Marking & Labeling: Torah From A Week on Clubhouse
I've spent a lot of time this week on Clubhouse. It's a new social media platform, with an audio only format, that's becoming really popular during the pandemic. There's tons of videos about Clubhouse out there, so go check it out, and feel free to email me if you're interested in getting on the platform.
What I love about Clubhouse, though, is the diversity of people who starting conversations, and the way the app empowers them to take control of those conversations. I spent some time this week in a Room for "Black and Mixed Raced Jews," where the mic was reserved for Jews of color to share their experiences with the rest of us just listening and hopefully learning. It was a fascinating experience, made all the more so by the juxtaposition of this week's Torah portion, Mishpatim, which sets forth the beginnings of a legal and civic code for the Israelite people. Strikingly, for a recently freed people, that code begins with laws about how to treat an Israelite slave.
Written Format
Titles are very important to attract the right kind of attention. It’s a lesson I’ve learned in podcasting, and it’s one the Torah seems to understand as well. This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, meaning laws, is exactly what the name implies—the beginnings of a Jewish legal code which will continue evolving throughout the Torah. By the time Moses dies at the end of Deuteronomy, he’s delivered a holistic system for civic and religious life, given in chunks throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That system becomes the legal code in effect as the Israelites begin conquering Canaan. Later, it governs the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It continues to be refined through the Talmud and the early rabbinic era, and today modern rabbis continue defining and re-defining areas of Jewish law.
One of the first set of laws given in this week’s parsha pertain to how one should treat a Hebrew slave. Even though the Israelites have just recently fled slavery in Egypt, after generations of suffering, slavery is still part of their communal life, even to the point that the Israelites enslave one another.
Exodus 21:2
When you acquire a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment.
If he came single, he shall leave single; if he had a wife, his wife shall leave with him.
If his master gave him a wife, and she has borne him children, the wife and her children shall belong to the master, and he shall leave alone.
But if the slave declares, “I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free,”
his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall then remain his slave for life.
In Jewish law, slavery isn’t for life. Every seven years, Hebrew slaves are set free. Even in the last case the text presents, when a slave whose marriage to another slave was arranged by his master chooses to stay a slave in order to remain with his wife and children, rabbinic commentary is clear that even though the Torah says “he shall then remain his slave for life,” this means until the next Jubilee year, which comes every 50 years after seven cycles of seven years.
This caveat, though, doesn’t ease the pain of watching a recently freed people begin enslaving each other. It’s a concern the Torah seems to share, on some level, with the commandment to physically mark someone who chooses to stay a slave, even if just to remain with their wife and children, by piercing their ear, against the doorpost in full public view, with an awl, which doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience.
The Talmud, in Kiddushin 1:3 interprets the verse this way:
“The door and the door-post which were witnesses in Egypt at the time when I passed over the lintel and the doorposts, when I said, all the children of Israel are My servants and not servants under servants, for which purpose I have also redeemed them from slavery unto freedom, and this one went and bought a master upon himself, therefore shall his ear be bored before the lintel and the door-posts.”
Daat Zkenim, a compilation of commentary from French and German rabbis in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, draws this conclusion:
“Why did the Torah choose the awl as the tool with which to pierce this servant’s ear? The numerical value of the letters in the word מרצע equals 400. It is to remind that servant that seeing that G–d had redeemed the Jewish people from 400 years of slavery, it is unbelievable that he should choose being enslaved to a human master voluntarily. G–d had stated categorically in Leviticus 25:55 “for the Children of Israel are meant to be bound by a master- servant relationship only with their G–d,” not with any human being. If this man chooses to become indentured to a human master he deserves to be punished physically.”
Part of what makes this idea of marking a slave as less than so disturbing is the history of how religion has been co-opted to brand Black people as inherently bad or immoral. The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, and the mark of Cain, in particular, have been associated with blackness for centuries. However, the modern slave trade gave rise, particularly in the United States, to the idea that Black skin was itself the mark of Cain, providing cover, in the form of a religious belief, to white people who were uncomfortable with slavery in their midst, by labeling black skin as a sign of G-d’s disfavor, and using lines like the one from the Torah this week to justify the inhumanity of the slave trade.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week on Clubhouse. A lot of time. Clubhouse is a brand new social media platform. It’s an audio only format, based on real-life conferences. Anyone can open what Clubhouse calls a room, on any topic, and others can join them. Each room has a stage, and an audience. The people on stage can speak, the people in the audience are muted, but can raise their hand. Whoever opens the room controls the conversation–they decide who’s on stage and who’s in the audience, they determine who gets to ask a question, or if questions are even allowed in the first place.
One of the first things I noticed about Clubhouse was the sheer diversity of it. There are endless rooms started by people of color, for people of color, that are filled with people of color. These conversations are being started everywhere–in the tech sector, the start-up sphere, and even in the Jewish community.
I had a chance this week to spend some time in a room labelled Black/Mixed Race & Jewish. The room was started by a woman living in London, who was seeking space to be in community with other Jews of color. The stage in this particular room was reserved for Jews of color, who spoke to their own experiences in the Jewish community. Those experiences were themselves incredibly diverse–with different people speaking in turn about their experiences being born into Judaism, marrying into Judaism, and converting to Judaism. Some had positive experiences, other had more challenging experiences, most had mixed experiences. Many people in the room, though, spoke to the challenge of often being the only Jew of color in their community, and having to balance the obligation to represent Jews of color, and the desire to avoid being tokenized and marginalized as a Jew of color.
What they shared, from perspective, was a feeling of being marked, from the moment they walk into a room, because of the color of their skin. It’s not a feeling that’s exclusive to the Black community, for sure, but it’s heightened by the history of systematic racism in the United States, in the world, and yes in Judaism.
What’s fascinating to me about Jewish text and technology both is how dynamic they are. Clubhouse, with its focus on empowerment is showing how technology can be used to free people’s voices. It’s refreshing, especially in a world where technology seems so purposefully designed to enslave us.
Jewish text is just as dynamic, if only we allow ourselves to reinterpret and reimagine our own history and traditions. Part of that process is including new voices in the conversation, even if that means silencing some old voices to make enough room. Honestly, I think that’s what I love most about Clubhouse, that I don’t really get a say over whether or not I get to speak, and as a result I spend most of my time listening, even when I’m desperate to contribute. Of course, it was listening, not speaking that led me to this episode topic, and maybe that’s a clue.
Shabbat Shalom
