Should Jews Have Slaves?

The forefathers all had slaves. Upon the Jewish people's entry to the Land of Israel they are commanded to take slaves from the locals, but not from their brethren. Solomon's greatness - and praise - in the Book of Kohelet was his sheer multitude of slaves, and so, how can we understand the pervasiveness of slavery in the Bible, and yet our own abhorrence to the very idea?

One approach could be to talk about how slaves – at least, Jewish ones – were treated better in Biblical times than our modern-day experience of slavery, its aftermath, lynching and the Jim Crow laws being bad enough. The sages do teach about the more sensitized approach in Judaism to slaves than in other religions. For example, were a master to have one comfortable bed, his Jewish slave would get it before him, to the point that they come up with the famous saying, "One who purchases a slave, has essentially purchased a master to lord over him."

At the same time, that doesn't fully tackle our own moral and ethical complexity, or dislike, for the notion of one person owning another.

I believe that a more balanced approach that takes into account historical norms is definitely in place.

For one, the Torah teaches that killing a Jewish slave (Shemot 21:20-21) is punishable by death. No ancient religion held that value; we now know from forensic bone studies that the Romans tried to heal gladiators because of the economic loss they would incur if a seasoned fighter were to die (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30562818/), but the mere concept of not only healing an average slave but putting his owner to death for striking him was otherwise inconceivable at the time.

Another example of how Judaism was ahead of its time is the punishment for rape; the Torah says that it is no less than "spilling the woman's blood" )Devarim 22:26); the pervasive view at the time was that a woman sought to be raped, which is why according to the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE) a married woman who was raped was drowned the same way the rapist was: Columbia University History of Sexual Abuse and Harassment.

At the end of the day, not only was Judaism ahead of its time, but in keeping with this week's Parsha, Bechukotai, one can better understand the sheer financial loss one would incur after injuring his slave. The maximal value of a man, i.e. a man between the ages of 20-60, was 50 silver shekels; that was the equivalent of millions of dollars nowadays, and at the time of the Bible, a slaveowner who struck his slave, for example by  injuring his eye, or tooth, needed to free him and relinquish the entirety of the value of the slave and his lifetime work output.

When push comes to shove, in some respects the Torah was ahead of the time, but the same way it is our imperative to mitigate any deleterious effects of the curses cited in the Torah, from the pain of childbirth to the infertility or aridness of the land, it likely behooves us to continue to create a more humane society.

In a manner of speaking, even the first of the Ten Commandments takes a swipe at Joseph: "I am Hashem, your God, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from a house of slavery."

Egypt was not a house of slavery, only the Jews were enslaved. But Joseph had turned all of Egypt into a "house of slavery," or rather, a country or state that had become conditioned to accepting slavery because Joseph himself had "purchased all Egyptians for Pharaoh," when they themselves were starving for bread. He acclimated the masses to accept the notion of slavery, which they only perpetuated by enslaving our ancestors, who were released and freed out of Hashem's devotion to our patriarchs.

May we, a light to the nations, be blessed to continue to spread and reveal a greater love for our fellow man, helping restore the dignity of each and every one of Hashem's creations.