Mishpotim / משפּטים

This is a weekly series of parsha dvarim written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make us more comfortable) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

Content note: slavery, genocide in Palestine

This week's parsha has given me more anguish than usual. It begins with mishpotim (laws) on how the Jews should treat slaves. This would be disturbing in any context, but is especially offensive because we are in the Book of Shemoys. We have just spent many hours reading so much ink spilled on the story of how the Jews escaped slavery. Is Torah a slavery-apologetic text, telling us that slavery is fine as long as it's done by us and we follow the rules?

There are several sections of the parsha that leftists usually point to. Women are specifically named as the potential victims of crime and Torah demands restitution and accountability. Furthermore, we seed the foundation of the Jewish approach to reproductive rights and is sometimes called "Repro Shabbat". Community is strengthened through the commandment to help your enemy should his ox wander loose or collapse under its burden. We are introduced to Shmita, the requirement to rest of the land and the free the it's-totally-fine-we-have-slaves slaves every seven years. There are a lot of wonderful things in this text about building a just society, but I don't believe we can simply pluck them out of their context and self-congratulate. These mishtopim sit alongside less inspiring ones like kashrus, and much darker ones like the death penalty for insulting your parents and the finer points of when you're allowed to kill your slaves.

Arguably the strongest commandment, the one that's hammered in over and over again throughout our texts and rituals and yom toyvim, is "remember". Remember when we were slaves in Mitsrayim. Remember when Hashem brought us out of bondage. Did we forget? Worse, do we imagine that slavery is only bad when it happens to us? Have we exceptionalized ourselves so much?

It's clear from the war in Palestine that the answer is yes. Slavery is bad when it happens to us—but with just a few parameters from Hashem, we can be righteous slave owners and righteous killers. "Never again" is reserved for Jews.

During the first year of the war, Jewish leaders and institutions in the diaspora focused on the hostages and their discomfort with the word "genocide" or even "ceasefire". The best that most did was call for a "humanitarian pause". And of course, many echoed the bloodthirsty rhetoric of hasboro (Israeli propaganda) and directly funded the killing.

Jewish antizionist groups organized under the banner "Never again for anyone". Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Na'amod, and Rabbis For Ceasefire have focused their energy on shifting the narrative that Jews support the war. More than anything, these groups are media campaigns. Last week, hundreds of Rabbis took out a full page ad in the New York Times which said "Jewish people say NO to ethnic cleansing!".

Jews—sorry, "Jewish people"—say no, but what are we actually doing? After 16 months of genocide, is now the time for talk? Have we not learned the lessons from the last 40 years of American wars? Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and the everlasting "War on Terrorism" showed us that marches and chat do nothing to stop the bloodshed—no matter how clear messaging of the dissent, no matter how many people peacefully take to the streets.

Some Rabbis contend that the Jews in Torah had already freed their slaves by this point in the narrative. If so, why have an entire set of commandments about how to treat slaves? Orthodox Rabbi Moishe Taragin offered in 2022:

For a large part of history, humanity was stuck living with [this] backward and discriminatory institution. This was not the will of Hashem. Yet, recognizing that an evolving society would nonetheless continue to practice slavery, the Torah provided guidelines. These guidelines are not meant to validate slavery but to provide corrective rules to moderate the brutality of slavery.

I refuse to accept that our most sacred and foundational text, allegedly the direct word of G-d, is a harm reduction manual for how to have slightly-less-bad slavery.

Even if the ancient Jews didn't have slaves by the time they reached Sinai—how do we reckon with the historical involvement of the Jews in the medieval and New World slave trades? (Proportionally, Jews owned less slaves than their goyishe contemporaries and the overemphasis on Jewish involvement in the slave trade is an antisemitic canard; but this does not mean that Jews are absolved from involvement.) Sometimes Jews are bad people and do bad things. Sometimes we are enslaved and sometimes we slaughter entire cities.

I don't have answers about how to deal with any of this violence, but it feels like the first step is a sober assessment of the text and the historical and modern realities. What happens when Torah tells us both to remember and to forget? One of my friends says that Purim's come early this year. We're living in a time of chaos and double-speak. This is also a parsha out of order: the narrative jumps around rather than following chronology. How do we set things right? Can we, like on Purim, lean into the confusion and dazzle our enemies? Can we be better than the Torah expects us to be?