Uncomfortable truths about slavery that we can’t whitewash TB Nazir 61-62

 Slavery was a fact in the ancient world so we should not be surprised that dappim TB Nazir 61-62 discuss the issues surrounding Canaanite slaves making vows and becoming a nazir. Even though both women and Canaanite slaves may vow to become a nazir, the Mishnah on TB Nazir 61a makes the distinction between these two categories. “Women and Canaanite slaves do have naziriteship. The mishna adds: There is a greater stringency in the case of women than in the case of slaves, as a master may force his slave to drink wine, shave his hair, or become ritually impure from a corpse, despite the slave’s vow of naziriteship, but a husband cannot force his wife to transgress her naziriteship (after his window of opportunity of annulling his wife’s vow has closed-gg).” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Mishnah on TB Nazir 62b continues the distinction between women and Canaanite slaves. “The previous mishna taught that the naziriteship of women includes a stringency that does not apply to slaves. This mishna adds: There is a greater stringency in the case of slaves than in the case of women, as a man can nullify the vows of his wife but he cannot nullify the vows of his slave, despite the fact that he can prevent him from fulfilling them in practice. Similarly, if he nullified the naziriteship of his wife it is permanently nullified, and it remains nullified even if she is later divorced or widowed. Conversely, if he nullified the naziriteship of his slave by forcing him to violate the terms of his vow of naziriteship, when the slave is emancipated he completes his naziriteship.” (Sefaria.org translation) Rava understands why the Mishnah says that the master cannot nullify his slaves’ vows is simple. There is no need to because the slave cannot make a vow at all. The Torah takes this ability away from him.

Our daf ends with a runaway slave whose master never gives up hope of getting him back. If the slave made a nazirite vow, must he keep it now that he has run away? “Rabbi Yosei, the one who says that he may drink wine, maintains that the slave will ultimately return and come back to his master, and therefore it is preferable for him to drink wine so that he should not be weakened by the time he returns. And according to Rabbi Meir, the one who says that he may not drink wine, he maintains that it is better that the slave should suffer by being deprived of wine, so that he will return to his master, as the desire to drink wine will spur him to return.” (Sefaria.org translation)

Especially so close to Passover, our festival of freedom, I find these discussions and conclusions hard to accept. During the Civil War arguments were made for and against slavery by Jews. I can honestly say that the majority of Jews were in the abolitionist’s camp. The debate is captured in the book A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States 1654-1875, edited with notes and introduction by Morris U. Schappes.

 Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall gave a sermon at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun, New York on January 4, 1861 where he taught that slavery was not sinful. Michael Heilprin rebutted Raphall’s arguments in the New-York daily Tribune, January 15, 1861. I’m just going to quote the beginning of this editorial.

“The Rev. Rabbi Raphall, on the fourth of this month, preached a sermon on slavery in the Bible… I have perused it and find that the Rabbi arrives at the conclusion that Slavery is not sinful in the eyes of God of Israel, the God of Moses and the Prophets. It is true, he is ‘no friend to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to the practical working of slavery.’ He is ‘sorry to find that’ he is ‘delivering a proSlavery discourse.’ He distinguishes between Slavery as practiced by the Hebrews, which was ‘confined within certain limits,’ and according to which a ‘slave was a person in whom the dignity of human nature was to be respected’ and ‘who had rights,’ and the heathen system of Slavery, ‘which’ he is ‘sorry to say, is adopted in the South,’ ‘which reduces the slave to a thing,’ and makes him a pray to ‘two of the worst passions of human nature, lust and cruelty.’… ‘Still, ‘after humbly praying to the Father of Truth and of Mercy,’ he regards it as his duty to proclaim from the pulpit that it is a sin, to preach against slavery in the South! I had read similar nonsense hundreds of times before; I knew that the Father of Truth and of Mercy was daily invoked in hundreds of purpose in this country for a Divine sanction of falsehood and barbarism; still being a Jew myself, I felt exceedingly humbled, I may say outraged, by the sacrilegious words of the Rabbi. Have we not had enough of the ‘reproach of Egypt?’ Must the stigma of Egyptian principles be fastened on the people of Israel by Israelitish lips themselves? Shall the enlightened and humane of this country ask each other, ‘Are these people of God, we have come from His land?’ (my emphasis –gg) I hoped, however, that amid the flood of scum that is now turned up by the turbulent waves of the stormy time, the words of the Rabbi would soon disappear, like so many other bubbles, and the blasphemous teachings of the synagogue find no longer Echols than those of Christian churches. But I am grievously mistaken. Day after day brings hosannas to the Hebrew defamer of the law of this nation; in his words are trumpeted through the land as if he were the messenger of a new salvation. So depraved is the moral sense of our proSlavery demagogues, so debauched the mind of their mammon-worshiping followers, so dense the Egyptian darkness which covers their horizon, that, all other false lights being extinguished, a spark of Hebrew ProSlavery rhetoric is hailed as a new lightning from Sinai, as a new light from Zion, sent to guide the people of the United States safely so the dark campus that threatens to destroy the ship of State…” (Raphall’s sermon can be found on pages 405-418 and Heilprin’s rebuttal from pages 418-428)

Heilprin’s editorial continues for another nine pages refuting point by point Raphall’s arguments. I believe that slavery is the original sin of the United States and we are still suffering the consequences almost 200 years after the emancipation of the Southern slaves. Removing uncomfortable books from the classroom and from the libraries will not make the problem go away.