The Edited Issue

• Udi Lion

  Bereshit 27:26-29 Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra a0a Slavery is closer than you think  

  Bereshit 27:26-29

  Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra a0a

  Slavery is closer than you think

    (צפיה בדעה במקור)

• David

  Hello everyone and welcome to this Sugia on "Avodah".  I'm David and will be facilitating this Sugia discussion.The material is inspired…

  Hello everyone and welcome to this Sugia on "Avodah".  I'm David and will be facilitating this Sugia discussion.

  The material is inspired and drawn from the work of the Limmud chavruta project and so I'd like to run the discussion on those lines - posing a few questions of my own to get started; and then answering and developing points with each of you as we progress.

   

  We are hopefully going to pose and answer 4 or 5 questions in this discussion - I'll introduce another one every couple of days depending on how our conversation goes. You can always go back to an earlier one by pressing "Reply" under an individual comment, or join the general discussion by writing in the box at the bottom of the page.

   

  Our opening question is: "Are we slaves? Are we free?" and I have a few different sources to draw out elements of this:

  1 - The story of the Exodus from Egypt and our freedom as a people from Egyptian slavery is hugely important to us -
  it's the opening of the ten commandments - see the source here.

  But did we just exchange one master for another?
  There are lots of times and places in the Tanach and Rabbinic literature where we are referred to as slaves to G-d himself -
  and this isn't just when we are obedient to his commandments - consider this example from Baba Batra 10a.

  What do you think the connection is between our freedom from physical slavery
  and our relationship to G-d's commandments?

   

  2 - Even if we are free people ourselves, how free can we call ourselves when our society is built on the slavery of the past?
  This was a central argument of the Communist Manifesto -
  that 19th century labour was if anything worse than the slavery of ancient history
  because the mechanism of free markets disassociated well-off people from the pain and toil that supported their comfortable lives
  . Louis CK makes this point more strongly (but with some bad language).

  How can we be free in the present
  if we can't be free from the past?

   

  3 - Even if we do think that slavery is a thing of the past entirely, what can we learn from its impact on our sources and religious lives?
  We  have a lot of sources we can discuss later on this, but maybe start off with Rav Soloveitchik's reflections
  on the halachic (Jewish legal) implications of being free rather than a slave.

  Are free people more "time-conscious" than slaves?
  Is that one of the most important differences (as he seems to imply)?
  And does that ring true to us?

   

  Really looking forward to hearing what you all have to say on this -
  comment away below and I will be back this evening (EST) -
  in the meantime my co-organiser Ben will hopefully drop by and share his thoughts as well.

   

  (צפיה בדעה במקור)

• 

  Eve Cartwright

  Although this is one hundred years old i think its just as true today. Engels wrote in 1874, less than… Although this is one hundred years old i think its just as true today. Engels wrote in 1874, less than ten years after the Civil War and slavery was a lived memory for many in America and a known fact about the way the world worked for Europeans. Its worth taking a minute to draw out the process of how this works for Engels. Like david said on the main discussion page, its the mechanism of the modern market that divorces production from consumption, and makes forexameple the sweatshops of the third world invisible to us when we by a pair of jeans. So its not so much the actions of individuals as the attitudes and structure of our current society that create it. This is what I think chumash means when it talks about "beit avadim" - "the house of slavery". We werent freed from being slaves, but from a slave system and a slave society. And if theres a moral duty for us to act against slavery or to oppose it, it should be against a system rather than against its consequences (צפיה בדעה במקור)

• Sofia Howard

  I can see the quote from the parsha which he Limmud on one leg talked about, but can't see how… I can see the quote from the parsha which he Limmud on one leg talked about, but can't see how to comment on it? (צפיה בדעה במקור)

• 

  Udi Lion

  I wish to give A Shabat gift with a thorn in it . I am refering to this clip of… I wish to give A Shabat gift with a thorn in it . I am refering to this clip of louis CK .' Can we , the first world survive without the third- world "slavery'  (what do you think the work conditions of millions of immigrants is going to be) ? an important question especially following the horrific events of this week Shabat Shalom (צפיה בדעה במקור)