Sirs, far from renouncing either of the two sorts of freedom . . . it is necessary . . . to learn to combine the two together.
~ Benjamin ConstantFootnote 1
Introduction
In modern times, Jews have integrated as equal citizens in western countries as well as re-established their own independent state. From these new realities emerges the contemporary intellectual quest for the political ideas that can be derived from within the Jewish tradition.Footnote 2 In an attempt to follow that quest, this article analyzes a passage in the Talmud—the most important, and still very influential, Jewish corpus of the first millennium—to show how one can reconstruct political concepts even from those rabbinic discussions dealing with legal and religious issues that are not explicitly political. This will contribute to the goal of expanding the canon of political thought.
The other major goal of this article is to produce a dialogue between Talmud and western political theory by focusing on the concept of liberty. To a large extent Isaiah Berlin's 1958 lecture on “Two Concepts of Liberty” launches a longstanding and still lively debate about that concept.Footnote 3 His lecture, undoubtedly the most influential single text on contemporary discourse on liberty,Footnote 4 will be used here as groundwork for the dialogue between Talmud and modern political theory. In summary, Berlin's argument reads as follows:
As the title of his lecture indicates, Berlin identifies two concepts of liberty, one negative, the other positive.Footnote 5 The negative concept of liberty is primarily preoccupied with the question: “How far does government interfere with me?”Footnote 6 In this sense, I am free as long as “no man or body of men interferes with my activity.”Footnote 7 Hence liberty is characterized by “the absence of obstacles to the fulfillment of man's desires.”Footnote 8 Negative liberty, Berlin explains, does not necessarily entail a preference for democracy over other forms of government, because democracy might heavily interfere with its citizens’ activities while “a liberal-minded despot” might “allow his subjects a large measure of personal freedom.”Footnote 9
The positive concept, however, focuses on the question: “Who governs me?”Footnote 10 In this sense, liberty is “the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master.”Footnote 11 It is a concept of self-realization and self-perfection according to which I am free to the extent that I realize my human potential, be it religious, political, or otherwise.Footnote 12 Thus positive liberty can be taken, for example, as a requirement of the self not to pursue its “immediate pleasures” but rather to be itself “at its best.”Footnote 13 It can also be taken as requiring the self to be active in politics so that in obeying the laws, it, at least in theory, obeys itself. In this sense, positive liberty seems to necessitate democratic rule. Positive liberty means that I am free as long as I can say that it is I who governs myself, and I am not governed by my internal low impulses nor by a ruler for whose election to office I am not responsible.
To illustrate the difference between these two concepts, let us take the example of someone sitting in a room all day long and doing nothing. He is negatively free, as nobody prevents him from opening the door and going outside but positively unfree in being idle and presumably not realizing his human potential.
Berlin clearly prefers the negative concept and warns against the dangers of the positive concept. Although the positive concept requires the person to govern himself, Berlin fears the argument made by philosophers and political leaders that they must “coerce men in the name of some goal . . . which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt.”Footnote 14 Someone would, in the name of positive liberty, coerce that person to leave his room and engage in a religious activity, for example, in order to exercise control over himself and realize his “true” self. When taken to support “the sovereignty of the people” the positive concept once again imperils liberty since it can turn into “the tyranny of the majority”;Footnote 15 in our example, free citizens are those who can collectively decide to banish such an idle person from their city.Footnote 16 Therefore, Berlin concludes that these two concepts reflect “profoundly divergent and irreconcilable attitudes to the ends of life.”Footnote 17 While negative liberty wants “to curb authority as such,” positive liberty wants to place it in the right hands.Footnote 18
Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, influenced by Berlin's argument, attempt to revive a third, “republican” concept of liberty.Footnote 19 Skinner characterizes this concept as an “absence of dependence” and Pettit calls it “non-domination.”Footnote 20 The starting point of the republican concept is the contrast—which we will later find in the heart of the talmudic passage—between the free person (liber homo) and the slave (servus) in Roman law. The focus of the republican concept is on social status.Footnote 21 In this context the first step toward understanding liberty is to ask: Who is the slave? For Skinner and Pettit the answer is: A slave is a person who is dominated by, and dependent upon, the arbitrary will of another person. Liberty is characterized, therefore, by the absence of domination and by independence.Footnote 22 Skinner and Pettit show how that understanding inspired early modern political theorists and activists in the seventeenth-century English Civil War and in the eighteenth-century American Revolution to argue that citizens are slaves even to a non-interfering king as long as “the crown possesses a prerogative right . . . to imprison without trial and impose levies without parliamentary consent.”Footnote 23 Hence, they argue, the republican concept dictates that a person who is dominated, albeit by a kind and non-interfering master, is still a slave, while Berlin's negative concept of liberty—which consists in the absence of interference—dictates that that person is to be deemed free.
Equipped with these different views of liberty, this article offers an original reading of a passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Giṭ 12a–13a, in order to reconstruct a somewhat latent Jewish approach to slavery and liberty. The primary and counter-intuitive question of this talmudic passage concerns whether liberty is necessarily beneficial to a slave or not. In arguing for either side of this “yes or no question,” the rabbis contrast slavery to liberty so that each of the talmudic ideas relating to slavery mirrors its counterpart, liberty.Footnote 24 Therefore, although the Talmud emphasizes here slavery more than liberty, clinging to the question “is liberty beneficial to a slave?” allows us to examine fundamental understandings of both slavery and liberty implicit in the Talmud.
I first examine the Talmud's main legal question and compare its diverse approaches to slavery with those found in ancient Greek and Roman literatures. Next, I identify a talmudic concrete approach to thinking about slavery and liberty that yields a thick and multi-faceted notion of liberty. Finally, I consider the possibility that a person might indeed prefer the benefits of slavery. This possibility reveals a paradox in the negative concept of liberty, of which Isaiah Berlin did not take account. I therefore conclude that the concept of negative liberty is thin and unsustainable and needs to be replaced by a concrete and thick liberty, which I will locate in the talmudic passage, as a better alternative.
Is It Beneficial for a Slave to be Free?
I shall now address the talmudic passage and analyze its understanding of slavery and liberty while keeping in mind the three notions of liberty presented above. This talmudic passage considers a Mishnah (a Tannaitic, or early rabbinic text, from around the second or early third century CE) that asks whether or not a husband may change his mind and retract his document of divorce and, similarly, whether or not a slave-owner may retract his document of manumission for a slave after the document in question has already been sent out but before it is delivered by an agent. The Mishnah reads as follows (see also Appendix I):Footnote 25
A man who says [to his agent]: “give this document of divorce to my wife,” or “this document of emancipation to my slave,” if he wants, he may retract both [instructions]; this is the opinion of Rabbi Meir.
The Sages said: [he may retract] only in documents of divorce but not in slaves’ emancipation; [according to the principle that] we may benefit a person in his absence but we may not disadvantage him except in his presence;
For if he wants, he does not have to feed his slave, but he has no permission not to feed his wife.
He [R. Meir] said to them: does he not disqualify his slave from terumah [priestly food] as he disqualifies his wife?
They replied: because he [the slave] is his property.
As mentioned, the Mishnah presents two legal questions: Can a husband retract his document of divorce? Can a master retract his document of manumission? R. Meir, a second century CE Galilean Sage, maintains that in both cases, divorce and manumission, the husband or master can change his mind, as long as the document has not reached the addressee, be it his wife or his slave. While the other Sages agree with R. Meir that a husband can change his mind before his wife gets the document of divorce, they argue, unlike R. Meir, that the master cannot retract his slave's emancipation. Thus only the slave's manumission is disputed.
The Mishnah provides the legal reasoning of R. Meir and the other Sages. The source for their controversy lies in the following question: Is liberty necessarily beneficial for a slave? It is a legal axiom for the rabbis that one can benefit a person in his absence but can disadvantage him only in his presence.Footnote 26 With this axiom in place, the rabbinic dispute turns to whether emancipation advantages or disadvantages the slave.
The Sages argue that while the husband is obliged to provide food for his wife, a master has no such obligation toward his slave, and therefore divorce is disadvantageous but liberty is beneficial. In other words, in his manumission the slave does not lose legal rights but only his bondage. Therefore, we benefit him with freedom even in his absence.
In his rejoinder, R. Meir points to the law that a slave living in a priest's household eats terumah, the priestly tithes, just as the priest's wife does, whether or not she was born of a priestly household. If the priestly owner were to release him, the slave would no longer possess these dietary privileges, just as the non-priestly wife divorced from her priest-husband would not retain her rights to the tithes. Therefore, it might be as disadvantageous for a slave to be free as it is for a wife.
This rabbinic dispute ends in this Mishnah with the Sages replying that a slave eats terumah not as a privilege but only because he is the property of his priestly master. From this perspective, there is no difference between a slave and an animal belonging to a priest; they both are his property and as such are allowed to eat the tithes.Footnote 27
The Tosefta, another Tannaitic text, presents a somewhat different version of this controversy, featuring a dialogue between R. Elazar and R. Meir in which a new aspect of the latter's argument is presented.Footnote 28 The slave who runs away from his priestly master, as well as the wife running away from her priestly husband, retain their right to eat the tithes. So therefore, argues R. Meir—as R. Elazar and the Sages admit that a wife is disadvantaged in her divorce in that she cannot eat the tithes—they should acknowledge that a slave too loses this right to the holy food when manumitted. According to the Tosefta's presentation of R. Meir's opinion, that the slave retains his right to the holy food, in spite of his master's reluctance, shows that being enslaved to a priest is beneficial. Hence, liberty, in this case, is not to be considered beneficial.
The Slave in the Eyes of the Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud)
The Yerushalmi, a later rabbinic corpus redacted in fifth-century CE Palestine, analyzes this Mishnah and helps us understand R. Meir's opinion that liberty is disadvantageous. In light of the elaboration of the Yerushalmi on this issue, R. Meir's point about the slave's permission to consume tithes can be interpreted as an example of the slave's enjoying his master's high status.Footnote 29 The Yerushalmi inquires in the name of R. Yoḥanan, a third century CE Sage from Tiberias: “Think of it, if it were a slave of an officer, it would be a disadvantage for the slave [to be released].”Footnote 30 That is to say, freedom can be detrimental to an officer's slave. What R. Yoḥanan seems to be teaching here is not only another example of slavery's potential advantages but also a way of reading R. Meir in the Mishnah. We might infer that R. Meir's case of terumah is an illustrative example rather than an exhaustive or exclusive one. Hence, R. Meir attributes to the master-slave relationship the potential benefits the slave can enjoy from his master's high religious, social, and/or political status. Priesthood is an example, but one could speak of a slave of any person of high social status.
The other Sages reject the idea that the master's high status is beneficial to his slave. The Yerushalmi elucidates the Sages’ rejoinder: “You have only the following: If he sells his slave without his knowledge, is he not sold? And if he divorces his wife without her knowledge, is she divorced?”Footnote 31 These two rhetorical questions point to the legal approach of the slave's being “his master's property,”Footnote 32 and therefore his master can sell him even without his knowledge and consent. This supports the Sages’ view that slavery is detrimental, inferring that its opposite, liberty, is beneficial.
The Babylonian Talmud's reading of the Tosefta (presented above) supports the Yerushalmi's presentation of the Sages’ account of slavery. The Tosefta ends with R. Meir's argument that liberty can be detrimental to the slave.Footnote 33 But this bothers the Bavli. To give the final word to R. Meir would be inconsistent with the talmudic rule that the law should follow the opinion of the majority of the Sages; the Sages must therefore have an answer to R. Meir's last argument. What would it be? Rava, a fourth-century Babylonian rabbi, imports the Sages’ argument in the Mishnah “because he is his property” into the Tannaitic conversation in the Tosefta and argues that the master can sell his escaping slave for a very low price and so disqualify the slave from eating the tithes.Footnote 34 This very power that the master has to sell his slave, which is highlighted in both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, aims to expose something fundamental about the Sages’ account of slavery, namely, in the words of the Mishnah, that a slave is no more than “his master's property.” Keith Bradley, a historian of slavery in the Roman Empire, writes in a similar spirit: “The ability to be sold was the slave's most compelling reminder of his status as sheer commodity.”Footnote 35 Along similar lines, those who promote the republican view of liberty (presented above) argue that even if you are a slave to a very kind and not interfering master you remain a slave because you know that he can, one day, change his attitude and use his legal power against your interests.Footnote 36
The Yerushalmi's elaboration on the Tannaitic controversy does give the last word to R. Meir. In inquiring whether liberty would be detrimental to an officer's slave, and facing the Sages’ argument that a slave is merely his master's property, the Yerushalmi provides a hypothetical counter-argument on behalf of R. Meir. “R. Abin said [indeed] he is his [master's] property; nonetheless, he disqualifies him [his slave] from the tithes [by manumission].”Footnote 37 To be sure, says R. Abin, R. Meir concurs with the Sages that a slave is his master's property. Nonetheless, he argues, servitude to an important master might emerge as an advantage. Being qualified to eat tithes, for example, symbolizes the high religious, social, and political status of the Levites (the priestly tribe) that a priest's slave shares.Footnote 38 In such a case, freedom prevents the slave from legal, social, theological, and dietary privileges.
An Ancient Context
The very idea that someone can prefer slavery over freedom may seem strange to modern people. However, as Moses Finley notes, in first century Rome “much [of] the greatest opportunity for social mobility lay among the imperial slaves,” not “among the free poor.”Footnote 39 Dale Martin adds that “slavery to an important person bestowed on the slave a certain amount of prestige and power, a status-by-association”; and, “it mattered less that one was a slave than whose slave one was.”Footnote 40 Apparently, not only an important person's slave would refrain from manumission. Many slaves were, unlike poor and free people, secured with clothing and food provided by their masters. Epictetus, a second–third century CE Stoic philosopher and an ex-slave himself, describes the freed slave's regrets: “Why, what was wrong with me? Someone else kept me in clothes, and shoes, and supplied me with food, and nursed me when I was sick; I served him only in few matters. But now, miserable man that I am. . . .”Footnote 41 This view is also expressed in the biblical stories about the Israelites who said to Moses time and again that they preferred the life of slavery in Egypt rather than the repercussions of the free and independent life.Footnote 42 Ephraim Urbach argues that in the rabbinic tradition, too, a slave's religious status depends on that of his master.Footnote 43 In addition, he presents earlier and later rabbinic and non-rabbinic passages reporting the good fortune priest's slaves could have, so much so that some slaves were eventually, though illegitimately, absorbed into the priesthood.Footnote 44
Thus taking into account the ancient literary and factual contexts of slavery and liberty brings us to the conclusion that sometimes it is better to remain secured in slavery than be free to fail. Framed in the terms of the republican concept of liberty, and contrary to its basic assumption, R. Meir's rejoinder to the Sages is that to be a slave is not necessarily to belong to a lower status than a free person; there are slaves of higher status than free persons. This insight clarifies also how R. Meir, R. Yoḥanan, and R. Abin could raise an argument that freedom might be detrimental to a slave of a priest or of an officer. It is not surprising therefore to find that R. Yoḥanan, a slave owner himself, is described as sharing his own meat and wine with his slave. He justified his conduct with the statement of another slave owner, Job: “Did not He who made me in my mother's belly make him? Did not One form us both in the womb?”Footnote 45 That slavery can be beneficial is for R. Yoḥanan not only a matter of theoretical possibility but also of real life practice. The Sages, however, refute this viewpoint. Instead of looking into the slave's sharing in his master's status, they examine the master's positive legal obligations toward his slave, and they see none.
These two opposed understandings of slavery were not unknown in the ancient world. How then are we to describe the master-slave relationship? Is the master always a tyrant toward the slave? Is he not sometimes a source of pride and hope for a better social and economic future? In his Politics, Aristotle differentiates between two kinds of master-slave relationships. In the natural state of things, he says, the slave is a part of his master, they both benefit from their relationship, and there is “a certain community of interest and friendship between slave and master.”Footnote 46 But if their relationship is not based on nature but on force and law, there will only be enmity between them. While the rabbis certainly do not speak (at least in our passage) of natural slavery, these two realities can be taken as support for the respective rabbinic standpoints: The notion of a community of interest is coherent with R. Meir's view in that the slave too might derive benefit from slavery. Force and law reflect the Sages’ point that in order to understand slavery, one should examine closely and exclusively the owner's legal power over the slave and economic interest in him.
The Slave in the Eyes of the Bavli [Babylonian Talmud]
The Bavli's passage seeks to understand the exact meaning of the Mishnaic rule that the master “does not have to feed his slave.”Footnote 47 That rule, stated in both our Mishnah and Tosefta to justify the Sages’ viewpoint that slavery is detrimental, can be interpreted in two contrasting ways: (1) that the slave feeds himself from the earnings of his work and cannot require his master to feed him; (2) that the master can take the entire earnings of his slave and yet has no obligation to feed him (App. II.b–c). The first interpretation obviously reflects a more humane approach to the master-slave relationship than the second interpretation. However, the Tannaitic sources that the Bavli consults do not convey a single or clear answer to this inquiry.Footnote 48
In the course of its discussion, the Bavli expresses three elements of its conception of slavery. One element lies in a talmudic statement related to an unproductive slave whose earnings cannot cover his basic needs. Can a master let this unprofitable slave go hungry? The Bavli rejects such a reading of the Mishnah, since no one would want to own “a slave who is not worth the bread of his stomach” (App. II.g.).Footnote 49 In my reading, this statement goes beyond the primary question about the extent to which a master is obligated to feed his slave. It addresses slavery through the economic interest of his master. This is reminiscent of Cato the Elder's treatment of his aging slaves that Plutarch, a first–second century CE historian, criticizes. “When they [the slaves] got older, he [Cato] thought that he ought to sell them and not feed useless workers.”Footnote 50 As long as they worked and profited him, Cato was willing to feed them, but once they became unprofitable, he sold them. Plutarch continues: “For myself, I consider his conduct toward his slaves in getting full use of them like pack-animals, and then, when they got old, driving them off and selling them, as a mark of a thoroughly inflexible character, unable to recognize any dealings between man and man except necessity.”Footnote 51
In this statement, Plutarch presents an alternative understanding of slavery to that of Cato and the Sages. Plutarch explicitly renounces the view of slavery “like pack-animals” while adopting a more humane attitude toward slaves.Footnote 52 Surely, Plutarch does not speak directly to the legal concern in this Mishnah. Nonetheless, his critique of Cato stresses the potentially better life for the slave. His view opposes the Sages’ argument that a slave does not share his master's status, since he remains only “his property” and is allowed to eat the tithes just like the priest's animal.Footnote 53 A humane master recognizes his slave as a person rather than considering him mere chattel. While R. Meir (in the Mishnah and Tosefta), R. Yoḥanan, and R. Abin (in the Yerushalmi) agree that a slave is his master's property, they remind us of the possibility that a slave may prefer to remain a slave. One can imagine a person preferring to be a slave to a master with the attitude of Plutarch or R. Yoḥanan rather than to be a free and poor layman.
Besides our Mishnah, the Talmud considers two other Tannaitic sources in investigating the Mishnaic general rule that the master has no obligation to feed his slave. Those sources deal with slaves in uncommon situations. One is a Tosefta about a slave exiled to a city of refuge (because he killed someone inadvertently), of whom it says “his master is not obligated to feed him, and not only that, but his earnings go to his master”; in the case of an exiled wife, however, “her husband is obligated to feed her,” and yet he can say to her: You take your earnings and feed yourself (App. III.a.).Footnote 54 At the core of this Tosefta lies the following contrast: a husband's obligation to feed his exiled wife, and a master's exemption from the obligation to provide his exiled slave's food. Yet, the anonymous layer of the Talmud sticks to an unlikely interpretation that this Tosefta speaks of a master who enables his slave to use his earnings for his basic needs (and the slave will transfer the surplus of his earnings to his master), and this is why the master is exempted from providing his slave's needs (App. III.c.). A simple and straightforward reading of this Tosefta, however, would rather dictate that a master can take all the earnings of his exiled slave and yet not feed him.Footnote 55 However, the Bavli proposes that unlikely interpretation in order to keep its question open. This will serve the Bavli to allow for a controversy between Amoraim (i.e., a later generation of rabbis, following the Tannaim) on this point (App. V.m.; VI.g.).
The purpose of the city of refuge, as the rabbis understand this biblical law, is to ensure that the refugee might “live,” implying a greater care for the refugee's life.Footnote 56 Yet, the Talmud admits that even in the case where a slave earns more than his basic needs, the master's taking his surplus in a way opposes the goal that “he could flee to one of these cities and live” (Deut 4:42 JPS), since the surplus of today can become the slave's basic need of tomorrow (App. III.j–k.).Footnote 57 With this point, the Bavli reveals a second element in its understanding of slavery. If the master takes the entire earnings of his slave and so prevents him from securing his future basic needs, his power puts the preservation of his refugee slave's life at risk.
That the master can represent a risk to his slave's life is more emphatically expressed in the second Tannaitic source (besides our Mishnah), which the Bavli cites in this passage. It is a Tannaitic dispute (unknown elsewhere) about whether a slave can require his master in time of famine either to feed him, or to release him (App. IV.b.). R. Simon b. Gamliel maintains that the master, if he does not want to feed his slave in time of famine, is obliged to release him upon the slave's request. The Sages, however, maintain that the master has no such duty. Instead of interpreting this baraita (i.e., Tannaitic passage external to the Mishnah) so that R. Simon b. Gamliel and the Sages disagree exactly on the Talmud's primary question about the extent to which a master is obliged to feed his slave, the Bavli proposes that they disagree about something else. It is about the expected Israelite sense of mercy toward a slave begging for charity in time of famine. If people are more compassionate only toward a free person, then the slave must be freed. If, however, people have the same degree of compassion for the slave as they have for a free person, the master is not obliged to release him (App. IV.f.). Although the word “compassion” does not appear at all in the baraita, the Bavli's redactor provides again an unlikely interpretation in trying to keep its primary question alive.Footnote 58
Times of famine can be trying for ordinary people, and especially for slaves. Complex issues related to the institution of slavery are exposed in such critical times. Cicero (first century BCE) reports Hecaton's question: “Is it consistent with a good man's duty to let his slaves go hungry when provisions are at famine price?” Hecaton examines this question from two opposite points of view: “expediency” and “human feeling.” These represent the two approaches to slavery with which we deal here. Hecaton concludes with the expediency side of the matter, paralleling the Sages’ opinion in the baraita that a master is not obligated to feed his slave in time of famine.Footnote 59 This is also coherent with the Sages’ point in the Mishnah that a slave is first and foremost his master's property.
Once the Talmud has decided that Tannaitic sources do not convey an answer to its primary question, it moves on to bring in statements of two Amoraim (i.e., post-Tannaitic rabbis), Rav and R. Yoḥanan (both third century CE). The first issue is about a master sanctifying his slave's hands so that all his work belongs to the Temple treasure (App. V.).Footnote 60 How can such a slave eat? Meaning, how can he provide for himself if everything he earns already belongs to the Temple? The Talmud cites two contradictory statements in the name of Rav. According to one statement, that slave whose master has sanctified the slave's hands (without providing for him), must go through a certain procedure (“he borrows, eats, and repays”) that allows him to provide for his basic needs (App. V.a.). According to the other statement, the slave whose hands were sanctified does not need any special procedure, but he works and provides for himself (App. V.j.).Footnote 61 In terms of the talmudic primary question, one would deduce from the first statement in the name of Rav that a master can take all his slave's earnings without providing for his basic needs, and this is why a special procedure is needed to overcome the slave's predicament. However, one would deduce from Rav's second statement that a master has no right to take everything from his slave while giving him nothing. Therefore sanctifying a slave's hands is illegal, and in such a case the slave can work and feed himself.
Surely, the Talmud would not be satisfied with a contradiction between two statements in the name of Rav. For the sake of coherence, therefore, the Bavli proposes that the first statement presumes a master providing for the slave, and thus he can sanctify his slave's hands, while the second statement does not presume it and thus he cannot (App. V.k.). This interpretation enables the Talmud to conclude that according to Rav a master cannot take everything from his slave while giving him nothing (App. V.m.).
Notwithstanding the more humane approach toward a slave in its interpretation of Rav, the anonymous layer of the Bavli reiterates the first element of its understanding of slavery. According to the Bavli's interpretation of Rav, if the master provides his needs, the slave can go through a certain procedure and provide for himself more than his basic needs. The Talmud then asks: Why would such surplus be permitted to him? The Talmud replies that the Temple treasure gains from “the betterment of its slave” (App. V.g.). From this perspective, that the slave can take care of his extra needs is not necessarily a sign of a humane attitude but rather of the economic interest of his master.
The Bavli attributes to R. Yoḥanan the view that a master can take everything from his slave while giving him nothing (App. VI.g.). In doing so, the Talmud attributes to R. Yoḥanan an alternative interpretation to the one we have ascribed to him above. The Bavli establishes its interpretation on R. Yoḥanan's ruling that in a case where “he who cuts [off] the hand of another man's slave,” the master of that slave gets all the compensation for the injury, and yet is not committed to feed his slave; the slave's basic needs are provided for through charity (App. VI.a.).Footnote 62 One could almost imagine the injured slave, missing his hand, wandering and begging for charity. Thus, the Talmud concludes that, contrary to Rav, R. Yoḥanan thinks that a master can take everything from his slave while giving him nothing.Footnote 63 The Talmud's conclusion with R. Yoḥanan seems to me to serve as a rhetorical tool that strengthens the Sages’ view (in the Mishnah) that slavery is disadvantageous to the slave. With such a gruesome picture, could anyone say that liberty is not beneficial?
Indeed, subsequent to its analysis of R. Yoḥanan's opinion, the Bavli brings forward the parallel Tosefta to our Mishnah (analyzed above) but with a difference in its opening statement. In the Tosefta, R. Elazar raises an open question: “We said to R. Meir: ‘What is the reason that we benefit a slave when he is absent?’”Footnote 64 In the Bavli, however, R. Elazar's statement expresses direct criticism of R. Meir: “We said to Meir: ‘After all it is beneficial for a slave to be free!’” (App. VII.a.). This critique, I argue, is coherent with the Bavli's conclusion that for R. Yoḥanan a master can take all his slave's earnings and yet not provide for his basic needs. It is also consistent with the general attitude to understanding slavery we have so far identified throughout the talmudic passage. The points we have stressed put forward a picture of the slave's body—including his stomach and hands—as the property of his master. The slave is at his master's service, even to the point where it might endanger the slave's life.
The talmudic passage concludes with the following inquiry (App. VIII.a.): According to R. Meir, why would liberty be detrimental not only to a priest's slave but also to an Israelite's slave? Since an Israelite does not seem to confer special rights and privileges upon his slave, is it not the case that liberty is certainly beneficial to him? The Bavli replies with a statement in the name of R. Shmuel b. Yitzhak: “[In his emancipation] he deprives him of [having sexual relationships with] a Canaanite slave woman” (App. VIII.b.). In response, the anonymous layer of the Talmud challenges (App. VIII.c.): “On the contrary, he permits him in [marrying] a free woman!” Then comes the Bavli's dramatic statement concluding the whole passage (App. VIII.d.): “A slave in license is comfortable, [since a Canaanite slave woman is] meretricious to him, frequent to him, not coy with him.”Footnote 65 We can see here two alternative visions of what is beneficial to the slave: On one hand, licentious sexual relationships with a slave woman; on the other hand, the restrictive contractual relationships with a free woman. Whereas liberty comprises obligations exemplified by marriage,Footnote 66 in slavery a man enjoys his licentious, cheap sexual life.Footnote 67 The Bavli makes the case on behalf of R. Meir that liberty might be disadvantageous in that it prevents the slave from having sex with a slave woman. In other words, between his two options the slave prefers license—the third element of slavery disclosed by the Bavli—rather than liberty.
Emerging Notions of Slavery and Liberty
Now that we have analyzed the whole talmudic passage, it is time to emphasize and summarize its underlying notions of slavery and liberty. The passage, as we have seen, focuses on one simple question: Is liberty necessarily beneficial to a slave? The Sages say “yes,” while R. Meir says “no.” The Mishnah provides a short account of their dispute. Let us start with the Sages. They think that liberty is beneficial to a slave, since his master has no obligation to feed him. The Bavli's passage seeks a specific interpretation to the rule—which serves the Sages’ argument in both the Mishnah and the Tosefta—that the master is not obligated to feed his slave.
On the one hand, the Bavli attempts to minimize the Tosefta's bold ruling against the exiled slave (that his master does not feed him and yet takes his earnings). It also tries to shift the focus of the Tannaitic dispute in the baraita about the slave in time of famine from a question about the master's legal power over his slave to a question about the expected compassion and charity toward him. In this way the Bavli seeks to keep open its inquiry whether a master can take his slave's entire earnings and yet avoid any duty to feed him. In the end, the Bavli uses its dilemma both to resolve a contradiction between two statements related to Rav and to suggest that it is a source of disagreement between Rav and R. Yoḥanan.
On the other hand, the Bavli intentionally chooses to interpret R. Yoḥanan so that he leaves the slave in an extremely difficult state in which the master can take his entire earnings and yet not feed him. It seems to me that the Bavli could use its point about compassion and charity—which, as I explained above, the Bavli's redactor uses to moderate the Sages’ ruling about the slave in time of famine—to minimize the scope of R. Yoḥanan's ruling, just as the Yerushalmi does elsewhere.Footnote 68 Moreover, throughout the passage the Bavli's anonymous redactor portrays the slave as chattel and makes the point that the slave's body is seen from the master's economic interest and is exposed to injury. This we saw in a variety of statements regarding the slave's stomach, his sanctified and amputated hands, and with regard to the potential danger to the slave's life in the city of refuge and in time of famine. It should be noted that portraying the slave as chattel is consistent with the expositions of the Sages’ viewpoint about slavery in the Mishnah, Yerushalmi and Rava's statement in the Bavli (App. VII.n.).
With this understanding of slavery, which for the Talmud is the core of the Sages’ argument, liberty is certainly beneficial to a slave. It is important to understand that until the last short section of the Bavli's passage, the Sages do not say a single word about how liberty is beneficial. The only thing they need to do to convince us that manumission is beneficial is to remind us of the essence of slavery. The Bavli's passage contributes to developing the Sages’ view by illuminating some crucial and grave implications of being subjugated to the will and interest of someone else. Hence the Sages’ argument is simple: If slavery is so detrimental, liberty, which for that matter represents not being a slave or not having a master, is beneficial. Thus, the Sages stress a negative element of liberty. They argue that a free man is the one who is not seen by the law as the property of another person; his body is not meant to serve another person's economic interests.
R. Meir does not dispute the notion that a slave is his master's property. But he does argue against the Sages that a slave is not merely his master's property. Based on the Mishnah, Tosefta and Yerushalmi, we can say that R. Meir stresses the notion that a slave can enjoy certain rights and privileges from his state of slavery. The last section of the Bavli's passage has suggested that, according to R. Meir, a slave might prefer his sexual license with slave women over marrying a free woman. Hence, R. Meir does not draw the equation that slavery is bad (ergo liberty is good) because he is not convinced that the slave always considers his life worse than that of a free man's.
License Versus Liberty
The core idea of the Bavli's last section in this passage (App. VIII.) is to distinguish between the licentious sexual relationships of the enslaved man and woman and the restrictive, contractual sexual relationships of the free man and woman. According to R. Meir, the Bavli suggests that the slave might prefer slavery because he prefers license rather than liberty. Whereas liberty comprises obligations exemplified by marriage, slavery has elements of license, such as cheap sexual life.
I would like to stress at this point the distinction between liberty (ḥerut) on one hand, and lawlessness or license (hephqera’) on the other hand. Plato and John Locke ask their readers not to confuse liberty with lawlessness and license, respectively.Footnote 69 In our context, the distinction between liberty and license seems to capture well the talmudic argument ascribed to R. Meir. As we have seen earlier, the Sages stress a negative element of liberty and argue that the slave prefers to be free from his subjugation. They share the assumption of the republican concept that even if a slave enjoys being a slave, he still fears that his master will use his legal power against him (App. I.c.).
However, based on the distinction between liberty and license, R. Meir replies to the Sages (according to the Bavli) that liberty is not a state of license either. If the slave's tendency is to run from obligations and external obstacles, he would think twice before giving up his sexual license with a Canaanite slave woman.Footnote 70 From this perspective, a free person marrying a free woman with the obligations that come with it represents a positive element that the Bavli incorporates into its conception of liberty. The legal obligations imposed on free persons are not reducing their freedom. Liberty is a state in which a person is commanded to live and act according to restrictive laws. In Berlin's terminology, this talmudic text conveys the message that a slave is governed by his low impulses while the free man realizes his human potential by controlling himself in light of socio-religious legal obligations.
Reading the Talmud's passage from a woman's perspective reveals a contrast between the free and the slave woman.Footnote 71 While the free woman is respected by the metaphor of a glorious and modest princess (App. III.r.), and her husband must provide her with her basic needs (App. I.c.; III.l.), the picture of the slave woman is one of profound disrespect in that she is treated with sexual license (App. VIII.d.).Footnote 72 The woman's perspective clarifies that restrictive laws imposed on free persons are necessary for the latter's human dignity; lawlessness, however, is a disgrace characteristic of the life of slavery.
It seems to me that the Bavli moves smoothly between two components of liberty. The central part of the passage elaborates on the Sages’ argument that liberty is beneficial while also stressing a negative component of liberty, which we have defined as non-slavery, i.e., not being legally defined as the property of, nor being subjugated to, the interests of another person. In its last section, while explaining R. Meir's position, the Bavli stresses a more positive component of liberty, which we can classify as living under religious, social, and legal restrictions. Our enquiry about the concept of liberty embedded in the anonymous layer of the Bavli's passage finds a thick concept of liberty, one that is not complete without its negative and positive components.Footnote 73 R. Meir and the Sages are not presented by the Bavli as disagreeing on the concept of liberty itself, but rather, as disagreeing on the question of whether it is necessarily beneficial or not. They deal with this question by proposing alternative views on the meaning of being a slave.
The approach of this talmudic passage is “concrete” in its attempt to think about liberty as it is experienced in real life, rather than as an abstract and ideal concept. The peculiar talmudic method that we have encountered was to examine: What does the slave want? What is he passionate about? What does he fear the most? What does he hope for? With these questions the Talmud discusses the benefits of slavery and liberty. These questions have revealed, on the one hand, the slave's fear resulting from his own vulnerability and from the fact that he is legally seen as an object; on the other hand, they have revealed the slave's hope to share in his master's high social status, his desire for sexual license and the profound disrespect attached to it. From the point of view of the male slave, liberty represents an actual state of life in which he would not be considered private property of anyone else; he would not fear exploitative measures of an enslaving master; he would not have the option of rising socially together with his master; he would not be able to enjoy sexual license; and he would be subject to the requirements of the law and be bound to the dignity attached to those requirements. These are elements of concrete liberty. Concrete liberty cannot be reduced to either negative or positive concepts; it must combine being free from, independent of, and neither dominated by, nor subjugated to an enslaving master, with the freedom to act according to higher social, ethical and, religious standards by being subject to legal obligations.Footnote 74
The Problem with Berlin's Liberty
Up until now we have analyzed the concepts of slavery and liberty emerging throughout the talmudic passage while incorporating insights from the negative, positive, and republican concepts of liberty. We have argued that these are not seen by the talmudic passage as distinct concepts but as different facets of one concrete and thick view of liberty as persons would presumably experience it. Based on our talmudic analysis, this section will criticize Isaiah Berlin's very influential distinction between negative and positive liberty and show what kind of benefit can come from the alternatively thick concept we are proposing.Footnote 75
Berlin prefers the view that persons are free so long as they are not interfered with (negative liberty) over the view that they are free only if they realize their human potential (positive liberty). As explained above, he thinks that the latter view endangers liberty.Footnote 76 However, a few years after publishing his thesis, Berlin recognized an error in his negative liberty. Hence he states in his 1970 Introduction to his Four Essays: “I wish to correct a genuine error in the original version of Two Concepts of Liberty . . . it is . . . a position that I consider to be mistaken.”Footnote 77
For if to be free—negatively—is simply not to be prevented by other persons from doing whatever one wishes, then one of the ways of attaining such freedom is by extinguishing one's wishes . . . I could render men (including myself) free by conditioning them into losing the original desires which I have decided not to satisfy. Instead of resisting or removing the pressures that bear down upon me, I can “internalize” them. This is what Epictetus achieves when he claims that he, a slave, is freer than his master.Footnote 78
Thus, to fix this problem, he argues in his 1970 restatement that the question whether you are free or not “ultimately depends . . . on how many doors are open, how open they are.”Footnote 79 Augustine, for example, instructed slaves to “make their very slavery in some sense free, by serving not in crafty fear but in faithful affection.”Footnote 80 Augustine's psychological advice, Berlin says, does not free the slave because in the end doors are not open to him. He cannot do whatever he might like; rather, he must do what his master commands.
However, three relevant points are to be gleaned from our earlier analysis of the talmudic passage in order to complicate Berlin's correction. Firstly, the source of his error is not the spiritual freedom argument that he easily refutes as denial of reality. Instead, his error results from what is unthinkable for him: that a person might desire to be a slave in order to enjoy material and worldly benefits.Footnote 81 Such benefits were presented on behalf of R. Meir in the rabbinic sources examined above: The slave enjoying, on the one hand, his master's high social and religious status, and, on the other hand, his sexual license that he prefers over marrying (contractually) a free woman. Secondly, in such cases becoming a slave is for someone a real door that he wants to remain open. Lastly, although someone might prefer a life of slavery, he is not to be defined as a free person but rather as a contented slave.Footnote 82
In light of these insights, if I want to be a slave of a benevolent king, saving myself from extreme poverty, for example, how could Berlin interfere with me and prevent it in the name of negative liberty? Well, he argues that although I now want to be a slave, tomorrow I might desire things that my master will not allow me to achieve; thus on his account it would be legitimate to prevent my enslavement.
Unfortunately, when facing a person who wants to enjoy the material benefits of slavery, Berlin cannot argue on behalf of (negative) liberty: “This is not what you really want,” since it is especially this attitude that he considers to be the danger of the concept of positive liberty. If someone can know better what you really want, he can coerce you to act according to your “true” will. Such an argument is the source for anti-liberty authoritarian regimes that Berlin fiercely condemns.Footnote 83
I do agree with Berlin that positive liberty alone can become too authoritarian. However, I think that the source of the problem is rooted in the very conceptual distinction between positive and negative liberty. Indeed, as long as we are going to adopt a thin concept of liberty—by which I mean either positive or negative liberty—it will be a weak concept both theoretically and practically. Without its two fundamental components emerging from our rabbinic discussion, i.e., not being subjugated to the will of another person, on the one hand, and being subject to socio-legal restrictive laws, on the other hand, the concept of liberty is dramatically weakened.
Negative liberty's paradox reveals itself, as we have argued, with a contented slave; and positive liberty's danger is revealed, as Berlin shows, with the tyrant who coerces his subjects to be “free.” It seems to me that these problems come from the method of taking the multi-faceted realities of free persons’ lives and making an artificially sharp distinction between two abstract and thin concepts of liberty. If liberty is only “absence of obstacles” to the fulfillment of my desires, on what ground should I be prevented from realizing my desire to be a benevolent king's slave? If liberty is only about “realizing my potential,” why should I not be compelled to act according to my “true self” when I am ignorant of it?
As explained above, the concrete and thick concept of liberty that we have found in the talmudic passage recognizes that liberty should not be defined as an “either positive or negative” concept. To the contrary, the talmudic method of thinking about the actual lives of free persons brings us to the conclusion that there is more to liberty than only non-interference or only self-realization.
Let us now reexamine the problem of the contented slave. The concrete understanding of liberty dictates that a person is not free as long as he is totally subjugated to another person regardless of whether or not he wants to be a slave. You might want to be a slave to a certain master in order to secure your material and social interests, but you cannot argue that you are free under his absolute authority. On this account, a slave lives according to lower socio-religious standards than free people unrelated to the extent of his contentment.
A concrete and thick liberty is also immune to the problem of positive liberty pointed out by Berlin. A political leader might want to educate citizens to realize their human potential, as he sees it, through extreme force and compulsion. Yet, in light of the concrete concept of liberty which dictates that a free person is not subjugated to the arbitrary will of another person (and liberty is not merely about self-realization), this ruler cannot argue that these citizens are free. He might indeed try to make the case that they will be better educated, but he cannot say that they are free under his compulsive policy. The more he tyrannizes them—the less they are free.
While Berlin promotes a distinction between two thin, abstract, and theoretically unsustainable concepts of liberty, we have proposed in this article a talmudic, concrete, and thick view of liberty, arguing that the latter is better protected from the paradoxes inherent to the former.
Appendix: The Babylonian Talmud's Passage, Giṭ 12a–13aFootnote 84
The First Part of the Talmudic Passage
I. Mishnah Giṭ 1:6—Is it Beneficial for a Slave to be Free?
a. A man who says [to his agent]: “give this document of divorce to my wife,” or “this document of emancipation to my slave,” if he wants, he may retract both [instructions], this is the opinion of Rabbi Meir.
b. The Sages said: [he may retract] only in documents of divorce but not in slaves’ emancipation; [according to the principle that] we may benefit a person in his absence but we may not disadvantage him except in his presence;
c. For if he wants, he does not have to feed his slave, but he has no permission not to feed his wife.
d. He [R. Meir] said to them: does he not disqualify his slave from terumah [priestly food] as he disqualifies his wife?
e. They replied: because he is his property.
II. A Slave's Stomach (12a)
a. (A quote from the Mishnah above, line c.) “For if he wants, he does not have to feed his slave”
b. Conclude from that, that the master can say to [his] slave: “You work for me and [yet] I do not feed you.”
c. With what are we dealing here? That he [the master] said to him: “Take your earnings and feed yourself.”
d. In the corresponding [case of a] wife [in the Mishnah] he [could] say to her [too]: “Take your earnings and feed yourself.” Why [is this] not [the case with] the wife [in the Mishnah]?
e. [The Mishnah speaks of] a wife that does not earn enough [to feed herself].
f. [If so, the Mishnah must speak of] a slave that, he too, does not earn enough [to feed himself].
g. A slave who is not worth the bread of his stomach—what does his master or mistress want him for?
III. A Slave in the City of Refuge (12a)
a. Come [and] learn (from a baraita in Tosefta Makkot 2:8): “A slave who was exiled to the cities of refuge, his master is not obligated to feed him, and not only that, but his earnings belong to his master.”
b. Conclude from that, that the master can say to [his] slave: “You work for me and [yet] I do not feed you.”
c. With what are we dealing here? That he [i.e., the master] said to him: “Take your earnings and feed yourself.”
d. If so, why do his earnings belong to his master?
e. [Only] about [the slave's] surplus income [is it said to belong to his master].
f. Is it not obvious [that the slave's] surplus income [belongs to his master]?
g. You might have said that since when he [i.e., the slave] does not have [money to buy his food] he [i.e., the master] does not give him [any assistance]; when he [the slave] has [money for his subsistence] then also [the master] should not take [his earnings] from him.
h. [And the baraita] teaches us [that the master can take the surplus anyway].
i. What is the special significance to the cities of refuge?
j. You could have thought [that since the purpose of the exile to the city of refuge is that “he could flee to one of these cities and live” (Deut 4:42 JPS) you should act so that he lives more.
k. [And the baraita] teaches us [that you should not].
l. But the second clause [of the earlier baraita] teaches: “However, an exiled wife to the cities of refuge, her husband is obligated to [pay for] her food,” implying that he [i.e., the husband] did not say to her [“Take your earnings and feed yourself”], because if he did—why is her husband obligated [to feed her]?
m. And since the second clause speaks of a case where he [the husband] did not say to her [“Take your earnings and feed yourself”], the first clause also speaks of a case where he [i.e., the master] did not say to him [“Take your earnings and feed yourself”].
n. Actually [the baraita speaks of a case where] that he [i.e., the master] said to him [i.e., his slave: “Take your earnings and feed yourself,”], but [the baraita speaks of] a wife that does not earn enough [to feed herself].
o. But the third clause [of the earlier baraita] teaches: “And if he [i.e., the husband] said to her: ‘Take your earnings and feed yourself,’ he is allowed to do so,” implying that he did not say to her [this statement] in the second clause!
p. This is what [the baraita] says: “And if [her earnings] suffice [for her subsistence] and he said to her, “Take your earnings and feed yourself,” he is allowed to do so.
q. [If the wife] earns enough, why should [the baraita] tell [that her husband can ask her to support herself]?
r. You could have thought [that since it is written of a woman in Psalm 45:14], “The royal daughter is all glorious within” [implying that a woman should not work outside for her livelihood].
s. [And the baraita] teaches us [that the husband can ask her to go and work].
IV. A Slave in Times of Famine, A Tannaitic Dispute (12a)
a. Let us say [that the legal question whether a master can say to his slave: “You work for me and yet I do not feed you”] is a matter in dispute between Tannaim (early rabbis).
b. R. Šimon b. Gamliel says: “The slave can say to his master in years of famine: ‘Either feed me or free me,’” and the Sages say: “The decision [whether to free him or not] is in the hand of his master.”
c. Is it not that they disagree over this, that the Sages think that he [i.e., the master] can [say to his slave: “You work for me and [yet] I do not feed you”], and R. Šimon b. Gamliel thinks that he cannot?
d. And does it make sense? [If this is the case, instead of saying,] “Either feed me or free me,” he should have said: “Either feed me or allow me to take my earnings to feed myself!”
e. And furthermore, why is it important to note that it is in years of famine?
f. Rather, with what are we dealing here? [In a case] in which he [i.e., the master] said to him: “Take your earnings and feed yourself” in years of famine, and he [i.e., the slave] did not earn enough [for his subsistence]. R. Šimon b. Gamliel thinks: “Either feed me or free me,” so that people will see me and have mercy on me, and the Sages think: Those who have mercy on free men have also mercy on a slave.
V. Sanctifying the Slave's Hands, Rav's Opinion (12a–b)
a. Come [and] learn: Rav says: “One [master] who sanctifies his slave's hands, this slave borrows, eats, and work, and repays.”
b. Conclude from that, that the master can say to [his] slave: “You work for me and [yet] I do not feed you.”
c. With what are we dealing here? [With a master that] provides him with food.
d. If so, why should he borrow and [only then] eat?
e. For surplus [i.e., food that the slave wants].
f. [In that case,] let the Temple's Treasure say to him: “Until now it was enough for you without a surplus; now, too, it should be enough for you without a surplus!”
g. It is preferable to the Temple's Treasure itself [that the slave works and eats more than his basic need] for the betterment of its slave.
h. “[He] works and repays”? But [his earnings] are immediately sanctified!
i. [The slave performs work and repays his creditors] in fractions of a worth of peruṭa’ [i.e., a coin of very small value].
j. So too, it is reasonable: As Rav says: “One [master] who sanctifies his slave's hands, this slave works and eats,” for if he does not work who will work for him?
k. If you say that this [first statement of Rav (V.a.) speaks of a case] where he [i.e., the master] provides [his slave with food] and he cannot [say to his slave: “You work for me and (yet) I do not feed you.”], and that [second statement of Rav (V.j.) speaks of a case] where [the master who] does not provide [food]—it is well [and consistent].
l. But, if you said, this [i.e., the first statement of Rav] where [the master] does not provide [food] and he can [say to his slave: “You work for me and (yet) I do not feed you.”]—if he does not work who will work for him? (V.j.), [why would we care?] Let whoever who wants to work for him!
m. Rather, conclude from that, that he [i.e., the master] cannot [say to his slave: “You work for me and (yet) I do not feed you.”] [Indeed,] conclude from that.
VI. The Amputated Slave, R. Yoḥanan's Opinion (12b)
a. Come [and] learn: As R. Yoḥanan says: “The one who cuts the hand of another person's slave, compensates for the lost earnings and medical expenses to his master, and that slave is fed from charity.”
b. Conclude from that, that the master can say to his slave: “You work for me and [yet] I do not feed you.”
c. With what are we dealing here? That he [i.e., the master] provides him with food.
d. If so, why should he be fed from charity?
e. For his surplus.
f. If so, “fed” (
)? [Instead] it should have said: “He is supported () [by charity]!”g. Rather, conclude from that, that he can [say to his slave: “You work for me and yet I do not feed you.”]
h. The Master (R. Yoḥanan) says (VI.a.), “He compensates for the lost earnings and medical expenses to his master.”
i. “The lost earnings”: is it not obvious [that it should go to the master]?
j. “The medical expenses” needed to be mentioned since it is he [i.e., the slave] who needed to be healed [by this medical treatment].
k. Yet, it is necessary [that the master should be paid for the medical treatment in a case] where it was estimated that he would be healed in five days, and made a strong medicine for him, and he was healed in three days.
l. You could have said that [the slave receives a compensation for taking a strong medicine because] it is his pain.
m. [R. Yoḥanan] teaches us [that the slave does not receive any compensation].
The Second Part of the Talmudic Passage
VII. Revisiting the Main Question: Is it Beneficial for a Slave to be Free? (12b–13a)
a. It is taught: “R. Elazar said: ‘We said to Meir: ‘After all, it is beneficial for a slave to be free!’
b. He [R. Meir] said to us: ‘It is disadvantageous, for if he was a priest's slave it disqualifies him from [eating] terumah (the priestly tithe).’
c. We said to him: ‘After all, if he [i.e., the master] does not want to feed him and not to support him, he is allowed to do so!’
d. He said to us: ‘And what if a slave who runs away from his priest master and the wife who rebelled against her husband? After all, they [are able to] eat terumah.’
e. And this one [the freed slave] cannot eat [terumah].
f. But [for] the wife it is [considered] a disadvantage [to be divorced] because it disqualifies her from [eating] the terumah and deprives her from her food [which the husband must provide her].”
g. What did [R. Eliezer and the Sages] tell him, and what did he [R. Meir] respond to them?
h. This is what he [R. Meir] said to them: “You have answered me about the food [that the master does not have to feed his slave]; what will you answer me concerning the terumah?
i. And if you were to say: If [the master] wants he can throw the document of emancipation and disqualify him [from eating the tithes]!
j. Yet he [the slave] could leave him, escape, and go out somewhere.
k. And what if a slave who runs away from his priest master and the wife who rebelled against her husband? After all, they [are able to] eat terumah.
l. And this one [the freed slave] cannot eat [terumah].” (VII.k–l. quotes VII.d–e.)
m. He [R. Meir] answered [R. Elazar and the Sages] well!
n. Rava says [in defense of the Sages]: “This is what they [i.e., the Sages] reply [to R. Meir] in our Mishnah (i.e.): ‘Because he [i.e., the slave] is his master's property,’ [meaning] that if he wants, he could take [only] four zuzim from an Israelite [and sell the slave to a non-priest master] and [so] disqualify him [from eating the tithes] wherever he may be.”
The Third Part of the Talmudic Passage
VIII. A Slave Wants License, Not Liberty
a. Let us grant R. Meir with [the case of] a priest's slave [that liberty is detrimental to him]; what would he say [however] about a slave of an Israelite [i.e., is liberty detrimental to him too]?
b. R. Shmuel b. Yitzhak says: “[In the slave's emancipation] he deprives him of [having sexual relationships with] a Canaanite slave woman.”
c. On the contrary, he permits him in [marrying] a free woman!
d. A slave is comfortable in license, [since a Canaanite slave women is] meretricious to him, frequent to him, not coy with him.
