Slavery is wrong. Full stop. And yet its existence in the Torah - moderated but understood as a fact of life - is problematic. There are some who like to say that everything in the Torah is eternally true, but the example of slavery is proof of a more nuanced Jewish reality - that our rabbis have always worked with the Torah to mediate what truth and ethics is for our generation. Take "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" - also in our parasha - which our rabbis have always understood to refer to monetary compensation.
I feel very privileged to be joining this rabbinic conversation in just a few more months.
Let's keep fighting modern day slavery in all its forms.
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