This week, I am tackling the very difficult topic of the ad infinitum slavery of those from the nations around us in this week’s parshat behar. It is a legacy which has ramifications for us today.  First, let’s look at the relevant passage which I’ve divided into two parts. We all know the first part for it is frequently and proudly quoted:

If your kin under you continue in straits and must be given over to you, do not subject them to the treatment of a slave. Remaining with you as a hired or bound laborer, they shall serve with you only until the jubilee year. Then they, along with any children, shall be free of your authority; they shall go back to their family and return to the ancestral holding. — For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude. — You shall not rule over them ruthlessly; you shall fear your God (Leviticus 25: 39-43).

The second part is less known, less talked about, ignored and even justified, or explained away:

Such male and female slaves as you may have—it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also buy them from among the children of aliens resident among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property: you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves; But as for your Israelite kin, no one shall rule ruthlessly over another (vs. 44-46).

We tend to slough over the fact that God has commanded us to take slaves and keep them as slaves in perpetuity, so long as they are from the nations around us. Often we prefer not to acknowledge these verses, perhaps because they were used as justification of slavery in the South.

In the Torah: A Women’s Commentary I found a refreshing acknowledgement of what is actually written in the latter verses:

44-46. Indentured foreign females and males do not go free. When sold into slavery, foreigners become the Israelites’ possession “for all time” (v. 46). This harsh ruling contradicts other laws in Leviticus that specify an identical law for the Israelite, the foreigner, and the resident alien (as 24:22 states: “you shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike”; see also

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