Mishpatim 2009

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. He told me about a book he was reading on slavery. Not about the history of slavery, or the morality of slavery. It was about slavery that exists now, in the 21st century. As we sit here, there are people around the world who are enslaved. I don’t want to shock you by mentioning numbers.

But I will.

I will because I must. An estimated 27 million people are held in slavery today. In absolute numbers, this is more people than have ever been enslaved before in the history of the world. In countries all around the world there are people who are working for no money, or for a minimal amount of money that is often taken back from them for room and board, or to pay debts they did not know they were incurring. There are people who may not leave their job under threat of being beaten, maimed, arrested, or even killed. 

These people are slaves. They are men, women and children, and they are enslaved in the farming, manufacturing, domestic, and sex industries.

Of course, the United States is against slavery. No one in this country may profit from slavery, and no one may buy or sell anything made by slaves. But like many developed nations, the United States is not as strict in the enforcement of these laws as it might be. Many items are sold in this country that a very little research would reveal to be made by slaves. Worse, it has been estimated that more than fifteen thousand people are brought into this country every year to work as slaves.

Fifteen thousand people.

I have seen some of them. Up until a few years ago, on the New York City subway system, one used to see young Latino men and women who would go up and down the subway cars, not exactly begging, but trying to sell little cards. The cards would say “I am deaf” on one side, and have the sign language alphabet on the other. The men and women would hand you the card and then wait for money. 

One of them finally had the good luck to run into someone who spoke both sign language and Spanish. He told her that he and his fellow “workers” had been taken from their families in Mexico by a couple who said they represented a school for the deaf run by a charity in New York. The couple told the families that their children would receive a free education. Instead, they were sent out on the streets to sell the little cards. If they did not return with enough money, they were beaten. They were told that they were in the country illegally, and would be thrown into jail if they went to the police. Illiterate, knowing no English, and deaf, they had no place to turn.

This story had a happy ending. The Spanish speaker went to the police, who raided the house and arrested the couple. The deaf men and women were given special visas to stay in the country, and they were sent to a school for the deaf, at no charge.

How many stories end less happily, because we never hear them?

My friend’s question was whether things were gradually becoming better in the world or not. Is the world a better place now, morally and ethically speaking, than it was 500 years ago? 

This is a good question to ask now, especially since our parasha, Mishpatim, begins with an admonition to behave properly to your slaves. After finally being freed from slavery themselves, and immediately after receiving the 10 Commandments, the Israelites are told that a slave will serve you for six years, and then you must set him free. Later we will be told that you must not send him away empty handed. Judaism may be the only religion where a slave gets severance pay. Clearly, the concept of slavery in the Torah is not the same as a modern idea of slavery.

This parasha contains commandments to protect widows, orphans, the poor and the stranger. We are told to help to raise the animal of our enemy, if it has fallen, and to bring it to him, if it is lost.

These laws may have been kept in biblical days, but the prophets later accused the Israelites of not following them as they should. The Israelites believed in setting slaves free after six years, but the Romans did not. Older codes of law hold that if a person pokes your eye out, you may kill that person. Mishpatim says only an eye for an eye. No more than a tooth for a tooth. Later, the rabbis of the Talmud will tell us that the meaning is the value of an eye for an eye. The value of a tooth for a tooth. We are fined an appropriate amount for harming a person.

Today we may not be fined, but we may be imprisoned. Is the world getting better?

We take two steps forward, and then one step back. Yes, there is slavery today, but at least it needs to be hidden. One hundred and fifty years ago slavery was not considered shameful by many, and it was out in the open. Today, if discovered, the slavers will be arrested.

Is that good enough? Of course not! We must not be complacent. We must not accept the status quo, whether of slavery or a hundred more areas in which the world needs to be improved. Whether the world is a better place today than it was in the past is not a question that is answerable. Whether the word can become a better place than it is now is a qustion we can answer.

Yes. If we work at it. If we work at it.

I encourage everyone to get involved in some way with the struggle for tikkun olam, the repair of the world. One place we might want to start is Freetheslaves.net.