More on Slavery

I wanted to expand on the ideas mentioned by Rabbi Besser in his post. Though I also can't claim to know what will happen in Yemot HaMashiach, I would find it very hard to believe that people will have slaves at that point in history. It seems that although the Torah does have laws concerning slavery; these laws are to limit and control slavery, not to advocate it לכתחילה. The Rambam (Hilkhot Avadim 8:9) states that although technically one can work a slave harshly, it is incorrect to do so, and one must treat a slave as a respected employee (one cannot yell at a slave, nor denigrate him, you must feed him before you feed yourself....). The Rambam concludes his comments by saying how as descendants of Avraham, we are commanded to show traits of kindness and רחמים, which do not come hand in hand with owning a slave!

Although laws controlling slavery might have been necessary for the Torah to assign (since it did exist as an institution for thousands of years - and still unfortunately exists in some countries), this doesn't mean that one must put these laws into practice in what will hopefully be an enlightened, modern age of Yemot HaMashiakh. This is similar to the laws of אשת יפת תואר- the institution exists if you need it, but there's no מצוה to initiate the process. Additionally, there seems to be a clear anti-slavery ethic being expressed in the Torah; both with the value of צלם אלוקים, and with the fact that one of the most pivotal events experienced by the Jewish people was that of being freed from the existence of slavery - יציאת מצרים. Especially with the fact that in most "first world" countries, slavery has been abolished, it seems that mankind has progressed to thankfully now view slavery as a terrible injustice.

Finally, I wanted to share an excerpt from a Dvar Torah that the Chief Rabbi of England, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes on this subject (found here), stating that perhaps the Torah's objective was to lead us to choose to abandon slavery of our own accord, due to viewing it as morally wrong, and not abandoning it simply because the Torah forbade it. Interesting stuff.

"...Yet the Torah does not abolish slavery. That is the paradox at the heart of Behar. To be sure it was limited and humanized. Every seventh day, slaves were granted rest and a taste of freedom. In the seventh year Israelite slaves were set free... During their years of service they were to be treated like employees. They were not to be subjected to back-breaking or spirit-crushing labour. Everything dehumanizing about slavery was forbidden. Yet slavery itself was not banned. Why not? If it was wrong, it should have been annulled. Why did the Torah allow a fundamentally flawed institution to continue?....."

"...G-d wanted mankind to abolish slavery but by their own choice, and that takes time. Ancient economies were dependent on slavery... Slavery as such was not abolished in Britain and America until the nineteenth century, and in America not without a civil war. The challenge to which Torah legislation was an answer is: how can one create a social structure in which, of their own accord, people will eventually come to see slavery as wrong and freely choose to abandon it? ....The Torah did not abolish slavery but it set in motion a process that would lead people to come of their own accord to the conclusion that it was wrong. How it did so is one of the wonders of history."