohibited on Shabbat (Exodus 20: 9; 35:2) only melekhet makhshevet, a
purposeful endeavor involving planning and production of estimable results such as that which typifies
an artisan, in general, and God the Creator, the master craftsperson, in particular. That kind of
thoughtful production of aesthetic and useful objects transforms the sense of self of the artisan as much
as his or her raw material. Implicit in human labor is intentionality and the need for the worker to
know what is intended.
9
Victor Frankl recalls that in the concentration camps the prisoners lacks the basic dignity of a human being for they were
regarded only as a mere animal:
"The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think it worth his while to say anything,
not even a swear word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of
a human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the
attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do
not even punish it."
"The majority of prisoners suffered from a kind of inferiority complexes. We had all once been or had fancied ourselves to
be `somebody.' Now we were treated like complete nonentities. Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner
felt himself utterly degraded." (Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 36, 72)
16
Even for a slave or one working under duress to survive, the principle of purposeful and useful
endeavors ought to be preserved. Thus the public works programs for the unemployed created by F.D.
Roosevelt WPA strove to engage the unemployed in various useful projects that gave their work
meaning and made a contribution to the good of society. This was the challenge met in a significant
way by the WPA, the public work projects, run under F.D.R. during the American depression and they
set an illuminating precedent.10
A powerful anecdote about the difference between debilitating labor and ennobling labor is found in
Nelson Mandela's autobiographical reflections on his 27 years in a South Africa prison as punishment
for his struggle for democracy. Initially he and his fellow political prisoners conducted a long struggle
to be released from the daily regime of meaningless and coercive work they did in the quarries.
However astonishingly to his captors when the prisoners finally won the freedom not to labor for the
state, Mandela himself asked for the privilege to work on his own initiative in cultivating a garden.
“To survive in prison one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one's daily life. One can feel
fulfilled by washing one's clothes so that they are particularly clean, by sweeping a hallway so that it is
empty of dust, by organizing one's cell to conserve as much space as possible. The same pride one takes
in more consequential tasks outside of prison one can find in doing small things inside prison.
Almost from the beginning of my sentence on Robben Island, I asked the authorities for permission to
start a garden in the courtyard. For years, they refused without offering a reason. But eventually they
relented, and we were able to cut out a small garden on a narrow patch of earth against the far wall.
The soil in the courtyard was dry and rocky. The courtyard had been constructed over a landfill, and in
order to start my garden, I had to excavate a great many rocks to allow the plants room to grow. The
authorities supplied me with seeds. ...A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control.
To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction.
The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom."xxx
It is striking and paradoxical that Rabbinic legal thought has developed an illuminating notion of
human dignity in setting minimal limits on the two most egregious conditions of human coercion –
execution of criminals, discussed above, and slavery. We saw above the prohibition on instructing
even the slave to do purposeless work or work without a time limit. There are other such restrictions on
Hebrew slavery – motivated by humanistic concerns – that are summarized succinctly by Maimonides
but based on Leviticus 25 and its rabbinic commentary the Sifra.
10
The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest
New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and
roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and
housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which
especially benefited rural and Western populations. Expenditures from 1936 to 1939 totaled nearly $7 billion. Between
1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. Until ended by Congress and war employment during 1943,
the WPA was the largest employer in the country.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is described in FDR’s first inaugural address on 21 March 1933: "I propose to create
a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to
forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this type of
work is of definite practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss but also a means of
creating future national wealth."
17
Leviticus 25 is one of the most important Biblical sources for tzedakah and the prime source on
Sabbatical years and Jubilee. It treats the most characteristic effect of poverty in the ancient world –
debt-slavery – with a multi-tiered policy for its prevention and alleviation, though only for fellow
citizens, Jews. When one becomes impoverished, your nearest relative is legally required to support
you, take you in to live and work on his land, buy back your inherited land – that had been sold off to
cover one’s debts – and buy you back from slavery if you were sold due to unpaid debt. Sabbatical
years regularly cancel debts completely (Deuteronomy 15:1-3) and forbid creditors to dun their
debtors. Once every fifty years, the Jubilee is the solution of last resort that liberates all slaves without
further compensation to the slave owner and returns them not only to their families but to their original
land holdings which are expropriated without compensation from their new owners. Recalling the
indignity of Egyptian slavery, no Hebrew may treat their fellow as if they were slaves even though
they have – according to normal economic definitions - sold themselves into slavery to cover their
debts. In Lev. 25 the term “slave” is never even used to describe such the status of having been sold, ,
though the legal term “Hebrew slave” (eved ivri) is freely used elsewhere in the Torah in Exodus and
Deuteronomy. Thus there is a solid Biblical basis in Leviticus 25 for thinking about how to maintain
some sense of human dignity for one's national brother even under harsh economic conditions of
dependence on one’s employer/master. The Rabbis develop their insights into the laws of Lev. 25 at
length. It remains for us to extend these notions from national dignity to universal human dignity.
By making legal and moral distinctions within the realm of the laws of slavery, the Rabbis appear at
odds with the modern assumptions since slavery was legally abolished in the West in the mid-19th C.,
While modern thinkers have characterized freedom and dignity as identical absolutes; one cannot have
dignity without freedom and human rights to dignity and freedom allow for no compromises, the
Rabbis sought to characterize and protect "relative human dignity" even under conditions of
economic slavery or harsh, asymmetrical power-cum-labor relations. They acknowledged that
economic dependency is very typical in societies – ancient and early modern slave empires and postmodern global economies supplied by child labor in third world. Economics generates abuses of
dignity of various types and degrees, that cannot simply be dismissed by declaring all humans equal
and free by law.
The Rabbis' attempts to ameliorate the humanity of the life of the slave is a very important model for
understanding the relationship between poverty and dignity, for poverty exposes one to many forms of
indignities in gradient of increasing economic dependence. The poor's employment record – almost
always occasional, partial and temporary work at the bottom of the economic-social ladder –
reminiscent of, though not formally identified with, slavery.
What were the red lines of indignity that the Torah and the Rabbis considered beyond the pale even
while not ruling out the legal validity of slavery itself? Besides prohibiting the imposition of
purposeless tasks, the Rabbis also added other restrictions on the indignities inflicted on a slave,
especially when in public:
"Both one who sells himself and one sold [for theft] by the court may not be sold publicly on a raised
stone platform [for the sale of slaves] nor in an alley [of the market] where slaves are generally sold, as it
says: they shall not be sold as slaves are sold (Lev. 25:42) – but rather in private, in an honorable way."
xxxi
18
For Maimonides, to be treated “like a slave” is, by social definition, to be shamed. So, paradoxically,
without abolishing slavery, the slave may not be treated as a slave.
"Every Hebrew slave purchased by a Jew may not be forced to do contemptible things usually reserved
for slaves, such as carrying the master's clothes and equipment to the public bathhouse or removing his
shoes, as it says: Do not make them serve as a slave serves (Lev. 25:39). Don't treat any way but the
way a paid employee is treated. As it says: like an employee, like a resident shall he be with you (Lev.
25:40).12
On the other hand, one may have them cut their masters' hair, launder their clothes, bake their bread, but
not a launderer for the public or a barber for the public or a baker for the public - unless they [the slaves]
already served in those [demeaning] service professions before [selling themselves into slavery]. Nor
may the master teach the slave such a skill [considered demeaning in order to serve the public ] at all
unless that was their previous function.
Under what conditions [are the kinds of employment restricted]? Only when the Jew is a Hebrew slave
for his soul is downcast (shefela) in having been sold. However a Jew who has not been sold may
be employed to do slave's tasks, for he is not engaging in these professions except by his own
desire and free will." xxxii
The principle of indignity is not defined simply by the kind of activity which may be considered
shameful by society – like collecting garbage and cleaning toilets which minister to the biological
wastes of others, but by the lack of freedom of choice, on one hand, and by the fact of having been
sold at all, on the other. Thus Hebrew slaves, rather than being considered more inured to indignity
which is the norm for slaves, are more vulnerable to shame and as such must be treated more gingerly.
So we might also conclude that the economically-coerced poor for whom accepting demeaning jobs is
not actually a result of "their own desire and free will" ought also to be treated more gently than, for
example, students taking a summer job in sanitation. Dignity is measured by what the slave considers a
respectable form of service – whether or not it is physically taxing or not. Therefore, according the
midrashic elaboration of embittering harsh labor, when the Rabbis commented on the verse The
Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with harsh rigor (b’feh-rakh) (Ex.1:14), they imagined
that Pharaoh forced men to do women’s work and women to do men’s work because that would
undermine their gender-based sense of self-respect.
Rabbi Samuel ben Nahman says in Rabbi Jonathan's name:
This teaches that they used to exchange the work, giving women tasks suited only for men and men,
the tasks which women usually performed.” (Midrash Rabbah on Ex. 1:14)
Another great source of indignity in slavery learned from rabbinic midrash is the separation from
one's family. The midrash in the Passover haggadah singles out the harsh slavery in Egypt for
intentionally separating husbands and wives from conjugal intercourse critical to human life (prishut
mi-derekh eretz).13 God, on the other hand, knew and empathized with that hidden indignity, the
12
"They shall not carry their masters on a litter, on a chair, chair like a carriage the way slaves do." (Mekhilta Nezikin 1)
13
“In all manners of work” (Ex.1:14) - Pharaoh decreed upon them four decrees: ... At first, he made a decree commanding
the taskmasters to insist upon their making the prescribed number of bricks. Then he commanded that they should not be
allowed to sleep in their homes, intending by this to limit their natural increase, and reasoning to himself: 'If they be not
allowed to sleep in their homes, they will not be able to give birth to children.' Thereupon the taskmasters said to them: 'If
you go home to sleep, you will lose a few hours each morning from your work, when we send for you, and you will never
complete the allotted number,' as it is said: And the taskmasters were urgent, saying: Fulfill your work (Ex. 5:13). So they
used to sleep on the ground [in the brick yard.” (Midrash Exodus Rabbah I 12)
19
enforced denial of intimacy.xxxiii For example, the original townships in South Africa under apartheid
permitted African workers to live in work camps near the mines but not to bring along their families.
Maimonides rules that "the master may not separate him from his wife and children" acquired before
being sold. Rather, the master must provide food for the slave's wife and children as it says: his wife
with him (Exodus 21:2-3; Lev. 25:41, 54). xxxiv
Paradoxically, by the laws of slavery, the slave must be treated as an equal even though the slavemaster relationship is by definition unequal. The economic and legal relationship should not affect the
interpersonal one. The slave must be treated as a brother, not as a slave. In fact, the Rabbis love to
proclaim with an ironic smile that a slave must be treated by the master as a master and the master
must serve the slave as if the master were his slave. Such a suggestion seems to undermine the whole
power relationship, such that Rabbis may be hinting that one should not own Hebrew slaves at all.
They have analytically distinguished between the unequal legal standing of a slave and a master
and the legal demand for a social-emotional relationship of dignity and brotherly solidarity
between them.
"In supporting every Hebrew slave - male and female –the masters must treat them as their own equals
regarding food, drink, clothing and residence as it says: [When the slave says I do not wish to leave you for I
love you and your household -] for it is good to him being with you (Deut. 15:16). Thus you shall not be eating
pure [white wheat] bread, while s/he must eat dark barley bread; you are drinking aged wine, while s/he drinks
new wine; you sleep a soft mattress mokhin, while s/he sleeps on straw; you reside in the city [where all the
conveniences are available], while s/he resides in village, as it says: liberated from being with you (Lev. 25:41).
Therefore the Rabbis concluded from this: All who buy a Hebrew slave are as if they bought a master for
themselves!14 They must treat the slave according to the way of brotherhood as it says: your brothers the
children of Israel (Lev. 25:46). Nevertheless slaves ought to behave themselves in the manner of a slave when
doing the labors they do."xxxv
The French Tosafists give an example in which the master is not only equal to the slave in material
conditions but even inferior to him:
14
Rav A.I. Kook argues that the Torah's form of slavery was much more humane than the treatment of laborers by
capitalist such as mine owners:
"Consider the miners who are hired freely in voluntary contracts, yet they are slaves to their masters while if they were
actually purchased as slaves their situation would be better. The rich whose heart is sealed mocks all forms of justice and
morality. It is more convenient for him that the tunnels have no light or air even though that shortens the life of tens of
thousands of people. If a mine collapses and it buries its workers alive, he pays no attention, for he can find other slavesfor-hire. That would not be the case if this work was done by the legal slavery of the Torah, where the slaves are their
master's property and the concern for their lives and their happiness would be equal to his concern for his capital, for 'they
are his wealth.' Then these impoverished workers would be happier and they could expect a better future.
But after the exile, slavery has become a monster such that its advantages were lost and humanity decided to abolish
legal slavery. However Biblical slavery's original telos was to protect those who are failing economically from the
hands of such evil and violent people [like capitalist mine owners] by giving them the security of property. So now we
need moral exhortations to care for the lives of workers – moral and material." (Letters of A. I. Kook I, 95-98).
Rav Kook is not concerned for the freedom of the worker but for their welfare which he believes Biblical slavery once
upon time protected. Analogously, before the Civil War American Southern slave owners argued that slavery was much
more humane than free labor in the North where workers who were ill, injured or aged were cast out by their former
employers with no care for their needs.
20
"Sometimes the master has only one pillow but if the master sleeps on it himself then he will have not have
performed the mitzvah of for it is good to him being with you [which requires material equality between them].
So the master must willy nilly hand over the only pillow to the slave, who is like a master relative to the master
himself. "xxxvi
In teaching this Rabbinic interpretation of the required brotherly relation between master and slave, Nehama
Leibowitz gave the following example from Israeli social reality of the early state period. during the massive
influx of newly impoverished Jewish immigrants from Arab states and from the European Holocaust.
"I recall an interesting experience in 1951, the year of massive refugee or transit camps [composed of dwellings
of tents and corrugated metal sidings] during the violent, awful storms of that Jerusalem winter when the tents
collapsed in the flooding. The government asked each [established] family with children to take home one child
from the camps until the rainy season was over.
The instructions of the government warned that under no circumstances were parents to discriminate between
their own children and the guest child (the unfortunate child cut off from his/her parents for two months and
staying with strangers). So if there were only one bicycle, one scooter, one ball or one piece of cake – they
would tell their own child to give it to the guest. For to discriminate negatively was forbidden, but to make the
guest child 'a master' was permitted. That is the point of the Talmud that if the law requires absolute equality in
the standard of living of the slave and the master , then sometimes the slave would emerge with preferential
conditions."xxxvii
Maimonides' point, however, is broader. Each side in this delicate situation must bend over backwards not to
take advantage of their legal advantages and lord them over the other. The master owns the slave and the
slave knows the master owes him brotherly dignity, but each acts as if wholly voluntarily when showing
respect or performing their subservient job. It is not the equality of the material conditions that truly provides
dignity but the interpersonal dance of honor between two players very differently situated legally and
economically. Incidentally, Maimonides asks for precisely the same dance of deference between the
monarch, who must treat his subjects as brothers, and citizens who ought to treat him with the awe of a
monarch.xxxviii
Most surprising is the concern for the spiritual aspirations of the slave even though they might more than
inconvenience the so-called master.
"A slave who wishes to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael may coerce his master to make aliyah together with him or else sell
him to someone making aliyah to there. However if the master [who already lives in Eretz Yisrael] wants to emigrate he
may not take his slave out with him unless the slave wishes to go voluntarily. That law is applicable in all eras, even now
when the land of Israel is ruled by non-Jews. If a slave escapes from abroad [to Eretz Yisrael] he may not be sent back to
slavery as it says: do not hand over [runaway] slaves to their masters (Deut. 23:16)" (TB Gittin 44b).xxxix
Living in the land of Israel is such a mitzvah that the slave (or the spouse – husband or wife) may
unilaterally follow their spiritual calling and go to Israel (or Jerusalem) even at the expense of their former
restrictive economic obligations. That spiritual freedom is essential for human dignity, significantly limiting
the coercive power of prior economic obligations and of even slavery to preempt such religious activities.
With all the attempts to maintain the some sense of dignity and self-respect, some relative equality, comfort
and respect of the slave, the Rabbis do not want that level of relative dignity within slavery to be equated
with the absolute value of human freedom. In reacting to the Biblical proviso for a satisfied slave who
voluntarily forgoes his right to liberation at the end of his term of service, the Rabbis mark his free choice to
remain a slave under a considerate master as reprehensible.
21
"If the slave [at the end of six years of service] declares, 'I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not
wish to go free,' his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or doorpost, and his
master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall remain his slave for life." (Exodus 21:5-6)
In the Biblical context it is not clear what the Torah's attitude is to such a voluntary action. It seems just
another option. This makes emotional sense since the wife and children were permanent slaves, apparently
non-Jews given to the Hebrew slave who will be not be liberated with the Hebrew slave, a temporary slave
by definition. The ritual legalizes the transformation of a free man to slave status by his own forfeiting of
rights.
But the Rabbis condemn that self-enslavement, for God has made us free and our calling is to serve God, not
to be enslaved to render service to human beings. Freedom from enslavement to fellow human beings is
essential to the highest calling – serving God. "Rav said: To Me the children of Israel are slaves (Lev. 25:45)
– Israel is not to buy one from the other" (Jerusalem Talmud Baba Metzia 6:2). The Rabbis root their
reinterpretation and reevaluation of the voluntary slave in the otherwise opaque symbols of the ritual of
voluntary permanent self-enslavement – the door and the hole in the ear.
"Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said:.. The Blessed Holy One said 'door' and 'doorpost' because they were witnesses
to God skipping over the lintel and doorposts (mezuzah) in Egypt [in the act of Divine liberation (Exodus
12:22)]. I said: To Me the children of Israel are slaves (Lev. 25:45) – not slaves to slaves and I took them out
from slavery to freedom. Yet this one acquires a master for himself?! Let him be bored with an awl before
them." (TB Kiddushin 22b)
"What difference does it make [that this slave is to required] to have his ear bored with an awl more than any
other limb? For that ear heard at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:2 – I Adonai your God took you out of Egypt from the
house of slavery]: To Me the children of Israel are slaves (Lev. 25:45) – my slaves! But this one threw off the
yoke of Heaven and made a monarch over himself, a yoke of flesh and blood. Therefore the Torah said: May the
ear [that heard at Sinai of its liberation] be marked with an awl for it did not keep the message it heard."
(Tosefta Baba Kamma Chap.7).
The dignity of freedom is an obligation for the Jew who appreciates God's acts of redemption and revelation.
That is the duty of maintaining one's dignity, one's independence from human mastery. The narrative of
freedom is then unique to Israel's religious history.
The situations in which one may be sold as a slave are limited to the most extreme cases of abject
hunger. For the Rabbis, impoverishment should not lead seamlessly into slavery and slavery will not
be regarded as just another economic mode of earning a living or discharging a debt. For example,
selling a debtor into slavery against his will is not permitted unless he – not she – has been caught and
convicted as a thief and the court has sold him into slavery. No other crime can be so punished.xl This
is a rabbinic innovation since the Torah's laws imply and the Bible's narratives make explicit that there
are many ways that one may become a slave including the creditor taking the defaulting debtor's
children in hock (II Kings 4:1). Further, no one is legally permitted to sell themselves into slavery even
for a limited time (once called indentured service in colonial America) unless they are starving.
Maimonides speaks passionately of this limitation of self-enslavement in the midst of his legal
summary of this law:
22
"Under what conditions may one sell themselves? That is a Jew (Yisrael) who has become extremely
poorxli – then the Torah permits him to sell himself as it says: when your brother with you descends
economically and is sold to you (Lev. 25:39). But he is not permitted to sell himself to save the money or
to buy merchandise or tools or pay them to his creditor, unless he needs them to eat – solely for that. A
person is not permitted to sell himself unless he has nothing left not even a garment, then he may sell
himself." xlii
No one may treat their liberty lightly as if one's freedom were simply an economic resource to be used
by oneself or others as they please. Human dignity means freedom but not the freedom to demean
oneself. Ironically, to restrict the freedom to sell oneself, the Rabbis invoked the great theological
notion that we are all slaves to God that appears in Leviticus 25: 45 to explain why at the Jubilee the
slave master who bought slaves legally must release them without remuneration. "For to Me are the
children of Israel slaves, my slaves are they – not slaves to slaves" (TB Kiddushin 22b); not slaves to
other Jews who have purchased them for those slave owners are also my servants subject to my will.
For that reason the Rabbis rule that a free laborer, even when contracted to complete a task, may
abandon his service at will and may not be coerced to work – even though he may be sued for damages
caused by quitting prematurely and violating his contract.
Thus as we see Maimonides has carried this notion one giant step further than the earlier rabbinic
sources by explicitly forbidding debt-slavery. One may not sell oneself to pay off a debt. Nor may a
creditor take all one's possessions leaving the debtor so destitute for food that they must sell
themselves to survive. Creditors are to be paid off gradually but never by encroaching on their food
supply of 30 days and their clothing allowance for 12 months. xliii
Incidentally, it is not accidental that in our translation we have not sought to insert gender equality
relative the rabbinic laws on slavery, for the Rabbis do not permit a woman to sell herself into slavery
even when starving nor may a court sell a women thief "because of the suspicion." xliv That suspicion is
probably lest she be sexually exploited, just as in cases of ransom the Rabbis worried about this,
therefore giving preference to the redemption of female captives (TB Horayot 13a). In others words,
human dignity even in coercive situations precludes exposure to sexual assault, typical of masterslave, boss-employee relationships.xlv
The Dignity of the Slave "Other" and the Slave "Brother" (The Hebrew Slave)
While the Torah and the Rabbis make major efforts to maintain the dignity of the slave brother, the Hebrew
slave, the status of the slave other – termed by the Rabbis “the Canaanite slave” – is much more exposed to
dehumanization, for s/he is a chattel slave, permanently stratified as other, ethnically and religiously other.
Leviticus 25, which is the site of a major effort to preserve the dignity of Hebrew slaves and to
rehabilitate them economically to full equality, is precisely the site of denigration of the non-Hebrew
slave. They are condemned to permanent slavery and their harsh treatment, as bad as that embittering slavery
of the Hebrews under the Egyptians, is explicitly permitted (Leviticus 25: 43-46). Brotherhood – whatever
one’s economic status, even if technically a slave – is constructed in opposition to others who may be denied
their freedom and even a minimal degree of considerate treatment as slaves. Ethnicity is a more vital
criterion for being treated with respect than one’s legal standing as slave or free. One’s standing as human
being created in the image of God is not the basis of dignity in Leviticus 25.
23
What is the significance of the Rabbis calling the non-Hebrew slave a “Canaanite slave” (eved k’na'ani)?
Race is not mentioned as a category of slave denigration in the laws of the Torah, though it is implicit in the
etiological tale of how Canaanites, associated with African Hamite Egyptians, were designated by Noah’s
paternal curse as destined for slavery. Noah’s three sons – Yefet, Shem, and Ham – are descended from the
same human couple thus they are part of the same human race, and yet they come to be differentiated
between three races from three continents – Greeks (white), Semites (Asia) and Hamites (Africa) (Gen. 10:
1,6). Those racial differences bear a value significance in the Torah only in relation to Ham who is
associated with some undefined homosexual sexual violation by seeing his drunken father Noah naked.
Noah then curses not Ham himself but only one of Ham’s sons – Canaan, and not even his brother Egypt.
“Cursed is Canaan who will be a slave of slaves to his brothers” (Genesis 9:25). Canaan will in the future be
a slave both to Shem and to Yefet (Gen.9:25-26). Since according to the genealogical tables of Noah,
Canaan gives birth to the ethnic mix of Canaanite peoples that Israel ultimately conquers, we have an
implicit rationale for their enslavement by the Hebrews (Gen. 10: 15-18). The Torah does not refer back to
the Canaanites as Israel’s slaves (except in the unique case of the Givonites who are cursed with slavery –
Temple slavery – Joshua 9:21,23). Rather the Canaanites are in principle to be expelled from the land of
Canaan (Exodus 34:11) or exterminated (Deuteronomy 7:1-4) due to the temptation of their idolatrous and
sexual practices. Nevertheless, historians suggest plausibly that the Canaanites may have been the primary
ethnic source of slaves purchased by the Hebrews (mentioned in Leviticus 25: 44-46). Christian slave
holders in the South and Protestant Afrikaans settlers in South Africa have highlighted that bizarre story and
its racial significance, though this tale has relatively little resonance in the rest of the Bible or rabbinic
sources.15
In modern economies, after the abolition of slavery less than 200 years ago, there are other distinctions that
affect the dignity of the lowest level of workers – such as unionized versus non-unionized, citizens versus
immigrant workers, legal versus illegal immigrants, permanent employees versus temps working for labor
contractors. At the lowest tiers, there are still modern slaves, including sex slaves, smuggled across the
border and sold to procurers. In traditional societies the status of the slave may appear anywhere on the
continuum between self and other, between employee, indentured servant and chattel slave, between
civilized and barbarian, between human and subhuman. The more "other" the slave, the less the category of
honor and shame applies to them, so that they may be coerced to perform the least respectable (most
dehumanizing) activities of society without compunction. Conversely, perceiving the "other's" humanity
may mitigate the harshness of their exploitation. While still cultural and ethnic others, they may still be seen
as creatures born of the same womb and embodying the same image of God; resulting in legal and moral
limits being placed on the owner-cum-employer’s right to treat their slaves as mere chattel. While work,
especially physical work, is often disdained in the Greek tradition, and with it these "low-level" workers, if
work were elevated in social opinion because people were honored for their contribution to communal wellbeing, such as cleaning up the garbage, then being a worker could be a prestige plus. Now we will examine
15
In the Torah the undefined sexual crime of Ham has shaped the stignatized picture of the “sexual abominations” of
Ham’s children – Canaan and Egypt. In Leviticus 18:3, 27-28 this cultural-religious praxis is defined as the most important
marker differentiating between a Hebrew, who maintains sanctified behavior, and the Canaanites, whose defiling behavior
leads to their expulsion – “thrown up” and out of the land, for their abominations. Perhaps the sexual crimes of the
Egyptian wife of Potiphar and the Canaanite people of Sodom are also part of this stigmatization of “Ham” whose name
means “hot, dark” people from the south. The Rabbis also attribute a desire to remain slaves to non-Hebrew slaves on the
ground that they enjoy the freedom of sexual anarchy in being exempted from Israelite laws controlling sexual activity.
However as we seee below the term “Canaanite slave’ is reserved for those who have accepted some mitzvot including
sexual limitations on adultery.
24
some of the laws and moral narratives used in the Bible and the Rabbis to extend humanitarian consideration
and even rights to dignity to the slave other, the non-Hebrew.
In the Torah’s legal tradition, the non-Hebrewxlvi slave is guaranteed a day of rest by the Ten Commandments
that prohibits labor on Shabbat to “your male and female slave” as well as your resident alien and your
domesticated animals (Deut. 5:14). In Deuteronomy 5 that restriction on labor by slaves is not portrayed as a
mere byproduct of the sanctity 16 of the day in which no work is to be done within one’s gates, but as the
very purpose of Shabbat:
In order that your male and female slave shall rest as you do and you shall remember that you were a slave in
the land of Egypt and Adonai your God took you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.
(Deuteronomy 5:13-14).
Shimon Peres, President of the State of Israel, identified the uniqueness of Deuteronomy’s Shabbat message
about equality:
“The commandment to sanctify Shabbat was the first call to humanity at large for real equality. And the first
summons for freeing man from the bondage of man, for freeing man from himself, from the routine of work.
This was the first significant taste of freedom and equality. And this taste has never faded since.” (Nobel Prize
for Peace Acceptance Speech, 1994)
The Deuteronomic rationale narrows the gap in solidarity between non-Hebrewxlvii slave and Hebrew master,
for both share an experience of slavery. Slavery of the non-Hebrew is not separated by an ontological,
cultural, racial or religious divide, but merely by an economic one. Freedom from labor, even slave labor, is
in some sense a “right” deserved by slave as much as by master, though you as master need grant that
freedom from work only once a week. It is a token of equality that transcends the hierarchical economic
relationship of master and slave. While “rights language” would be anachronistic in the Torah, this law
shares some of the features of an unalienable right. It is a prohibition against treating your slave as a slave on
Shabbat, for their own sake. However, unlike an absolute “right,” it is not up to them to decide whether to
rest or not.17 In some ways national laws mandating a day off such as France’s law for a rest day (1906) also
force people to take a day off in order to prevent employers from “forcing” employees to work every day or
else lose their jobs.
Another absolute limit on the treatment of slaves, Hebrew or not, is a ban against killing or physically
maiming them, even as part of corporal discipline by the master – which is otherwise considered a standard
practice necessary for slave management.18
16
Rav Sherira Gaon and Rav Hai Gaon explicitly distinguish the observance of Shabbat ritually from the liberation from
labor for non-Hebrew slaves. “The observance of Shabbat by slaves is not in our hands and we have no obligation but to
give them rest and relaxation and teach them about the honor of Shabbat. If they observe it, good, and if not, we are
exempt.” (Responsa of Geonim #431 cited by Yaacov Shapira in his paper “The Attitude to Foreign Workers in Hebrew
Law,” Oct. 19, 2009, for the Ministry of Law of the State of Israel)
17
Many Kantian liberals also agree that one may not sell one’s self into slavery or sexual bondage, for that violates one’s
rationality and it is self-contradictory to one’s freedom to alienate that freedom.
18
Slaves are compared to children and wives. A moderate beating is prescribed for child education – “One who holds back his
staff [from corporal punishment], hates his son” – Proverbs 13:24)
25
“When a person [master] strikes his male or female slave with a staff and s/he dies under his [the master’s]
hand, then s/he must be avenged.xlviii But if s/he survives a day or two, s/he is not to be avenged, since s/he is
his [the master’s] property.” (Exodus 21:20-21)
“When a person [master] strikes his male or female slave’s eye and destroys it, into freedom shall he send
her/him on account of the eye.
When a person [master] knocks out his male or female slave’s tooth, into freedom shall he send her/him on
account of the tooth.” (Exodus 21:26-27)
The slave’s work belongs to the master and his body may be sold, but the master’s ownership of his body
and life is not absolute. That fundamental ownership of self belongs to a person alone, even if sold into
slavery. Even though the slave is transferable property, chattel, his lack of freedom does not eliminate one’s
legal interest in one’s own life and bodily integrity. The punishment of the violent master is death. The right
to avenge (nakom yinakem) often means that one’s blood relatives take vengeance, but for a non-Hebrew
slave, it likely means, as the Rabbis also ruled, that the courts execute the murderer on the slave's behalf (TB
Sanhedrin 52b).xlix
Permanent damage to the body of a slave inflicted by his master l is viewed not merely as a loss of assets, a
matter of torts for which payment might be exacted. The master may not sell the slave and the courts do not
transfer the slave to a more humane master. It is a fundamental violation of one’s integrity as a human being,
so the master is fined and the slave regains freedom. Thus paradoxically the slave who in the ancient world
has by definition no dignity, no rights, not even to the physical integrity of his body, is to be respected by his
master or else the slave wins the fullest status of human dignity in the ancient world – freedom. The master
who struck his slave with a staff “to put the slave in his place,” but crossed the line and violated his bodily
integrity even by the loss of tooth – produces the opposite of his intention – the liberation of the slave from
his authority as master. One is no longer his slave, and the other is no longer his master. That result is
worthy of a blessing which no Jew may take for granted for all Jews were once enslaved and each could
again be enslaved. So the Rabbis bid each Jew – male and female – recite this crucial blessing daily to thank
God that “I was not made a slave” (TB Shabbat 60b).
Rabbinic law expands lists of limbs injured for which a slave is liberated to include all bodily damage that
does not heal.li For example, masters who maimed a slave's penis or breast has to release their victims from
servitude (TB Kiddushin 25a), perhaps because they wished to protect slaves from castration which was
frequently forced on slaves – especially in harems (The Book of Esther uses the term saris, castrati, for all
officials including those in the harem). Slaves too have a mitzvah of reproduction and a desire to contribute
to their own immortality and the survival of the world by having offspring.19 Further, sexuality is an
important part of a man or woman’s dignity, and their sexual abuse, and even worse their mutilation, is a
19
“One who is half a slave and half free works for his master and for himself on alternate days. This was the
ruling of the school of Hillel. The school of Shammai said: You have fixed matters (tiqqantem) for the master but
not for the slave. It is impossible for him [the half-slave] to marry a female slave because he is already half free. It
is impossible for him to marry a free woman because he is half slave.
Shall he then remain idle [without a legal framework in which to have children]?
But was not the world made to be populated, as it says,
God did not create it a waste, but formed it for habitation (Isaiah 45:18).
For the sake of tikkun olam, therefore, his slave-master is compelled to liberate him and give him a bond [a loan]
for half his purchase price. The school of Hillel thereupon retracted [their opinion and] ruled as did the school of
Shammai.” (Mishna Gittin 4:5)
26
source of great shame, as it is for hostages held captive (Mishna Horayot 3:7). They also debate whether the
master is punishable for unintentional damages, such as a master who threw a stone at an animal but hit the
slave by accident.lii They also debate whether a non-Hebrew has a right to damages to their legally
recognized honor (boshet) or not, such that when insulted the slave may claim damages.liii When a master
causes the death of the slave, the Rabbis distinguish between death as a result of disciplinary action using a
staff, and intentional murder using deadly weapons such as a sword, a knife, a stone or bare fists. The former
is excused if the slave initially recovers even if he later worsens and dies, since it is unclear if the death was
directly caused by the master's disciplinary instrument. But if the blow was strong enough to kill, it is a
capital crime, even if the slave recovered for up to a year before dying.liv Even if the death was accidental,
the master is sent into exile to a city of refuge as in any case of an accidental death to a free person, even
though the non-Hebrew slave probably has no blood avengers that would make refuge from avengers useful
for the master who inadvertently caused the slave’s death.lv
Ancient Near Eastern cuneiform laws of chattel slavery do not mention limits on the infliction of
injury to their own chattel slaves, though they do insist on an eye-for-an-eye punishment for killing a
debtor-slave, while they work off their unpaid debt. In fact, owners did mutilate chattel slaves and even
a lower-class debt-slave might be subject to a creditor-master who wished “to flog him, pluck out his
hair, bruise him and bore his ears” (MAL A #44).lvi By contrast, Exodus 21:20-21 establishes limits on
the disciplining or mistreatment of slaves by threatening the master with death were he to kill his slave
or with liberation from slavery were he to maim him/her.lvii Thus the Torah treats chattel slaves, though
they were often foreigners, as human beings with basic rights to compensation and protection as if they
were citizens who had become temporary debt-slaves.lviii As Bible scholar Nahum Sarna notes, the
Torah’s limitations on the treatment of slaves are wholly unprecedented in ancient law codes.lix
The severe financial penalty for maiming one's slave – liberation – can be appreciated against the
unique relationship between a slave and intentional physical maiming in the ANE and the GrecoRoman world. Removing an eye was a ritualized mark of humiliation when a conqueror enslaved his
captured enemies – a major source of supply or ancient slavery. For example, Nahash the Ammonite
demanded that the defeated citizens of Yavesh Gilad swear fealty by removing their right eye (I
Samuel 11:1) and the Babylonians put out both of King Zedekiyah's eyes when he was captured (II
Kings 25:7). Herodotus reports that blinding itself was the mark of slavery for captured enemies
(Herodotus, History, Book 4:2).
Slave disciplining often involved intentional maiming. Seneca reports that a slave who broke a vessel
was often punished by chopping off his hand.lx Hammurabi's Code associates such maiming of the
slave's ear with punishment for insubordination by reiterating physically the slave’s slave status.
"If the slave strikes a free person on the cheek, then his ear is to be lopped off." "If a slave says to his
master: 'You are not my master,' then he is to be rebuked that he is the master's slave and his master shall
lop off his ear." (Hammurabi #205, #282).
Perhaps that is why a Hebrew slave who chooses to remain a slave, is to have his ear pierced as a mark
of perpetual – but uniquely voluntary slavery (Exodus 21:6).
What then is the Biblical rationale for this restrictive innovation on a master’s power over slaves? The
motivation is not made explicit in the Torah. Perhaps the memory of being slaves in Egypt made the
Torah more humane toward the non-Hebrew slave. Note that this law appears in the Torah
immediately after the Ten Commandments where God is introduced as “the one who took you [Israel]
out of Egypt out of the house of bondage” (Ex. 20:2). Perhaps, even the status of chattel slavery does
27
not remove the slave from the category of human being based on the image of God which is literally
embodied in a body whose maiming is a desecration of God, as is the impalement of a criminal after
death. One medieval commentator, Hizkuni, suggests: “Even though the slave’s body is owned by the
master, the Blessed Holy One does not want the slave’s limbs destroyed” (Hizkuni on Ex. 21:26).
Perhaps human suffering in itself is a “currency” by which the slave has acquired his/her liberation as
if redeemed from his master. Hizkuni says: “From God’s hands one buys one’s self by virtue of one’s
suffering, so too suffering buys [one’s freedom] from one’s human master” (Hizkuni on Ex. 21:26). It
appears to me that much of the international support for Jewish refugees' right to enter British mandate
Palestine or for the Jewish people’s right to independence after the Holocaust was fueled by a logic
that extreme suffering earns rights that overturn previous political arrangements.
Or perhaps, less radically, releasing the slave from his master’s control is not a reflection of the rights of the
slave, but an indication to the master regarding the value of humane treatment and Divine mercy. The
structure of the master-slave relationship may inherently lead to abuses. Therefore, these exceptional
punishments – fines rather than torts, death even for an unintentional death of a slave by the master – are a
severe warning to the master that he is subject to execution or loss of ownership over the slave should he
unleash his anger or his cruelty when disciplining his slave. Avraham Ibn Ezra suggests that “God
commanded that when a master disciplines his slave he should not be cruel, for God’s mercies are for all
God’s creatures.”lxi In medieval Germany, Judah the Hasid instructs Jewish slave owners that: “If you have
a good male or female slave and you become poor [and must sell them], do not sell them to a cruel person
who will beat them cruelly for no reason” (Sefer Hasidim #668).
In Biblical wisdom literature, the slave has the right to challenge the unjust treatment of the master.
This is referred to by Job when refuting the claim that perhaps he sinned towards his slaves:
Did I ever despise the cause of my manservant, or of my maidservant, when they complained against me?
What then should I do when God arises, when God calls me to account, what should I answer God?
Did not God make me in the same womb as they, did not God fashion us in one womb? (Job 31:13, 15)
This verse is employed by Rabbi Issi, in a personal anecdote relayed in the midrash about his relationship to
his non-Hebrew slaves:
“Rabbi Issi’s wife argued with his female slave and he rebuked his wife in front of the slave.
His wife said to him: Why did you rebuke me in front of my female slave?
He answered: Didn’t Job say: "Did I ever despise the cause of my manservant, or of my maidservant,
when they complained against me? What then should I do when God arises, when God calls me to
account, what should I answer God?” (Midrash Genesis Rabbah #48)
The slave is permitted and encouraged expected to complain and the master to pay him heed. That is not
only mechanism of feedback and a check on arbitrary power, it also establishes the dignity of the slave. The
moral hutzpah20 of challenging one's superior and superiors taking it as their sacred duty to listen to such
challenges is a typical Jewish and Israeli trait since Abraham confronted God over Sodom.
20
"After the Second Lebanon War in 2006 Giora Eiland leveled a criticism that is perhaps quintessentially Israeli and
hardly imaginable within any other military apparatus: 'One of the problems of the Second Lebanon War was the
exaggerated adherence of senior officers to the chief of staff’s decisions. There is no question that the final word rests with
the chief of staff, and once decisions have been made, all must demonstrate complete commitment to their implementation.
However, it is the senior officers’ job to argue with the chief of staff when they feel he is wrong, and this should be
done assertively on the basis of professional truth as they see it.'
Nati Ron is a lawyer in his civilian life and a lieutenant colonel who commands an army unit in the reserves. ‘Rank is
28
As we have now seen, some laws of the Torah, Wisdom literature and the Rabbis, recognize clear limits to
the mistreatment of non-Hebrew slaves who are not to be regarded as mere chattel. However, Leviticus 25
and parts of Rabbinic law protect the dignity of the “brother slave” but not the “other slave”, the nonHebrew one. Thus, for example, while the narrative of treatment of Jews in economic need and of Jews
enslaved in Leviticus 19 is inclusive, the narrative in Leviticus 25 is exclusive.lxii
“For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into
servitude. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God. Such male and female slaves
as you may have - it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves.
You may also buy them from among the children of aliens, resident among you, or from their families
that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property:
you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all
time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly
(parekh) over them.” (Leviticus 25: 42-46)
When interpreting this Biblical text, Rabbi Yishmael deduced that one is permitted to keep non-Jewish
slaves forever, unlike Hebrew slaves that must be released on the Jubilee. However, Jewish law ultimately
followed Rabbi Akiva, who despite his famed homiletic maxim that “all human beings are beloved for all
are created in the image of God” (Avot 3:18), nevertheless insists that it is a legal obligation to maintain
one’s non-Hebrew slaves “for all time” and never liberate them (TB Sotah 3a).
Even more problematic from the point of view of human dignity is the application of the prohibition of
coercing harsh labor to Jews only (“no one shall rule ruthlessly (parekh) over them”). That unique term used
in only one other place in the Bible. It necessarily reminds us of the kind enslavement Pharaoh applied to
embitter the lives of the children of Israel (Exodus 1:11,13). Yet Leviticus 25 does not extrapolate that we,
as former victims of Pharaoh’s persecution of his ethnic "other" – Israel, must learn to treat our own slaves
more humanely, let alone that we must strive for their ultimate liberation. Rabbi Akiva decidedly forbids the
liberation of slaves.
By contrast, the law in Deuteronomy suggests a more radical legal sympathy for the non-Hebrew slaves and
their right to freedom. When such slaves succeed in escaping their legal masters, who are presumably from
other lands, Hebrews, as a society, are prohibited to return them to their masters. In the ancient Babylonian
Hammurabi Code that predates the Bible it states: “When you find a slave fleeing from his master, return
him to his master in exchange for a fee of two silver shekel” (Tablet 8). But Hebrews are commanded to
welcome the runaway slaves as refugees and help resettle them in their own land according to their own
preferences:
“You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. S/he shall live with
you in any place s/he may choose among the settlements in you midst, wherever s/he pleases (tov lo); you must
not mistreat him/her. ” (Deut. 23:16-17)
almost meaningless in the reserves,’ he told us, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. ‘A private will tell
a general in an exercise, ‘You are doing this wrong, you should do it this way.’ ” (Saul Singer, Dan Senor, Start Up
Nation, 94-100)
29
This law is absolutely unique in the ancient world and its formulation is precisely opposite to the Aramaic
treaty on international extradition of escaped slaves, that states: “You must not say to them: Live quietly in
your place.. live where you please.”lxiii Maimonides reinforces this law by stipulating:
“A slave who ran away from abroad to Eretz Yisrael is not to be returned to slavery. The slave says to his/her
master: write me a writ of manumission and a writ of debt equivalent to the slave price until s/he acquires the
funds and pays back [the former master/ now creditor]. If the master refuses to liberate him, then the court
removes the slave from the master’s ownership and the slave can go.” (Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 8:10)
The whole of Eretz Yisrael functions as city of refuge, for God made it a desirable place where refugees can
escape slavery.lxiv
Deuteronomy 23:16-17 also stands in direct opposition to pre-Civil War American law. In the Dred Scott
case it was determined that one must return escaped slaves who sought refuge from their Southern masters in
Northern American states where slavery was prohibited. In the spirit of Deuteronomy 23, Sephardi Jews in
Newport, Rhode Island, used a hideaway under the synagogue bimah (prayer podium) for hiding runaway
slaves in the so-called Underground Railroad route running from the slave states to Canada. As we can see,
the Torah preserves deeply discordant views on slavery, both permitting enslavement under difficult
conditions for non-Hebrew slaves, yet giving sanctuary and preferable economic situations to runaway
slaves from foreign lands.
Above we saw that Hebrew women may not be sold into slavery according the Rabbis lest they be exploited
sexually. What of non-Hebrew female slaves and their sexual rights and respect? A crucial debate takes
place around the crux in Leviticus 25:46 that permits harsh labor to non-Hebrews. Some Babylonian
Talmudic Rabbis treated their non-Hebrew slaves without respecting what we consider one’s most basic
sense of dignity – one’s sexual intimacy.
“Rav Nahman would switch the coupling of male and female slaves.
Rav Sheshet would give the female slaves to an Arab and say to them: Beware of coupling with Jews.” (TB
Niddah 47a)
Rav Nahman seems to be interested either in preventing his slaves from forming lasting familial
relationships or in using them to breed more slaves regardless of their emotional preferences. Alternatively
and conversely, one commentator interprets “switch” (mahlif) as passing the male and female slaves before
one another to allow them to choose a fixed partner to whom they are attracted (Rav Alfasi on TB Niddah
47a). Rav Sheshet, by contrast, is concerned that female slaves will tempt Jews to have intercourse with
them, so he provides them with a non-Jew with whom they may satisfy their sexual needs, though he does
not provide them with male slaves with whom they can marry. Rashi, the 11th C. commentator, is disturbed
by the behavior of both of these Babylonian rabbis, both Rav Nahman and Rav Sheshet, who he accuses of
treating their female slaves “shamelessly” – as they have no shame (boshet) and no sexual mores (hefker).
By contrast to the later Rav Nahman and Rav Sheshet, the first great Babylonian rabbi, Shmuel, radically
reinterprets the permission to treat non-Hebrews as slaves and deny them all the protections of Hebrew
slaves in Leviticus 25: 46 - “for all time, such you may treat as slaves” In his view that verse prohibits
shaming one’s slaves, even non-Hebrew chattel slaves.
“For all time may you may work them” – for work only were they given to you, not for shame.” (TB Niddah
47a)lxv
30
Shmuel would therefore pair off his slaves into fixed couples. When he, as a master, checked the breast
development of a female slave’s body to see if she had reached legal puberty, he would then pay her 4 zuz as
a fine for the shame he had caused her. Slaves have honor and thus their shame has legal standing and so
they may be awarded damages even though usually slaves have no private property separable from the
master. A slave’s dignity entails a right to torts when it is violated, even for understandable reasons.
Solidarity with the Assimilated Slave:
From Racial Other to Cultural Brother to Fellow Creature
The non-Hebrew slave is sometimes stigmatized as a sexually licentious creature like Ham, son of Noah,
who was therefore condemned to become an “eternal slave”. But generally speaking, non-Hebrew slaves are
not stereotyped by race. Their otherness is not metaphysical or racial, for they become quasi- Jews in their
legal status, and when emancipated they become full Jews without any further conversion process.
Thus another theme in humanizing the laws of non-Hebrew slavery is the transformation of the non-Hebrew
slave into a cultural-religious “cousin” of the Hebrew master. The non-Hebrew slave may remain in the
Jewish household on a long-term basis on condition that they choose to undergo what is essentially a partial
conversion process. Thus, the otherness of chattel slavery is moderated as the slave adopts the culture of the
master. This aims to allay the rabbinic fear that an idolater who is a permanent member of one’s household,
even as a slave, may corrupt the other family members by serving as a sexual temptation or as a culturalreligious model of idolatry. In a limited sense the Rabbis present the assimilation of the Canaanite slave as
voluntary act of cultural transformation as a result of the slave’s integration into the new environment. Some
commentators insist that the slave has a high degree of religious freedom of choice,lxvi even if slaves are not
free regarding their body or their labor.
“A slave taken from the idolaters is told: Do you wish to enter the status of slaves of Israel and become a kosher
(i.e. respectable in behavior) slave or not? If the slave wants, then s/he is instructed in the main point of religion,
taught a few difficult and a few easy mitzvot, the punishments and rewards for observance, just exactly as a
convert is instructed. [If s/he agrees], s/he is immersed in water (i.e. mikveh) just like a convert.
If s/he does not want to accept those conditions, then one makes due with him/her [in this interim situation] for
up to 12 months [while s/he makes up their mind about this quasi-conversion option]. [After that] the slave is
sold to idolaters for it is forbidden to maintain an idol worshipping non-Hebrew slave any longer.” (Maimonides,
Laws of Prohibited Sexual Relations 14:9)
The “slaves of Israel” who have accepted the mitzvot are ironically called Canaanite slaves (eved k'na'ani),
though there is no legal model for a Canaanite slave in the Bible and ethnically the Rabbinic slaves were not
Canaanites at all. In fact, Canaanites in the Bible are not allowed in the holy land lest they adversely affect
Israel’s religious practice. Oddly enough, under Rabbinic law, one enters the status of Canaanite slave after
rejecting idolatry. Canaanite slaves are obligated to many mitzvot and their exemptions are often compared
to Jewish women’s exemption from mitzvot. Alternatively, slaves may choose to enter the Jewish household
with a status similar to that of a resident alien, which entails far less commitments:
“If the non-Hebrew slave stipulated as a condition from the beginning [not after 12 months] that s/he would not
undergo mikveh or circumcision but will become a resident alien (ger toshav), then it is permitted to maintain
31
them with their labor, though this option is restricted to the era when Jubilee is practiced.” (Maimonides, Laws of
Prohibited Sexual Relations 14:9)
In theory then, a non-Hebrew slave leaves the status of the wholly other, either by accepting many mitzvot
as in the case of the Canaanite slave, or at the very least by rejecting idolatry and perhaps accepting the
seven mitzvot of Noah, which represent basic human norms (the prohibition of theft, murder, adultery, idol
worship, etc).lxvii
While it might have been easier to exploit the non-Hebrew slaves fully by closing off the option of their
assimilation into the master’s culture, the halakhic decision to create a quasi-conversion process removes the
racial or ethnic aspect from slavery. Rather, the slave is recognized as a religious personality with whom
Hebrews have duties of solidarity which at least partially removes them from the status of chattel in the
wholly utilitarian slave market. For example, a slave may not be used as collateral for a loan,lxviii nor may a
Hebrew slave owner sell his non-Hebrew slave who has accepted mitzvot on the open market:
“One who sells his slave to an idolater thereby manumits him.” (Mishna Gittin 4:6 with Rashi)
In other words, there is a fine for removing a slave from his status as worshipper of God committed to
mitzvot and transferring him to the authority of an idol worshipper.
“One who sells his slave to the idol worshippers' market shall regard the money he received as prohibited to him
and he should take it and throw it into the Dead Sea [to prevent its benefiting him in any way].
The seller is coerced into redeeming his former slave even if it costs 100 times as much as the original price and
then he must let the slave go free.” (Tosefta Avodah Zara 3:19. See Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 8:10).
We saw above that a Jewish slave’s religious aspirations must be respected even when restricting the
owner’s economic rights:
"A slave who wishes to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael may coerce his master to make aliyah together with him or
else sell him to someone making aliyah to there. However if the master [who already lives in Eretz Yisrael]
wants to emigrate he may not take his slave out with him unless the slave wishes to go voluntarily. That law is
applicable in all eras even now when the land of Israel is ruled by non-Jews.
If a slave escapes from abroad [to Eretz Yisrael], he may not be sent back to slavery as it says: do not hand over
[runaway] slaves to their masters (Deut. 23:16)" (TB Gittin 44b)
While Rashi restricts this law to Hebrew slaves, Maimonides applies it to non-Hebrew slaves as well.lxix
Sadly, when Jews became slave traders in Babylonia, the Geonim permitted sales of slaves because of their
fine marketability (“an unmatched merchandise, sold quickly and very profitable”) and therefore they said
such slaves belonging for trade purposes to Jews do not need to accept mitzvot.lxx
Solidarity with one’s slave may derive from the common religious tradition once the slave accepts the
mitzvot or from the very fact that an owner must take care of someone whose labor has been devoted to
their benefit. This bond of solidarity or responsibility results in a requirement that the owner pay for the
slave’s redemption if s/he is captured and held for ransom, even if the owner thinks it is not
economically worthwhile. In fact, the whole Jewish community must contribute to the redemption of
captives, even if they are slaves: “Just as Israel redeems the free, so it redeems the slaves” (Tosefta
Gittin 3:4). This most likely includes an obligation towards nonHebrew slaves in captivity. In addition,
slave owners are obligated to feed their slaves, even the Canaanite slave, in exchange for his or her
labor, even though s/he is chattel slave. Thus slavery becomes an implicit contract – feed me or free
32
me. This is clarified further when we recall that voluntary enslavement was often a solution to
economic impoverishment.
The key test case for one’s financial duties to one’s slave is in time of famine:
“Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: A slave can says to his master during famine years: Either support me
or liberate me!
The majority of Rabbis said: It is up to the master to decide whether or not to support the slave [even if the
master cannot or will not feed the slave].” (TB Gittin 12a)
The Talmud explains various interpretations of the majority view. First, the master who cannot afford
to support the slave, can tell him that you are still my slave but in the meantime go find work and
whatever you earn will pay for your food. But the master cannot say: work for me without my
supporting you. If, however, the slave cannot earn enough in outside jobs to support himself, then
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: Liberate him. The other rabbis say: Even if the slave cannot find
alternative jobs, he can always beg and the Jewish community is obligated to give tzedakah to the
Canaanite slave, so the slave can survive by working or begging, even without being liberated.lxxi
Thus we see contrasting legal traditions about the treatment of chattel slaves. Whatever the law,
Maimonides, in the tradition of Wisdom literature, urges the masters – on moral grounds – to go beyond the
demands of the law and the rights of their property regarding chattel slavery. He urges them to maintain
humane relations with the slave even when the law itself grants the master freedom to be cruel and harsh,
thus exacerbating the indignity of slavery. While Maimonides summarizes and legitimates as legal the most
ruthless law of Leviticus 25, he seeks to countermand its corrupting effect on the humanity of slave and
master alike by concluding his Laws of Slaves by launching into an impassioned sermon calling for restraint
and compassion.
“It is permitted to work a heathen slave with rigor. Though such is the rule, it is the quality of hesed and
the way of wisdom that a man be merciful and pursue justice and not make his yoke heavy upon the
slave or distress him, but give him to eat and to drink of all foods and drinks.
The sages of old were wont to let the slave partake of every dish that they themselves ate of and to give
the meal of the cattle and of the slaves precedence over their own. Is it not says, As the eyes of slaves to
the hand of their master, as the eyes of a female servant to the hand of her mistress (Psalm 123:2).
So too the master should not disgrace them by hand or by word, because Torah has delivered them
only to slavery and not to disgrace. Nor should he heap upon the slave oral abuse and anger, but should
rather speak to him softly and listen to his claims. Such advice is elaborated by the good paths of Job, in
which he prided himself:
Did I ever despise the cause of my manservant, or of my maidservant, when they contended with me ...
Did not God make me in the same womb as they, did not God fashion us in one womb? (Job 31:13, 15).21
Cruelty and effrontery are not frequent except with heathens who worship idols. The children of our
father Abraham, however, i.e., the Israelites, upon whom the Holy One bestowed the favor of the Law
and laid upon them statutes and judgments, are merciful people who have mercy upon all.*
21
Rabbi Yochanan said: Eat meat and give it to your slave, two [flasks of] wine and give one to your slave and cite the
verse about yourself from Job – “Weren’t he and I both fashioned in the same womb?” (Job 31:15).That is the common
womb of Eve (Metzudat David’s commentary on Job).
33
Thus also it is declared by the attributes of the Holy One, which we are enjoined to imitate: And God’s
mercies are over all God’s works (Psalm 145:9).
Furthermore, whoever has compassion will receive compassion, as it is says,And God will show you
mercy and have compassion upon you, and multiply you (Deut. 13:18).”lxxii
The Jewish wisdom writer, Ben Sirah (c. 200 BCE) expresses a similar ethos of humanity and
pragmatism, but goes beyond Maimonides’ plea for compassion to an emotional appeal for love and
intimacy based on “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).
"Do not abuse a slave who performs his work faithfully (in truth),
or a hired laborer who devotes himself [to you or to his work].
Let your soul love (agapato) your intelligent domestic slave;
and do not deprive him of his [moments of] freedom. (Ben Sirah 7:20-21)
Put him to work, that he may not be idle, for idleness teaches much evil.
Set him to work, as is fitting for him, and if he does not obey, make his fetters heavy.
But do not burden him immoderately, and do nothing without measure.
If you have a servant, let him be as yourself,
because you have bought him with blood.
If you have a servant, treat him as a brother,
for you will need him as much as you need your life.
If you ill-treat him, and he leaves and runs away,
then on what road will you seek him?" (Ben Sirah 33: 28-33)
Even today, in the West, the laws applying to non-citizen employees, especially illegal immigrants, often do
not defend the poor working in servile jobs from many indignities. The one-sided economic power relations
between employee and employee are so distorted that law has little influence on actual behavior. Therefore it
depends on the character and the integrity of the boss more than on the vigilance of the police. Maimonides
offers a supra-legal narrative about the respect owed the employee by the employer. He regards all human
beings – Jews and non-Jews alike – as deserving of respect, exemplified by hearing out their claims, treating
them with kindness, and avoidance of all shame. The motivation for such decent behavior is twofold. Firstly,
as Jews whose pride in their chosenness has at times led them to disregard the humanity of others,
Maimonides argues that it is that very cruelty which draws into question their claim of being Jewish.
Secondly, as human beings fashioned in the image of a God of compassion, wisdom and noble self-restraint,
all human beings are called upon to strive to live by a higher moral code, above and beyond what the written
law may permit. The image of God embodied in the human being is not only an argument for the value
of the weak and their rights but also for the duties of the strong.
34
Part B. The Dignities of Meaningful Labor
“Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.”
“One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker, if it is to survive.”
- Reverend Martin Luther king, jr., Speech to Striking American Federation of State County and
Municipal Employees, Memphis, TN, March 18, 1968 two weeks before his assassination,
April 4, 1968)
In this part of the chapter we will concentrate on how dignity is an achieved rather than an ascribed
status. Labor here earns one not just rights but honor in society and meaning in life. Dignity is treated
here as the outcome of doing, not being. It derives from re-making oneself like the “self-made man;
or from demonstrating creativity as a quintessential human trait; or from taking responsibility and
making a contribution to the common good of society.
The Dignity of Responsibility
"By showing too much mercy beyond what is just (midat hadin), one may help plant a tendency to
lack of responsibility (hefker)" - Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (Ain Aya to TB Berakhot 5,94)
In our previous chapter we contrasted welfare as the rights of the recipient with tzedakah as the duty of
the society. Now we look at labor as a mitzvah incumbent on the needy. In my judgment the duty to
work manifests a kind of dignity that must be earned by shouldering of responsibility. So those
who live up to that calling earn the dignity of the office to which God has assigned. Rav Soloveitchik
waxes eloquent in his description of the glory of responsibility:
"Dignity of man – expressing itself in the awareness of being responsible and of being capable of discharging his responsibility - cannot be realized as long as he has not gained mastery over his environment.
For life in bondage to insensate elemental forces is a non-responsible and hence an undignified affair.
Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague
with degrading helplessness could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers
therapeutic techniques and saves lives is blessed with dignity. … There is no dignity without responsibility, and one cannot assume responsibility as long as he is not capable of living up to his
commitments. Only when man rises to the heights of freedom of action and creativity of mind does
he begin to implement the mandate of dignified responsibility entrusted to him by his Maker." lxxiii
In that same spirit, an added source of indignity for the dead is their “freedom from mitzvot” for only
the living are obligated to perform commandments which is a source of their pride. Therefore, on the
basis of the verse, One who mocks the poor affronts their Maker, one who rejoices over another’s
misfortune will not go unpunished (Proverbs 17:5), the Rabbis prohibit performance of mitzvot in the
cemetery for the dead who are exempt from the mitzvot will feel insulted (bizayon). So too one may
not don tefillin, wear tzizit, carry a Torah scroll, or pray within 4 cubits of a grave.lxxiv One who refuses
to accompany a passing bier on the way to burial has also violated the same principle (TB Berakhot
18a). For the same reason in the home of a mourner sitting shiva for the deceased, one may not recite
Hallel, the Psalms of praise, for they include the verse, The dead shall not praise You … but we will
bless You God from now and forevermore (Psalm 115:17-18).
The term for mocking those who are unable to do something they would like to be able to do is called,
literally, “making fun of the poor,” because the indignity of the poor is also their inability to do many
35
things due to their lack of means. For the Rabbis, status is measured less by negative liberty –
“freedoms from,” than by the dignity of obligation, of mitzvot. The concern is less with rights
that must be respected by others, than with my ability to bear duties that earn me honor. That
approach is typical of rabbinic attitudes to mitzvot as a source of self-respect. Human dignity means
acknowledgement that I am capable of bearing responsibility. To be commanded is to be respected as
one mature enough, rational enough, strong enough and free enough to live up to covenantal
responsibilities imposed by God. "Ought implies can." Children, the mentally impaired and slaves are
exempt from mitzvot, from religious, ethical and legal commandments, not as privilege or special
dispensation, but as a black mark against them – their inability to be responsible.
This view helps make some sense of why women are exempt from time-bound mitzvot:
“All positive miztvot that are time-bound – men are obligated and women are exempt.” (Mishna in TB
Kiddushin 33b)
David ben Joseph Abudarham, the medieval Spanish commentator, offers the explanation most
consistent with classical rabbinic texts:
“The reason women are exempt from time-bound positive mitzvot is that a woman is bound to her
husband to fulfill his needs. Were she obligated in time-bound positive mitzvot, it could happen that
while she is performing a mitzvah, her husband would order her to do his commandment. If she would
perform the commandment of the Creator and leave aside his commandment, woe to her from her
husband!
If she does her husband's commandment and leaves aside the Creator's, woe to her from her Maker!
Therefore, the Creator has exempted her from his commandments, so that she may have peace with her
husband.”lxxv
Women are often treated by the Rabbis as subject to their husbands’ authority, hence they are
exempted from many time-bound mitzvot lest they have a conflict between what they owe God and
what they owe their husbands in terms of service. Here God forgoes honor by exempting women so as
to maintain domestic peace, but at the expense of the women’s own independent relationship to God
through expressive ritual mitzvot.
Therefore many contemporary Jewish religious women have in the last twenty years demanded not
more "freedom from" but more "responsibility for," not exemptions but duties, not independence but
inclusion within the community of the obligated. To enter the yoke of commandments more fully is
perceived as a sign of their dignity as free, rational and mature human beings. Thus too the dignity of
the poor is recognized when they themselves are obligated to give tzedakah (TB Gittin 7b).
“In the oral tradition we learn that even the poor living off tzedakah are obligated by this mitzvah – to
give tzedakah and to support the needy and to lighten their burden – by giving tzedakah to those who are
lower than they are or to one who is like them [in financial need] – even if it is a small donation.”
(Maimonides, Book of Mitzvot, Positive Mitzvah #195)
One could imagine the poor recipients of aid demanding they too perform community service in
exchange for their “welfare allotment,” so that they become recognized as full members in the
community. The working poor earn their respect by bearing responsibilities rather than by relying on
the endowed dignity of their inner image of God. Thus the needy may be expected to contribute
tzedakah (TB Gittin 7a) and often the homeless on the street do take responsibility to share what they
36
have with someone even less fortunate. Consider this anecdote’s implications about how receivers
become givers with no clear demarcation in generosity between these “classes” of haves and have-not.
“Two 18 year olds hitch across country from California and arrive in NYC in Greenwich Village almost
completely broke. A drunken African-American staggered over, stuck out his hand and asked for one
dollar – to buy wine. Impressed by the beggar’s honesty about what he wanted with the money, the boys
apologized that they had nothing left but bus fare back to LA. The beggar left and came back half an hour
later. ‘Stick out your hands,’ he said to the 18 year olds. They did and he placed 50 cents in each of their
palms. ‘You need it more than I do. Get yourselves something to eat.’” (C. Clark, Sympathy)
The Dignity of Creative Labor:
The Modern Reinvigoration of Rabbinic Values of Labor as a Divine Calling
"Great is work, as it gives honor to the one who does it!" (TB Nedarim 49b)
Labor – however hard or menial – contributes to human dignity when it is creative and purposeful. In
19th and 20th C. Jewish thought, two modern Orthodox halakhic thinkers also gave religious
significance to human progress and mastery of the world through skilled labor. Rav Shimshon Rafael
Hirsch (1808-1888), founder of modern German Orthodoxy, explained that the Ten Commandments
not only forbid doing "melakha" – skilled labor – on Shabbat, but they also form a positive command
that for six days a week humans are commanded to devote themselves to the "mission" of transforming
the material world so it will take on a rational form:
Six days you shall labor (avodah) and do all your labor (melakha) (Deut. 5:13).
Not only for your own glory shall you do your work in which you rule in the midst of your world, but
rather as ‘worship’ [avodah means both work and worship, service and services] just as you practice
worship on Shabbat, to worship (serve) in God's kingdom, to serve God. In God's mission (shlikhut) you
shall do your work (melakha) for the sake of the world …in which God placed you to serve it and to
protect it (Genesis 2:15) in order to elevate the world by means of possession, reworking and changing
it22 from a realm of physical enslavement to a realm of ends of moral freedom and worship of God in
freedom.
In this spirit, do all your labor ("melakha") (Deut. 5:13).
We already defined melakha (Genesis 2:2) which derives from malakh (messenger, angel) which is a
personality that executes the will and the mission of another, and in that sense it has Divine power.
Similarly, melakha is an object serving the will and the mission of a rational being, and in that sense – of
human beings. Doing melakha is turning matter or the object into our ‘angel’ (malakh)." (S.R. Hirsch,
Commentary on Exodus 20:9)
Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993), a spiritual and philosophical leader of modern American
Zionist Orthodoxy, argues that providing an opportunity for work allows people to participate in a
22
Making meaningful changes defines the kind labor ("melakha") forbidden on Shabbat. "Errant people err and mislead when
they undermine the law of Shabbat and distort the concept of Shabbat by interpreting melakha as a work of toil. ..Melakha is
not physical toil in small or large measure but melekhet makhshevet, skilled labor of the thoughtful artisan – planned execution
of a particular intention .. an activity involving creativity." (S.R. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters, 70, Hebrew, translated by editor)
37
primary source of human dignity - the fulfillment of human purpose in yishuv ha-olam (settling the
world).lxxvi For that reason, professional gamblers are not considered trustworthy witnesseslxxvii because
if they are full time gamblers, they fail to participate in the productive human endeavors. lxxviii In fact
they dupe the amateur gambler and skim off his earnings – often at the expense of his family. Rav
Soloveitchik connects the rabbinic notion of “settling the world” with the responsibility to engage in
tikkun olam. The Rabbis connect that to the Biblical mandate proclaimed by the prophet of redemption,
Second Isaiah:
Men from your midst shall rebuild ancient ruins; you shall restore foundations laid long ago; and you
shall be called "Repairer of fallen walls, restorer of lanes of habitation (Isaiah 58:12, see Rashi)
God did not create it a waste, But formed it for habitation. (Isaiah 45:18, see Mishna Gittin 4:5)lxxix
Those who do not take an active role in maintaining the habitation of the world through economic
activity are also, according to Rashbam, "failing to bear the yoke of communal responsibility,"lxxx
which is what Ravah said to the pauper who demanded vintage wine.
Rav Soloveitchik goes on to criticize pious extremes of quietism that reject self-supporting economic
activity. Thus he might have another reason to agree with Ravah in rejecting that same formerly
wealthy pauper who insisted that what he deserved vintage wine because God gives to everyone in
their time and according to their needs whatever they may be accustomed to eating.23 “Man must first
use his own skill and try to help himself as much as possible.”lxxxi
Work as a creative act makes “God and human beings partners in the creation” (TB Shabbat 19a). Here
too Rav Soloveitchik is the Jewish theologian most innovative in this area by virtue of his extended
philosophical reflections on the Creation story:
"Adam the first is aggressive, bold, and victory-minded. His motto is success, triumph over the cosmic
forces. He engages in creative work, trying to imitate his Maker (imitatio Dei). … Adam the first ..
fashions ideas with his mind, and beauty with his heart. He enjoys both his intellectual and esthetic creativity and takes pride in it. He also displays creativity in the world of the norm: be legislates for
himself norms and laws because a dignified existence is an orderly one. Anarchy and dignity are
mutually exclusive..lxxxii
“This longing for creation and the renewal of the cosmos is embodied in all of Judaism's goals. [That is]
the idea of the importance of man as a partner of the Almighty in the act of creation, man as creator of
worlds.”lxxxiii
“If a man wishes to attain the rank of holiness, he must become a creator of worlds. If a man never
creates, never brings into being anything new, anything original, then he cannot be holy unto his God.”
lxxxiv
As we argued above, the religious value of labor was accepted but marginalized in classic rabbinic thought
and tzedakah practice until the modern era. But creativity in general and labor in particular become very
significant for 19th and 20th C. Jewish theologians. An isolated forerunner of this trend is found in Rabbenu
Bahya (13th C. Spain) who extols God’s Divine providence that makes human labor necessary and valuable:
23
"I eat [the food] of the All-Merciful! For we have learned: The eyes of all wait for You, and You give them their food in one’s
due season. Since it doesn’t say ‘in their season’ but ‘in his season,’ that teaches that the Holy One provides for every
individual food in that “one’s season.” (Psalm 145:15), (TB Ketubot 67b)
38
“Human livelihood requires active participation. [it must be earned]. Apart from the period of the
wandering in the desert, or [other instances of] miraculous intervention for limited periods, there is no
manna from heaven. This active participation of man in the creation of his own wealth is a sign of man's
spiritual greatness. In this respect he is, as it were, an imitator of God. Since man is superior to all the
creation, his parnasah [livelihood] is not so easily available [as that of the vegetable and animal
kingdoms]. [Apart from growing and producing all those things necessary for his physical well-being,] he
must even take the trouble to prepare his food by cooking and baking it." (Kad HaKemakh)
Rav Soloveitchik taught that the recitation of Vayechulu (Gen. 2:1-3), the passage from the Torah preceding the
Kiddush blessing, invites us to testify to two things: God’s work on earth and our mission to go with doing that
civilizing work within nature. We witness that God started the work of Creation – and it is the human task to
complete it. We are in a partnership with the divine as the Rabbis defined when they stipulated that reciting
Kiddush represents being a “co-partner in Creation” / Shutaf B’Ma'asei Breshit (TB Shabbat 119a). It is our
duty is to complete and transform the domain of chaos into a perfected, beautiful reality.
For Rav Soloveitchik, who creates his own midrash on the ancient mystical work Sefer HaYetzira (the
Book of Creation), creativity is the mark of the Divine image in humans. Human value requires
“doing” or imitating, not just “being” in God’s image:
“The Creator, so to speak, made the world deficient in order that mortal man could repair its flaws and perfect
it…So the human task is to ‘fashion, engrave, bond, and create’ (Sefer HaYetzira), and transform the emptiness of
being into a perfect and holy existence, bearing the imprint of the divine name…The peak of religious ethical
perfection to which Judaism aspires is the human as creator.” (J.B. Soloveitchik, Halachic Man)lxxxv
Herein is embodied the entire task of creation and the obligation to participate in the renewal of the
cosmos. The most fundamental principle of all is that man, must create himself. It is this idea that
Judaism introduced into the world.”lxxxvi
Thus, for these modern Orthodox Jewish philosophers, just as for many religious Zionist thinkers,24 labor
becomes much more than a source of income and a shield against the indignity of dependence on others. Labor,
melakha, becomes a calling to serve according to God's plan, to add, progressively, to the worldly order that
overcomes chaos, and to fulfill the human mandate for creativity and a partnership with God. While these
values can be found in isolated Rabbinic aphorisms, their elevation into an organizing principle of a modern
Jewish philosophy of halakha is an innovation. In moving labor beyond a necessary means of survival into an
essential Divine-human partnership, these Jewish thinkers echo, intentionally or unintentionally, the ultimate
value of labor in Protestant theology and later in Marxism.
In conclusion, if tzedakah seeks to help human beings flourish and be happy, then it must offer them
opportunities for creative labor rather than mere material independence. As the liberal 20th C. Jewish
theologian Mordecai Kaplan, who praises God as the source of creativity in the world, summed it up:
“It is in creating, not in possessing, that man finds his truest happiness.”lxxxvii That is how evil and
suffering are overcome – through creative endeavor which is the life force.
24
Moshe Unna, the ideologue of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, insisted on the value of the physical alongside
the spiritual: “The body of the human is also part of the image of God” (“Megamat HaHinukh vHaHaskala
baYahadut” in Bishvilei HaMahashva v’HaMaaseh, 16). “Labor as a value expresses the view that one must
emphasize that the human being is a maker/creator (haAdam hayotzer) and that creativity is the unique essence of
the human species” – just as Karl Marx taught (“Hatneilekhet” in HaKheillah He Hadasha, 178).
39
The Dignity of Making a Contribution:
Providing for the Good of one's Neighbor is a "Labor of Love"
Mar Zutra says: “Even the poor living off tzedakah must give tzedakah.” (TB Gittin 7b)
“There is something noble in a system that enables us to live as contributors to a community of
contributors. Being in a position to trade on equal terms - to benefit others as much as they benefit
us - is a kind of equality, an important kind, indeed a key ingredient of self-esteem. ...It would be a
mistake of fact to think poor people need to be reassured by philosophy professors that they count.
It is likewise a mistake of fact to think poor people need to be reassured that, although they do not
deserve anything, neither does anyone else.
What actually serves as a basis for self-esteem among working people is neither a sense of
unearned and abstract equivalence, nor an assurance that their welfare is someone else's job, but
rather a concrete sense of being willing and able to take responsibility for themselves, for their
families, for their futures, and-to a more limited extent-for their neighbors as well. Self-esteem
among working people is primarily based not on equality but on efficacy, on being willing and able
to meet life's challenges. We do untold damage when we set up programs that make recipients less
willing (and their children correspondingly less able) to meet life's challenges in peaceful and
productive ways.” (David Schmidtz, Social Welfare, 94)
“Thomas followed Aristotle in holding that every human being, knowingly or not, wisely or not,
seeks a state of well-being, happiness, or flourishing (beatitudo, eudaimonia). To seek to flourish is
to seek the human good. The most basic moral implication of seeking good and avoiding evil is to
will the good for ourselves and every other human being.”lxxxviii
We have seen how in the Bible, among the Rabbis, and especially in the writings of 20th C. Rav J.B.
Soloveitchik, there are many nuanced ways labor grants dignity to its laborers. As we saw above, Karl
Marx praised the dignity of labor and defined the essence of human beings, not as thinkers or
philosophers but as homo faber, makers. The seeds of his worldview derive from John Locke who
defines the worth of objects by the human labor invested in them, not by their market price. Locke
takes much from the Puritan and Calvinist tradition, so let us complete this chapter by going back to
John Calvin who not only provides a religious rationale for human labor as a source of human dignity
but subordinates the ultimate value of labor to its ability to contribute to the welfare of one’s neighbor.
Labor produces the resources necessary not only for supporting oneself but, more importantly, for
fulfilling the commandment of “Love your neighbor as yourself, I am Adonai” (Lev. 19:18). Thus the
Calvinist narrative of labor becomes the best justification for sharing one’s wealth.
For the Calvinists, one's calling is one's work which is an extension of the Divine mandate of Genesis
1 to serve the common good with "mutual communication." Nicholas Wolterstroff describes this
doctrine:
“[Work has its own dignity because it is central to] a Calvinist's understanding of the goal of God's
redemptive activity. If we had lived as God meant us to live, we would all be members of an ordered
community bound together by love for each other and gratitude to God, using the earth for our
benefit and delight. In fact we do not live thus. A fall has occurred. God's response to this fall of
mankind was to choose from all humanity a people destined for eternal life. They in obedient gratitude
40
are now to work for the renewal of human life so that it may become what God meant it to be. They
are to struggle to establish a holy commonwealth here on earth. Of course it is the mandate of all
humanity to struggle toward such a community; what makes Christians different in their action is that
they have in fact committed themselves to struggling toward this goal, that they recognize it as God's
mandate, and that they struggle toward it nor just in obedience to God the creator but in imitation of
Christ. It is because Christians are committed in obedient gratitude to work for the renewal of the
earthly community that they will render their obedience in such ordinary earthly occupations as tailor,
merchant, and farmer.”
The common good of the whole community is the goal of a right order of society and each
individual25 has a vocationlxxxix or calling to contribute their part to that commonwealth though their
labor as well as through their obedience. That is simultaneously service of God and of humankind
through the particular holy community in which one lives and contributes. Wolterstorff explains
that for Calvin:
“Each occupational role must either be made to serve the common good, or if in some case that cannot
be done, then that role must be discarded. It's not true that if everyone works devotedly in the
occupation to which God called him or her, the common good will automatically be served; one has to
see to it that one's occupation serves the common good rather than simply assuming that it does, for we
live in a fallen, corrupted society: the structures of our social world are structures which in good
measure do not serve the common good.
What naturally follows among those who hold this perspective is the social activism... What also
follows is that one will begin to think of the whole array of occupations as man-made. Once one is
convinced that each occupational role ought to serve the common good, but that as a matter of fact
many are corrupted so that they do not, then it will be impossible to think of the social order as given
by God. One will inevitably think of it as made by human beings and capable of alteration. One will
think of us as responsible for its structure.”xc
For Calvin, love is a duty, not an act of mercy, not a free gift. Love is not self-sacrificial, but
mutually beneficial. Love is an acknowledgment of the unconditional value of the beloved as an
embodiment of God’s image, not a condescending and pitying love for the worthless sinner.
“What follows from this for society is what Calvin sometimes called ‘mutual communication’: each
is to contribute what he or she can to the enhancement of the common life:
‘It is not enough when a man can say: Oh, I labor, I have my craft, or I have such a trade. That is
not enough. But we must see whether it is good and profitable for the common good, and whether
neighbors may fare the better of it.’xci
Calvin regards both the exchange of goods on the basis of money and the division of labor in
society as concrete manifestations of this mutual communication.
But it is not true communication if exchange is conducted in violation of the order of nature. If some
are poor and others are wealthy, then it is not in fact an exchange of good offices: ‘since God has
united men in the bonds of mutual society, hence they must mutually perform good offices for each
other. Here, then, it is required of the rich to succour the poor, and to offer bread to the hungry.’xcii And
25
"If the chambermaid and the manservant go about their domestic tasks offering themselves in their work as a sacrifice
to God, then what they do is accepted by God as a holy and pure sacrifice pleasing in His sight.” (N. Wolterstorff, Until
Justice, 17)
41
again, ‘the Lord commends to us . . . that we may, in so far as funds allow, help those in difficulties
that there may not be some in affluence and others in want.’"xciii xciv
The extent of the common society of mutual communication is expanded to all humanity as Calvin
himself explains:
"The general truth conveyed is, that the greatest stranger is our neighbor, because God has
bound all men together, for the purpose of assisting each other ... The chief design is to show
that the neighborhood, which lays us under obligations to mutual offices of kindness, is not
confined to friends or relations, but extends to the whole human race." xcv xcvi
I believe that the Calvinist understanding of labor as purposive and useful to the community can be
heard loud and clear in J.F.K.'s call for more jobs for the poverty stricken (1962):
"We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence. We must find ways
of returning them to a participating and productive role in the community.
One sure way is by providing the opportunity every American cherishes to do sound and
useful work. ..Unemployed people on welfare would be helped to retain their work skills or learn
new ones; and the local community would obtain additional manpower on public projects."xcvii
Thus human labor for the good of others – not just for one's own glory and economic
independence – is a particular source of human dignity to be cherished. The President's insistence
on the duty of the poor to do labor is not a manifestation of the government's suspicion of the
corrupt character of the poor, nor a coercive paternalism to work for their own good whether they
like it or not. He speaks of an entitlement to share in the reciprocity of neighbors helping one
another, of participating in a human community that works to produce resources to be shared.
At a Jerusalem conference held on the fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, 2010, the theme was the
right to access and the right to contribute. 1500 people participated in this conference, sponsored
by non-profits such as Ma'agalei Tzedek and organizations of people with disabilities. Rav Yuval
Sherlo spoke there about the need to retool our language and restrain our one-sided rhetoric of
"rights" such as the right of people with disabilities to physical access or to financial support. The
needy, just like those well-off, require a list of duties and obligations as is typical in the halakha.
For example, all citizens, including the poor and disabled, have a" right" deriving from their
"duty" to do volunteer work as a service to society. Such a labor of contribution is an obligation
but also a source of dignity.
Furthermore, Rabbinic Jews want to be worthy of obligation, of miztvot, as witnessed by the
blind scholar Rabbi Yosef who because of his blindness was exempted from observing mitzvot.
But he wanted to be obligated like everyone else. He promised that for whomever could prove
that the disabled were also subject to mitzvot, he would throw a party, for he wished to observe
mitzvot out of obligation, not merely as voluntary good deeds (TB Kiddushin 31a). Similarly,
Jewish women's "liberation" movements, as we noted above, want more duties, not exemptions,
from religious commandments. Therefore, society should give the needy, not just goods, but
opportunities to serve the common good, to perform their civil obligations. For example, in Israel
the disabled have asked for greater wheelchair accessibility in military bases so that they would
be enabled to do their citizen’s duty in service in the Israeli military. Today, as opposed to ten
years ago, the Israeli army does encourage and enable alternative service by the disabled.
Halakhically, even the poor are obligated to give tzedakah. Speaking paradoxically there is a
42
"right to contribute" as well as a duty, since it is a source of pride and a mode of accessing
recognition as a full member of society.
Peculiar to the denial of the “right” to give of oneself to society is the indignity of having one’s
gift rejected and hence one’s membership in the bond of society nullified. Moshe Halbertal sees
in Cain’s violent response to the rejection of his gift to God an archetype for a uniquely human –
not libidinal - violence.
“In the story of Cain's and Abel' sacrifices, the source of violence is in the exclusion from the
cycle of the gift. Because Cain's gift was rejected, he was excluded from the most meaningful
bond. He brought forward his gift, thus showing his desire to take part, and he was slapped in the
face, annihilated. Having a gift rejected is far worse than not being the recipient of a gift.
Someone who doesn't receive a gift while someone else has, is excluded from a cycle to which he
didn't show any initial desire to belong. The rejection of a gift, on the other hand, is a harsher
form of exclusion. It is an actual rejection, not only a form of ignoring.
Cain's way of asserting his presence was through an act of violence. He destroyed the bond which
he was excluded from [God-Abel], and made his weight felt again. The response to being rejected
from joining the cycle of bounty from what constitutes being itself might be the deepest element
in violence. The first murder was not only motivated by jealousy; it came from an acute response
to banishment and isolation. The exclusion from the possibility of giving is a deeper source of
violence than the deprivation that results from not getting.
The exclusion of a person from the cycle of giving is a thorough humiliation. It diminishes him
from the effectiveness of giving and from the weight of contributing.' 4 Assigning a person
exclusively to the receiving end dooms him to passive receptivity and dependency, depriving him
of the expression of love.” (Moshe Halbertal, Essay on Sacrifice)
Finally, let us reconnect to the theme of the last few chapters – the dignity of every human as
being rooted in the image of God. In the standard understanding, the image of God is a given, an
unconditional source of dignity. Though as we have shown, being in God's image is sometimes
understood as a potential, an Aristotlean potentiality, a form which is to be actualized. So one
may become godlike if one imitates God's ways rather than merely by possessing God's
attributes. If these divine attributes as human capacities are identified as rational or intellectual,
then in fact many human beings can never achieve such a mark of divinity. However, almost
everyone can show compassion, which is what the Rabbis identify as a central characteristic of
the Divine. Human labor itself, and the sharing of its fruits with those less economically
fortunate, become a reenactment of God's image in this world, a fulfillment of the ultimate
human and divine essence.
“This is my God, and I will glorify Him; [my father's God, and I will exalt Him] (Exod. 15:2).
Abba Shaul says, "Be similar to God (hidameh lo). As God is kind and merciful, so you also be
kind and merciful.'” (Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael to Exod. 15:2)xcviiixcix
For the Greeks, generosity and largesse are marks of the aristocracy only. It takes surplus wealth
to be able to share it liberally. So too in the Greco-Roman world dignitas is an office held by the
highborn. But one can win one’s dignity by sharing whether or not one is wealthy or high class.
John Steinbeck, who was deeply engaged in Biblical thought and the Protestantism of his
43
forbearers and of American culture, describes in his epic novel Grapes of Wrath the inner life of
the poor farmers of the Depression. Even though these self-reliant, hardworking people lost their
land and became refugees in their own country and worked the lowest level agricultural jobs,
they maintained their dignity even without respectable employment, without possessing their
own homes, and without economic self-sufficiency.
“[Those economic and social conditions] do not remove dignity, which is found more surely in a
poor person's gift to another poor person than in the luxuries of middle-class life. The world of
the poor, as Steinbeck depicts it, is rich in love, friendship, and spirituality; it also contains
orderly norms and a code of mutual aid. The poor people are never too stricken to take thought
for the equal or greater needs of others. In the novel's famous conclusion, a cold and
malnourished young woman who has just given birth to a stillborn baby offers her breast to a
starving stranger. Thus the novel indicates that ethical values of care and love remain alive when
the world has done its worst.” c
Here too dignity is not intrinsic; it is achieved by acts of humanity in giving.
In Conclusion
An important aspect of human dignity is achievement, not only recognition of an inherent, inborn status.
Dignity is valued more because of what is given and created, rather than by what is possessed or received.
That kind of self-made dignity can be contrasted with the demand to be recognized and respected as
human beings by others. It does not turn one's social stigma into one's emblem – worn with pride. True,
shared exclusion, disabilities, suffering due to prejudice, and the retelling of a common history of
persecution can be the basis of solidarity that returns a modicum of dignity to the out-group. Yet the outgroup is too often likely to tie their desired dignity to recognition by others of their neediness, their
vulnerability, their badge of shame. What this chapter suggests is that the dignity of achievement is more
therapeutic and more meaningful. In fact, the common struggle of an out-group for liberation. The Zionist
movement or the feminist movement is a perfect example of self-help that builds a dignity based on merit,
based on one’s achievement in struggling for recognition as well as for self-acceptance. A further step in
this process turns these out-groups redeeming themselves into leaders making their own special
contribution to the general good of the community. The danger of socio-economic human rights is that it
may shift the criterion of human honor from production to consumption. While Martha Nussbaum and
Amartya Sen emphasize human rights as restoring human capacity to live creatively, many others
translate economic rights into resources of consumption to be used anyway the rights holder desires.
Freedom is the consumer’s ideal.
Michael Sandel, the communitarian philosopher of justice, has shown that Maynard Keynes’ new
economics has tended to support the shift from collective to individual welfare and from humanity as a
producer to humanity as consumer. The debate between welfare rights versus the duties of labor, between
human rights as the source of dignity and identity and human labor as the basis of dignity and status in
society is, according to Michael Sandel, the deeper issue to which Keynesian liberal economics (1930s1960s) related. Its influence reached its peak under John F Kennedy. The Keynesian revolution “shifts
from production to consumption as the primary basis of political identity and focus of economic
policy .. and embraces the voluntarist conception of freedom and the conception of persons as free and
independent selves, capable of choosing their ends for themselves.”ci
44
“Keynes declared that ‘consumption ... is the sole end and object of all economic activity.’ Freedom is the
freedom to satisfy needs and the dignity of modern man is to be a consumer with many choices and
adequate means to shop.”cii
However Michael Sandel defends the republican tradition of economics that sees the producer as a
responsible, self-supporting moral agent in society and views the self-restrained appetite as the key to
character development and inner freedom.ciii
“Keynes's claim that consumption is the sole end of all economic activity, obvious though it seems, runs
counter to one of the main assumptions of republican political thought, that, one of the ends of economic
activity is the cultivation of conditions hospitable to self-government. From Jefferson to Brandeis,
republicans worried more about conditions of production than about conditions of consumption because
they viewed the world of work as the arena in which, for better or for worse, the character of
citizens was formed. The activity of consumption was not decisive for self-government in the same way.
To the extent that consumption figured at all in republican political economy, it did so as a thing to be
moderated or restrained, a potential source of corruption. Keynesians, by contrast, focused on
consumption and wanted to increase "the propensity to consume... Not a new civic virtue but rather
increased consumer confidence and a more widely distributed purchasing power would induce people to
spend more and lead the country ‘forward toward a high-consumption economy.’... The theory of
consumer demand ‘divorcing economics from any judgment on the goods with which it [is] concerned.’”
civ cv
Sandel sees in the Johnson’s Great Society and in Robert F. Kennedy’s vision a more appropriate attempt
to restore dignity through work.
“’Welfare was perhaps our greatest domestic failure’ rendering ‘millions of our people slaves to
dependency and poverty waiting on the favor of their fellow citizens to write them checks. Fellowship,
community, shared patriotism - these essential values of our civilization do not come from just buying
and consuming goods together. They come from a shared sense of individual independence and personal
effort."
The solution to poverty was not a guaranteed income paid by the government but ‘dignified employment
at decent pay, the kind of employment that lets a man say to his community, to his family, to his country,
and most important, to himself, ‘I helped to build this country. I am a participant in its great public
ventures.’' A guaranteed income, whatever good it might do, ‘simply cannot provide the sense of selfsufficiency, of participation in the life of the community, that is essential for citizens of a
democracy."(Press release LA, May 19, 1968,in RKF: Collected Speeches, 385-386)cvi
The conceptual and value conflict underlying the question of the dignity of UDHR versus the dignity of
labor is also parallel to the difference between the ascribed status of Kant, kevod habriot, the dignity of
being created in the image of God and the achieved status of a competitive world striving for excellence.
“The Enlightenment gave rise to a new scale of values to be espoused universally by all men. Human
dignity equally to all people without exception and serves as a common basis for the moral life. Dignity
does not depend on any external social criterion or on a person's own achievements as Aristotle, for
example, held, but is a function of the inestimable inner worth of every individual.” cvii
But as Ehud Luz notes:
45
“Achievement-oriented societies tend to offer honor as a goad to what they regard as achievement. One
who does not compete successfully is ashamed of his failure. This is the source of the moral ambiguity of
[achieved] honor. On one hand, all that is noble in human nature is bolstered and reinvigorated by it.” cviii
On the other hand, those who cannot compete feel shame for what they could never achieve thus creating
self-loathing and despair rather than adding to their striving for excellence. While the pursuit of
differential achieved-honor remains morally ambiguous, it has a moral benefit that should not be
discarded lightly in the name of an exclusive notion of unconditional dignity as birthright. Room must be
made for both important human values contributing to human dignity.
Anna Faith Jones, director of the Boston Foundation, tells a story which was in the canon of her upbringing and
illustrated the belief that human dignity is based on self-help and the faith that one can succeed with whatever
disabilities:
"As one of the early black colleges, Howard University in Washington had a lifeline to the federal government,
which provided the bulk of its financial support. But that support was far from automatic. The core funding
from the federal government was absolutely crucial to the university, success in securing it was no mean feat,
and the commitment was enhanced in important ways by support from high-ranking government officials,
including President Roosevelt himself.
One gesture of that support stands out among my very earliest memories, and the full significance of it became
clear to me only in subsequent tellings of the story by my parents. In the late thirties, the university put up a new
chemistry building, and FDR accepted the invitation to speak at the dedication. My father then made a special
request of the president: that he let the students see that he was crippled. The young people at Howard were
struggling with a huge social disability, my father argued, and if they could see the president of the United
States struggling with a disability himself, it would help them to see what they themselves might overcome.
When he arrived at Howard, FDR let himself be lifted from his car in full view of the audience gathered for the
dedication. And then, with great difficulty, he made his way to the speakers platform. It was a gesture that must
have cost Roosevelt a good deal. He had never made it before in his public life, and would repeat it only one
other time, at a hospital for wounded and crippled soldiers, during the war. For the audience at Howard that
gesture seemed to erase the barrier between the privileged and the excluded; for a moment, there was that sense
of fellow feeling that marks a community of shared understanding. It was a great gift. ‘If I can do this,’ he
seemed to say, ‘think what you can do.’” cix
In previous chapters dignity has been constructed on the basis of the human rights tradition and on the
theological ethics of the image of God as unconditional birthrights of humanity (by rationality or by
divine origin). For Nicholas Wolterstorff a Christian sense of universal human worth derives from being
unconditionally loved by God. But this chapter is best summarized by David Hartman who says: “The
feeling of personal integration and self-confidence that makes for dignity never comes exclusively as
a gift from the other, but is always also the fruit of enormous personal effort.”cx
46
i
Cited in S. Moyn, The Last Utopia, 35
Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? 113-115
iii
"Social rights were first articulated as rights during the French Revolution and after. Following various Old Regime
projects for putting the needy to work, social rights were considered from the first, and featured prominently in the second
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793 (Year I of the Revolution)." (S. Moyn, The Last Utopia, 34)
iv
Charles Fourier, “The Right to Work Denied” in The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier, 1806, 137
v
Cited in S. Moyn, 35. In the 1848 revolution in France, organizing government to provide useful activity, as in the
national workshops, was a major goal.
vi
Frederick Douglass, “Self-Made Men," 549-50
vii
“All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and
dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.” (F. Douglass, “Self-Made Men,", 553- 557, 561)
viii
Rav Abraham Isaac Kook Ain Aya to TB Berakhot 9, 64
ix
Nachmanides, Genesis 1:24: "As it is written, and (Thou) hast crowned him with honor and glory; which refers to his (i.e.
man's) intelligent, wise, and technically resourceful striving:" (“The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 1965, 14)
x
Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 13-15
xi
The honor guard, the shomer, is to protect against mice (TB Berakhot 18a)
xii
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel, 29
xiii
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel, 36
xiv
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel, 36
xv
“The contempt for manual labor characteristic of ancient Greek aristocracies is entirely absent from the Hebrew Bible.
The book of Proverbs is remarkable for its persistent warnings against laziness, reluctance to work with one's hands on
one's own land; and this is a broadly upper-class production. Further, many of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible are found
working as farmers or herders. There was in the biblical period no cultural incentive to avoid personal labour on the land.”
(Walter Houston, Contending for Justice, 30)
xvi
Robert Kaster, Emotions, 122
xvii
The quotations from Locke are cited by Yechiel Leiter, “The Hebraic Roots of John Locke’s Doctrine of Charity,” 144ff
xviii
John Locke, ELN, in Locke’s Political Essays, 105
xix
"Rightly considered .. what is the true and proper relief to the poor .. consists in finding work for them, and taking care
that they do not live like drones upon the labour of others.” (John Locke, A Report to the Board of Trade to the Lords
Justices, 1697, Respecting Relief and Unemployment of the Poor)
xx
Quoted in Erving Goffman, Stigma and in Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity,280
xxi
Adam Smith, WN V.ii.k.3
xxii
Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 1965, 53
xxiii
Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, 85
xxiv
Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 101-102
xxv
Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 101-102
xxvi
Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 97-98
xxvii
Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 99
xxviii
Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Book of Acquisitions, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 1:6; Sifra Section #8:8
xxix
Primo Levi, his memoir Survival in Auschwitz,.24
xxx
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 488-490. "In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspect of
my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the result. Like
the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve
what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.”
xxxi
Maimonides, M.T., Book of Acquisitions, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 1:5; Sifra Section #6:1
xxxii
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 1:7; Sifra Section #8
xxxiii
Haggadah Midrash Arami Oveid Avi on Exodus 2:25
xxxiv
Maimonides, M.T., Book of Acquisitions, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 3:1-2,5; Mekhilta Rashbi on Exodus 21:3
xxxv
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 1:9; Sifra Behar 7:1,3; TB Kiddushin 20a.
xxxvi
Tosafot TB Kiddushin 20a "In name of the Yerushalmi.
xxxvii
Cited by Haya Deutsch, Nehama, 143 (translated by the editor)
ii
47
xxxviii
Maimonides, M.T., Book of Judges. Laws of Kings 2:6.
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves, Chapter 8:9-10. "Now his master is ordered to write him a document that he is liberated and the
slave now owes his value to the master as a debt to be repaid." See TB Ketubot 110b in Mishna; TB Gittin 45a.
xl
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 1:1; Mekhilta on Exodus 21:2
xli
Sifra on Lev. 25:39
xlii
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 1:1; Sifra
xliii
Maimonides, Laws of Lenders and Borrowers 1:7
xliv
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 1:2; Mekhilta on Exodus 21:7
xlv
For various reasons rabbinic law prohibits a sexual liaison in which a Hebrew master exploits a nonHebrew slave.
xlvi
TB Yevamot 48b identifies the salve in this verse with the non-Jew.
xlvii
TB Yevamot 48b makes explicit that this is a non-Hebrew slave.
xlviii
“Both one who kills a Jew and one who kills a Canaanite [non-Jewish] slave are executed on their account, and if it
were unintentional, they are exiled [to a city of refuge]” (Maimonides, Laws of Murder 2:10).
xlix
Nahum Sarna, JPS Commentary on the Torah: Exodus, 125. Nachmanides (Ex. 21:21) says the slaves death is treated
just as any murder where the court prosecutes (Ex. 21:12)
l
The rabbis listed 24 body parts associated with this basic physical integrity of the human being: fingers, toes, tips of ears
or nose, penis, breasts, etc., and perhaps even tongue or testicles (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael Mishpatim 9; TB Kiddushin
25a).
li
Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael Mishpatim Nezikin #9
lii
Tosefta Baba Kamma 9:24-25. TB BK 26b. Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 5:11-13
liii
Mishna Baba Kamma 8:3. “Rabbi Yehuda says: Slaves have no boshet, damages for being dishonored, for it says: When
two people fight together, a man and his brother (Deut. 25) - only one who shares in brotherhood to the exclusion of the
slave who does not share in brotherhood. But the halakha does not follow Rabbi Yehuda.” (Rabbi Ovadiah Bartenura on
Mishna BK 8:3)
liv
Rashbam on Exodus 20:20; Maimonides, Laws of Murder 2:14.
lv
Mishna Makkot 2:3 with Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishna; TB Makkot 7a; Maimonides, Murder 2:10-11.
lvi
Gregory Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery, 146; 77
lvii
Although scholars debate whether this is for debtor-slaves (Hebrews) as in Mesopotamia or chattel slaves (nonHebrews) which is unique to Israel. They also debate whether the punishment for death of a slave – of whatever kind - as
result of disciplinary action by a master “shall be avenged” by means of a penalty or death? death at the hands of the court
or at hands of God who advocates for those without blood redeemers (like Exodus 22:22-24)? The weight of scholarly
opinion now leans to the view that Exodus 21:20-21 relates to non-Hebrew chattel slavery and condemns the master to
capital punishment for killing his own slave.
lviii
Gregory Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery, 149-155. (See Moshe Greenberg, “Crimes and Punishments,” IDB I, 733ff)
lix
Nahum Sarna, JPS Commentary on the Torah: Exodus, 127
lx
Shmuel Rubenstein, Kadmoniot Hahalakha (Kovna, 1926)
lxi
Ibn Ezra on Ex. 21:21, 26
lxii
See an in depth treatment of the particularist ethno-centricism of Lev. 25 in book one, chapter #5 of our trilogy.
lxiii
Jeff Tigay, JPS Commentary on Deuteronomy, 215 (Sefire III 4-7). Apparently the law refers to international runaway
slaves, but it is not clear if it was meant to apply to Hebrew slaves or non-Hebrew slaves in Eretz Yisrael.
lxiv
Rabbi David ben Zimra, Responsa V on Rambam #400; Sefer HaHinukh 568.
lxv
Thus Maimonides ruled: “A master may not show contempt for his non-Hebrew slave, neither with physical acts or words, for
they were given to their masters for work, not for shame.” (Laws of Slaves 9:8; see Arukh HaShulkhan Y.D. 267:134).
lxvi
While Maimonides and Shulkhan Arukh hold that the slave has a free choice about accepting the mitzvot of a slave,
Rabbenu Asher and Rashi hold that the non-Hebrew may be forcibly converted against their will (Rosh on TB Yevamot
Chapter 4 #38; Shulkhan Arukh YD #267:3)
lxvii
TB Avodah Zara 64b
lxviii
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 8:2
lxix
Maimonides, Laws of Slaves 8:9
lxx
Responsa of Geonim, Sha'arei Tzedek #27 cited by Yaacov Shapira in his paper “The Attitude to Foreign Workers in
Hebrew Law,” Oct. 19, 2009, for the Ministry of Law of the State of Israel
lxxi
Maimonides says: “The master may even demand work from the slave, refuse to feed him and still send the slave to get
his own tzedakah because Israel is commanded to maintain the lives of [non-Hebrew] slaves among them” (Maimonides,
Laws of Slaves 9:7). But Rabbenu Asher that is only when the famine is not so great that tzedakah is not available (Tur YD
#267)
xxxix
48
lxxii
Maimonides, M.T., Book of Acquisitions, Laws of Slaves 9:8
Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 13-15
lxxiv
See Shulkhan Arukh O.H. 23:1
lxxv
David ben Joseph Abudarham (14th C. Spain), Sefer Abudarham, Part III, "The Blessing over (Fulfilling) the
Commandments" cited by my friend Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish Law, 13
lxxvi
J.B. Soloveitchik, Lonely Man of Faith, 14-17
lxxvii
Shulkhan Arukh Hoshen Mishpat 370 (3)
lxxviii
Rashi on Mishna Sanhedrin 3:3; Maimonides and Jacob ben Asher, Tur Hoshen Mishpat 34:10 cited in Aaron Levine, “Aspects of
the Ideology of Capitalism and Judaism” in Shatz, Tikkun Olam, 272.
lxxix
The Rabbis suggests that God brings rain in order to settle the earth (TJ Taanit 64b-c) and God made the world flourish
(Gen. 2:5) so that human beings would talk about the agricultural productivity of the land whose settlement concerns them
(Pesikta Zutra on Genesis 2). See Rashi on TB Yevamot 62a
lxxx
Terumat HaDeshen 342 on teshuvah cites Rashbam.
lxxxi
Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 1965, 53
lxxxii
Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith” in Tradition, 1965, 13-15
lxxxiii
J.B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Man, 99
lxxxiv
J.B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Man, 108
lxxxv
While acknowledging the needs of the political community for honorable employment, Maimonides still shares with the
philosophers the elitist view that the image of God in the human and the truly human actualized in intellectual contemplation
of the world and the knowledge and love of God that perfect the soul/ mind. But he dreams of a messianic world where this
ideal is democratized and all will share in wealth equally and hence all can pursue vita contemplativa without slaves and
without non-Jewish nations to do the menial labor. (Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings 12:4-5). Work, that is tending to the body,
for the individual and the community,. tikkun haguf, has its relatively instrumental value, but it is still a great value both
because it enables one to pursue spiritual perfection without the shamefully immoral side effects of not being gainfully
employed - exploitation of others and one-sided dependence on one’s fellow creatures.
lxxxvi
J.B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Man, 109
lxxxvii
Mordecai Kaplan, The Meaning of God on Modern Jewish Religion, 77
lxxxviii
Stephen Pope, “Poverty and Natural Law” in W. Galston, Poverty and Morality, 267
lxxxix
Ernst Troeltsch distinguishes Luther’s and Calvin’s notion of vocation: “Luther's view of vocation agreed with that of Paul,
the Early Church, and the Middle Ages. To him the "calling" was simply the sphere of activity in which one was set, and in
which it was a duty to remain. . . . Although at the same time Luther pointed out that it is precisely through the ordered work of
one's calling, and the intricate network of mutual service that the preservation of the whole community is effected, and with that
peace, order, and prosperity, he attributes it all to the wise ordering and the kindly guidance of Providence, and not to deliberate
human initiative. The vocational system was not consciously designed and developed for the purposes of the holy community
and of Christian Society, but it was accepted as a Divine arrangement. The individual, moreover, regarded his work, not as a
suitable way of contributing to the uplift of Society as a whole, but as his appointed destiny, which he received from the hands of
God. That is why it was possible for the Lutheran to regard the work of his vocation in an entirely traditional and reactionary
way-as the duty of remaining within the traditional way of earning a living which belongs to one's position in Society. This point
of view coincides with the traditional Catholic view.” (Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches II 610)
xc
N. Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace, 16
xci
Calvin, Sermons of on the Epistle to the Ephesians on Ephesians 4:26-28
xcii
Calvin, Commentaries on the First Twenty Chapters of Ezekiel on Ezekiel 18:7
xciii
Calvin, Commentaries: The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians on II Cor. 8:14
xciv
.N. Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace,.78
xcv
"For here, as in a mirror, we behold that common relationship of man, which the scribes endeavored to blot out by their
wicked sophistry; and the compassion, which an enemy showed to a Jew, demonstrates that the guidance and teaching of nature
are sufficient to show that man was created for the sake of men. Hence it is inferred that there is a mutual obligation between all
men.” (Jean Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. Rev. William (1949) III,
61-62.)
xcvi
Darryl Trimiew, God Bless, 263
xcvii
J. F. Kennedy Message to Congress on Public Welfare (February 1, 1962) H. Doc. No. 325
xcviii
see also TJ Pe'ah 1:1 and TB Shabbat 33b
xcix
"When Moses told Israel "after the Lord your God you shall go" (Deut. 13:5) and "to go in his ways" (Deut. 8:6)? They
said: who can go in his ways?
lxxiii
49
Moses said to Israel: That is not what I said to you - rather [follow] his ways which are kindness and truth and charity as it
is written, "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth" (Ps. 25:10), and tzedakah.... So you also, go after these traits of
the Holy One.” (Tanhuma. Gen. Vayishlah 10) (Translated by Herbert Basser, The Mind behind the Gospels)
c
Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 410
ci
Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents, 267
cii
Sandel, DD, 262. Alvin Hansen stressed increased consumption as the key to a prosperous postwar economy. "It is
important to develop a high-consumption economy so that we can achieve full employment and utilize effectively our
increasing productive power.... We must raise the propensity to consume."
ciii
“The advent of the new political economy marked a decisive moment in the demise of the republican strand of American
politics and the rise of contemporary liberalism. According to this liberalism, government should be neutral among the
conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their ends for
themselves. [It also] abandons the ambition of inculcating certain habits and dispositions, it denied government a stake in
the moral character of its citizens and affirmed the notion of persons as free and independent selves, capable of choice.”
(Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents, 262)
civ
Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents, 268
cv
Edgar Kemler viewed this shift as "the most important aspect of the deflation of American ideals. It is most clearly seen,
I think, in the changed character of political education. We no longer care to develop the individual as a unique contributor
to a democratic form. We want him as a private in an army cooperating with all the other privates. The old Jeffersonian
emphasis on schools for citizenship and on self-government has changed to a Rooseveltian emphasis on response to a
heroic leadership." Social engineering is the goal, not moral and political education. cv “According to the republican
tradition, freedom depends on self-government, which requires in turn certain qualities of character, certain moral and civic
virtues. Liberals object that according government a role in molding the character of its citizens opens the way to coercion
and fails to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their ends for themselves.” (Sandel,
Democracy’s Discontents, 270)
cvi
“Robert Kennedy's proposal for bringing jobs to the inner city reflected his broader aim of restoring a political economy
of citizenship. Rather than a government jobs program directed from Washington, Kennedy proposed federal tax breaks for
businesses that opened plants in impoverished areas, an idea recently revived as ‘enterprise zones.’ But Kennedy did not
propose to rely on market forces alone. Even if tax incentives succeeded in prompting outside enterprises to invest in the
ghetto, this would do little to give residents control of their communities. Kennedy therefore proposed the creation of
Community Development Corporations, community-run institutions that would direct development in accordance with
local needs. Such corporations might finance construction of low-cost housing, health clinics, parks, even shopping centers
and movie theaters, and also arrange job training so that local workers could carry out the construction. The aim of the
program was civic as well as economic: to help "the ghetto to become a community-a functioning unit, its people acting
together on matters of mutual concern, with the power and resources to affect the conditions of their own lives. (Sandel
DD, 302-303)
cvii
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel, 35
cviii
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel, 29
cix
Anna Faith Jones, "Doors and Mirrors: Reflections on the Art of Philanthropy" cited in Amy Kass, Giving Well, Doing Well:
Readings for Thoughtful Philanthropists, 46ff
cx
David Hartman, “The Celebration of Finitude” in A Living Covenant, 273
50