Parshas Behar, 5763 I Have a Dream

               By Rabbi Joshua (somnolently known as The Hoffer) Hoffman 


In this week's parsha, we read of the mitzvah of Yovel, which occurs on the fiftieth year of the shemitah cycle, following directly upon the shemitah of the forty-ninth year. Perhaps the most difficult mitzvoh of Yovel is the requirement to leave one's land fallow for an additional year, after already having to let it lay fallow during the previous year. However, some see as the defining mitzvoh of Yovel the requirement to free one's slaves in the beginning of the year. In words later immortalized on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Torah tells us, ".... and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants" (Vayikra 25:10). One may ask, why does the Torah tell us to proclaim liberty for all the inhabitants, rather than "for all its slaves?" Surely not all of the inhabitants are slaves! Rabbi Chaim Elazari, in his Nesivei Chaim, raises this question, and mentions two possible answers. First, he says that the liberty applies to both the slave and the slave owner, because, as the rabbis tell us, anyone who acquires a Hebrew slave is really acquiring a master over himself, because of the many considerations due to the slave. Still, says Rabbi Elazari, this could not account for the entire population! Alternatively, he suggests that the Torah did not wish to refer to a Jew as a slave, because they are servants to God and not to man. This concept is articulated in a verse later in the parsha, in which we read, " for the children of Israel are servants to me, " (Vayikra 25:55), as explained by Rashi there. However, this answer, too, is a bit difficult, because, technically, there is, in fact, an institution of the Hebrew slave in the Torah! I would, therefore, like to suggest two other, interrelated answers, that approach the entire verse from a different perspective. 


In parshas Mishpotim, when the Torah presents us with a set of civil laws, the first laws that are mentioned are those of the Hebrew slave. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains that the code of civil law began with these regulations because the quality of a society's system of justice is judged by how the lowest rung of its citizens is treated. This thought was later echoed by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in which he wrote that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The Torah tells us that a Hebrew slave must be released after six years of servitude, unless he voluntarily decides to remain with his master. However, once the Yovel year arrives, he can no longer remain under his master's control, even if he wants to. To retain control over him after this point in time would be an injustice, and if the slave wishes to remain in that state, he is doing an injustice to himself. When the slave is treated unjustly, it is a reflection on the entire society. Thus, by releasing the slaves from their servitude at the onset of the Yovel, all of the inhabitants of the land become truly free.  


Expanding on this notion that freedom for the slave means freedom for everyone in the land, we need to understand what freedom really means. Rav Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohein Kook, during his trip to America in 1924, visited Philadelphia and spoke in front of the Liberty Bell there, praising the freedom that America gave to its citizens. These words of Rav Kook reflected his notion of freedom, which he understood as the ability of a person to bring out his inner essence, to be true to himself. A slave, who is constantly subject to the call of his master, is not free to be his own person and to develop his own talents. The Palestinian Talmud tells us that when the Jews were about to leave Egypt, Moshe related the mitzvoh of freeing one's slaves on Yovel to them. Rabbi Meir Juzint, zt'l, who was associate dean of students at Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, explained that the people had become so used to their state of servitude that they did not believe they were capable of being free. Therefore, Moshe told them of the commandment to free one's slaves. The commandment to grant freedom to others was an indication to the people that they had within them the power to be free themselves.


 Over the course of years, people get caught up in their routines and lose sight of their wider purpose in life, and of their need to develop the unique element that makes them who they are. On Yovel, we are reminded of this need through the commandment to free our slaves. Just as this commandment to free one's slaves awoke the element of inner freedom within the nation in Egypt, so too is it meant to serve this purpose on the Yovel year. Thus, the very commandment to free one's slaves reminds all of us of our ability to be free ourselves, to realize our inner potential and make our own unique contribution to our people. The proclamation of liberty on Yovel, then, justly applies to all the inhabitants of the land.