Bava Kamma 49
Our Gemara on Amud Aleph compares a Canaanite slave to a donkey, in a sense that it is property that can be bought and sold (“am hadomeh lechamor”). This Talmudic dictum has been used to accuse Jews of having legal basis for treating non-Jews as if they were animals. Later in this article, I will discuss some of the meanings to this verse and allusion, but I first feel compelled to respond defensively in a global manner. One should never judge a society by its technical laws, but rather by the actions of its members, whose behavior is influenced by the totality of laws, legal system and culture.
Let us not kid ourselves, each of the world’s major religions have in their scripture harsh rhetoric and vicious hatred toward its enemies, often those who violate its moral codes, the heretics and scoffers. Just like deep in the privacy of the beis midrash you may hear a rebbe voice negative sentiments against “goyim,” so too I am sure despite Vatican II, in many churches, Jews are still described as killers of Christ. Those sentiments were certainly enacted cruelly during the Crusades and Inquisitions, and in minor ways, no doubt continues in some regions of the world, despite Christianity professing love.
Nachmanides, in his famous disputation, quipped that the Christian religion, which was purported to bring Messianic peace to the world, is responsible for the most bloodshed in history. Of course, let us not forget Islam, which not only has violent rhetoric, but through modern times has a large contingent of its adherents who dehumanize and decapitate the infidel. In the Torah, we have similar laws that are technically on the books in regard to infidels, but do we act that way in reality? The Rambam (Laws of Slaves 9:8) delineates a list of behaviors that one should direct toward a Canaanite slave, including not yelling at him, and listening to his complaints. This is hardly a religion and culture that dehumanizes innocent civilians, Jew or slave.
We recently became painfully aware of how many of the advocacy groups who espoused “silence is violence” somehow ignored this idea when it came to Jewish rape victims of October 7. Or those who would fire a professor or censure a student for the wrong pronoun, but allow the most vile and violence-inciting chants on campus in the name of free speech. So, please do not lecture me as a Jew, about what it states in the Talmud. Forgive me for quoting the Christian Bible, when I say, “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”
That aside, the Maharal (Tiferes Yisrael 37 and Gevuros Hashem 4) has a beautiful explanation of the idea of “am hadomeh lechamor.” Aside from Canaanites, Egyptians also earned the comparison to a donkey, and that comes from the verse in Yechezkel (23:19-20):
“But she continued her promiscuity, remembering how in her youth she had behaved immorally in the land of Egypt; she lusted for concubinage with them, whose promiscuity were like those of donkeys and whose ‘body part’ were like those of stallions.”
The Hebrew word chamor stems from the root, chomer, which means material matter. The Egyptian is a slave to his desires and thus servitude and chomer are metaphysically equivalent. (Maharal discusses the Canaanites’ chomer and slavery in a different aspect, but we won’t dwell on that for this discussion.) The Jewish spirit is the opposite. The Jewish connection to G-d and soul is the ultimate liberty: freedom from enslavement to animal instincts (chomer, chamor), and by dint of connection to the Divine, true autonomy, independence and generative ability. The verse (Shemos 32:16) describes the Stone Tablets as “charus,” engraved (Eruvin 54a) and makes a play on words that they offer “cheirus,” freedom.
Maharal says that we know from a mystical standpoint opposites are the same. light and dark, cold and hot are merely on a continuum. Dark is just a far end manifestation of much less light, and cold is on the end of a continuum of heat. However, color and sound are not opposites, so whiteness is not remotely related to quiet, except by way of metaphor. So too, the Egyptians and the Jews were inexorably linked, with the Egyptian mentality on the far end of the freedom-slavery scale, representing lack of spiritual existential determination and agency, and with a tendency toward self-liberation and freedom. This is why the Egyptians were able to enslave the Jews, as they had the same spiritual power as the Jews, just through the dark side.
(My chavrusa of almost 30 years, Dov Nierman, commented on this: This may be why the Egyptians were known to be experts in magic (Menachos 85a), as this is a corresponding opposite to the spiritual power of the Jewish nation.)
The Maharal uses this idea to explain the following verse in a unique manner (Devarim 23:8-9):
“Do not despise the Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land. Children who will be born to them, in the third generation, will enter into Hashem’s community.”
The pashut peshat is that we should show gratitude for the Egyptians, since after all, they did host us in their land, and therefore the third generation of converts is allowed to marry into the Jewish nation.
Maharal goes deeper. One cannot permanently distance an Egyptian convert because they have within them the same quality as the Jew, they are on the freedom-slavery continuum. This is why you were able to dwell in their land and this is why you eventually must admit them into Jewish society, because once they begin their journey toward freedom they have the quality within them to become as you.
This is a profound theological and psychological truth, that opposites are closer to each other than we think, and within one extreme is the potential for the other, good or bad.
