Servitude

A Dvar Torah for Mishpatim - February 2002

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

If you buy a Jewish bondsman, he shall work for six years; and in the seventh he shall go free, for no charge. If he shall arrive by himself he shall leave by himself; if he is the husband of a woman, his wife shall leave with him. If his master will give him a woman and she bear him sons and daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out by himself. But if the bondsman shall say, "I love my master, my wife and my children -- I shall not go free"; then his master shall bring him to the court and shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall bore through his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

The mystery of this passage is, of course, why would a slave ever choose to stay a slave when he could go free for no charge? I used to imagine this slave -- an elderly retainer, someone too passive, too subservient to imagine an independent life, someone of diminished capacities who would rather accept permanent slavery than the ordeals of managing his own personal life out in the big world. What a sad creature, this slave who chooses to stay in the master's house even when the door is opened -- who chooses to have his ear nailed to the threshold rather than walk through that frame to independence. I recall hearing of slaves in the American south after the Emancipation who chose to stay with their masters rather than go out into freedom with all its unknowns. What a strange, sad, agoraphobic impulse, to choose slavery over freedom when it is offered.

But now, at this juncture in my life, I understand this servant somewhat differently, perhaps more neutrally. At various points in life, one has the choice to go or to stay. There are moments at which one can leave his or her obligations and move into uncharted territory. This often happens towards the end of adolescence, when one has the opportunity to leave his or her childhood home. If you go to college, it may happen around when you graduate. It may happen when one enters into or leaves an intimate relationship or leaves a physical home or a job. I hear that there is some mythical moment called "retirement," when sometimes people actually quit working and sometimes even travel or take classes or move to a different place. If it exists, that would be such a moment. There are times when you stand at the doorway, and you can either walk out or turn and go back in.

Why would the bondsman, at that critical seven-year juncture, choose to go? That's easy to answer! Because she is bored; because she is not satisfied with her compensation in the master's household; because she imagines that there are greater adventures out there to experience; because she wants to see the world, meet different kinds of people, have different tasks to do, stretch herself in different directions, try new things; because she feels like she has more to contribute than she gets to in the small world of her present household; because she feels her possibilities are too limited with one master; because she fears that, at the end of he life, when all decisions are in the past, she will regret not having seen and done more, stretched more, learned more, given and received more. She fears that, by settling for one small situation she will be selling herself short.

I understand that servant well! We have one short life, and there is a huge world out there! We all know people who have lived "small lives." What a shame that they didn't travel, didn't get an education, partook of so little of what life has to offer. Given the opportunity, go through the door, of course!

I am a restless person by nature. I am cursed with boredom. I am usually a person who hates to be nailed to a situation, who, given the option, will walk through the door. For me, this past thirteen years has been -- among many other things -- an experiment in staying still, committing to one place, one household, one master, if you like. Like the slave in our passage, I have taken a spouse while here, and my spouse brought children and grandchildren into my life as well. I have learned a bit about the servant who loves his master and chooses to stay.

When I first visited here, nineteen years ago now, and led that little Shabbat service and met the Jews of the Mendocino Coast, some of the people I met had already lived here for ten or fifteen years. I was, what, twenty-five at the time, and I thought that that was an astronomical amount of time to stay in one place. And such a tiny place! Not only that, but it seemed like many of you had built houses, had kids -- it didn't seem like you were going anywhere. I was both fascinated and appalled. You were young people, bright people. And, as I saw it at the time, you were opting out of the big world to make your lives in this tiny pond, seeing the same people at every movie and every party and every wedding and funeral.

But I kept coming back here, from New York and then from Los Angeles. And as I did, I watched with fascination. And I saw things that suggested to me that, in this little pond, relationships were different than mine in the big city. There was a quality of intensity, of experience, of forgiveness, of endurance, of commitment that I kept noticing. It just seemed different to me than what I had known in my travels and adventures.

So in this past week I have spent time with one of my beloved bar mitzvahs from years past and his mother as he goes through a crisis. I visited with another dear friend just as he was getting out of the hospital and is at one of those doorways in his life. I took a walk with someone else, another beloved, who has, over the past few weeks, been trying with all her might to figure out how to be of support to someone else in our community who is ill. I went to our Israel meeting, with all its complexities and facets and frustrations and sparks of wisdom. And here's what I know now that I didn't know when I moved here in the big hundred-year snowstorm thirteen years ago:

Every person is an entire universe. Every conversation is a long trip in an airplane. In a day with your best friends you can lie on a hundred white-sand beaches, have thirty tents collapse, get mugged, eat a four-star Parisian meal and try all the weird snacks available on the streets of Calcutta, all before bedtime. The adventures and perils of relationship-building and maintenance are every bit as challenging as climbing any mountain. And that's even before you touch matters of the soul, of love, of outrage, of the hunger for transcendence that's in us all. There is no shortage of adventure in the household of the master.

And then there is the adventure of smallness itself, of repetition, of staying still. Things deepen, they ripen, they grow. I had no idea, when all this started for me, about cycles, about patterns. I didn't know how the holidays would get richer year after year. I didn't know about the large cycles of births, growing up, aging and death, either in the life of an individual or in the life of a community. I knew nothing of watching a piece of land through the seasons and years. I didn't know that you could get bored and then un-bored, that inspiration and creativity and passion have cycles of their own. Nor did I know about the long oscillations, the way that things don't actually repeat themselves even if they seem to, the ways we seem to swing back and forth through habits and patterns but are actually, as my beloved Rav Kook teaches, being refined and deepened with each swing.

Nor did I understand the matter of servanthood itself. What servant would stay a servant when he could go free, right? This is, as I see it, the central mystery and truth of Jewish wisdom -- that we exist to serve, that we are all servants, slaves, who have the opportunity to leave the path of service, but who also have the opportunity to say, like the servant in our passage, "I love my master, my wife and my children -- I shall not go free." There is no greater meaning in life than loving service, than the service that arises from love, than being a servant to love. Nor is there anything else in life which is as deeply frustrating, as wearying, as aggravating! I am constantly kvetching and moaning, plotting my escape. But then I return to this enduring and frustrating truth: I love my master and my household, and there is nothing else out there in the wide universe that promises greater meaning than a life of loving service. So hell, I may as well do it here.

I believe that we have a master, that service and submission to that master is the highest, deepest calling of any of us. But our master is mysterious and elusive, allowing us to serve with our initiative and imagination as well as with muscle and endurance. Still, we can tell when we are a servant in the master's house and when we are not. We know when we are endeavoring on behalf of love and when we are not.

There are doors and doors, but there is only one master. You can leave one of the master's households and go to another. Or you can choose to free yourself of the bonds of servanthood entirely, to walk out the door into that wide, beckoning world. But then what? Our passage does not recommend either going or staying. It simply poses the possibility of each.

This passage rolls around every year. And when it does, we might each ask ourselves where we stand in that moment. Should we stay or should we go? This servitude, this household, or another? Or, I suppose, a life entirely free of service, free of obligation, free of commitment -- which now looks to me like the poorest, the saddest option. This particular year I am celebrating the mystery and magic of staying. I am celebrating thirteen years-- a childhood's worth -- of life and love in this community, this household in which we find ourselves. I am taking this moment to take stock and to give thanks -- to you, my fellow-servants and my masters, and to God, Who is within and beyond us all. Baruch ata ADONAI she hechayati v'keymati v'higiyati lazman ha-zeh.

© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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