Judaism for the Thinking Person
Religion & Spirituality:Judaism
What do we do about Slavery in the Torah? Ein Midalgin ba-Torah: No Skipping in the Torah!
One of the halakhot of the Torah service is "Ein Midalgin ba-Torah," one may not skip [words, verses, or chapters] during the Torah reading." Underlying this strict practical rule is an important value: we must pay attention to all verses of the Torah, even uncomfortable ones, like those about slavery. In this sermon, I relate this principle to Exodus chapter 21, which includes rules about slavery rather than eliminates it; and then I look at a Bible that actually did skip verses, the so-called "Slave Bible." I will leave it to the listener to hear which verses of chapter 21 (and elsewhere) were included as appropriate for those enslaved by the British to fund the empire through sugar plantations, as I also compare the phenomenon to the 1619 Project's recent article "They sold human beings here."
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