Vayigash - Brothers
“For
your servant took responsibility for the youth from my father saying,
“If I do not bring him back to you then I will be sinning to my father
for all time’. Now, therefore, please let your servant remain
instaed of the youth as a servant to my lord, and let the youth go up
with his brothers.” Genesis 44:32
What
should the attitude of Orthodox Jews be to fellow Jews who are not
religious? The Gemmorah in Kedushin 20a and 20b may shed light on
this important and timely question.
The
Gemorrah there brings up an interesting question. It is
considered a mitzvah to redeem a Jew that has been sold as a slave to a
non-Jew (the non-Jew is called an 'idol worshipper' in the
Gemmorah). The amount of money needed for redemption is reduced
by the amount of time the Jewish slave has already worked. So
normally if a Jew is sold for $1000, and the standard term is for 6
years, after 3 years he can be redeemed for $500, i.e. half. The
question arises, however, what if the value of the slave has gone up or
down? Do we take half of the original purchase price or the price
of what he is worth now? For example, if he was purchased for $1000 and
is now worth $2000 (perhaps because he became stronger, or the price of
slaves went up), and he has served half his time, do we pay $500 (half
of $1000) or $1000 (half of $2000). The same question arises if
his value has gone down, to let's say $500, perhaps because he's not
well or there's a glut on the slave market.
The
Gemmorah concludes that we do whatever makes it easier to redeem the
Jewish slave. If his value has gone up, we use the original
purchase price, and if his value has gone down, we use the value that
he is worth now. But, asks the Gemmorah, why should we be easy on
the slave, perhaps we should be strict according to what Rabbi Yossie
said in the name of Rabbi Channinah. And that is: perhaps we assume the
slave is being punished by Hashem, like the person who buys and sells
Shmittah produce. We see in Leviticus 25 that such a person is punished
in several stages. First he has to sell his moveable possessions, then
he has to sell his land and house, and eventually he has to sell
himself as a slave to a non-Jew. The final and lowest rung he
descends to is that he is sold to the temples of idol worship, and
Rashi says he cuts their wood and fetches their water. So, the
Gemmorah asks, why should we make this slave's redemption easier,
perhaps we should make it harder, seeing how Hashem has pushed him to
lower and lower levels.
The
Gemmorah gives an answer from the Yeshiva of Rebbe Yishmael. They said,
do we recoil from the fact that this Jew is now defiled from working in
the temples of idol worship. No! We don't throw a stone on
someone who has fallen. The reason is that Leviticus 25 concludes
the description of the downward slide of punishments with the sentence,
'There will be a redemption for him, one of his brothers will redeem
him (echad me'achiv yigalenu).' This shows that, now that the Jew
has fallen to the lowest level, he's been punished enough and Hashem
wants his fellow Jews to redeem him, and that is why we make it easier
to redeem him.
If
we look at the Tochachah, the 'chastisements', in Leviticus and in
Deuteronomy, we see there that the Jewish people would suffer the same
kind of progressive degradations as a result of sinning, somewhat
similar to that of the individual Jew as mentioned above. The
difference is that the downward slide of degradations occurs on a
national scale, not only to just one individual. But the rungs on
the ladder have a striking similarity: first people have economic
difficulties, then they lose their houses and land, and they end up in
the lands of the diaspora, dependent on the non-Jews for their survival.
The
final stage of degradation for the individual Jew was working in the
temples of idol worship. Then perhaps we, as a Jewish nation, are
in the final stages of the Tochacha, because today the great majority
of Jews are not only non-religious, but they are working in the very
institutions that produce the atmosphere of Tumah that we are
surrounded by daily.
So
what should our attitude be to these Jews? Should we say we are
to keep as far away as possible from them because they have been
defiled by the temples of idol worhship that they live and work
in. No, says the Gemmorah! We are not to throw a stone on
those who have fallen. 'There will be a redemption for him, ONE
OF THEIR BROTHERS WILL REDEEM HIM.'
We
are called upon to not ignore the plight of our fellow Jew, no matter
what state of Tumah he has descended to, because we are his brothers
and we are obligated to redeem him spiritually from the terrible level
he has sunk to. ONE OF HIS BROTHERS WILL REDEEM HIM.
And
lest you say this only refers to Moshiach, and we are not obligated to
do anything until the ultimate redemption, that is a very different
kind of redemption. If we don't act, then the slave will be
redeemed by the Jubilee year when the trumpets of redemption call
out. That can be compared to the time of Moshiach, when trumpets
of redemption will also ring out.
But
before the Jubilee year, when there are no trumpets yet, there is the
obligation to redeem the Jew enslaved to the non-Jew. Likewise today,
ONE OF HIS BROTHERS WILL REDEEM HIM. This must take place
"one-on-one", Jew to Jew. Each of us has to sit down with a
fellow Jew, and begin the process of spiritual redemption by learning
Pirkei Avos, and other works, with him. We can't stay away from
him, saying that he's Tomay. ONE OF HIS BROTHERS WILL REDEEM HIM.
(Printed in The Jewish Press December 3, 1993, p24)