Judaism and slavery

Jewish views on slavery are varied both religiously and historically. Judaism's ancient and medieval religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves. Texts that contain such regulations include the Hebrew Bible, the 12th-century Mishneh Torah by rabbi Maimonides, and the 16th-century Shulchan Aruch by rabbi Yosef Karo. The original Israelite slavery laws found in the Hebrew Bible bear some resemblance to the 18th-century BCE slavery laws of Hammurabi.Hastings, p. 619 The regulations changed over time. The Hebrew Bible contained two sets of laws, one for Canaanite slaves, and a more lenient set of laws for Hebrew slaves. From the time of the Pentateuch, the laws designated for Canaanites were applied to all non-Hebrew slaves. The Talmud's slavery laws, which were established in the second through the fifth centuries CE, contain a single set of rules for all slaves, although there are a few exceptions where Hebrew slaves are treated differently from non-Hebrew slaves. The laws include punishment for slave owners that mistreat their slaves. In the modern era, when the abolitionist movement sought to outlaw slavery, some supporters of slavery used the laws to provide religious justification for the practice of slavery.

Broadly, the Biblical and Talmudic laws tended to consider slavery a form of contract between persons, theoretically reducible to voluntary slavery, unlike ''chattel slavery'', where the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. Hebrew slavery was prohibited during the Rabbinic era for as long as the Temple in Jerusalem is not reconstructed (i.e., the last two millennia). Although not prohibited, Jewish ownership of non-Jewish slaves was constrained by Rabbinic authorities since non-Jewish slaves were to be offered conversion to Judaism during their first 12-months term as slaves. If accepted, the slaves were to become Jews, hence redeemed immediately. If rejected, the slaves were to be sold to non-Jewish owners. Accordingly, the Jewish law produced a constant stream of Jewish converts with previous slave experience. Additionally, Jews were required to redeem Jewish slaves from non-Jewish owners, making them a privileged enslavement item, albeit temporary. The combination has made Jews less likely to participate in enslavement and slave trade.

Historically, some Jewish people owned and traded slaves. They participated in the medieval slave trade in Europe up to about the 12th century. Several scholarly works have been published to rebut the antisemitic canard of Jewish domination of the slave trade in Africa and the Americas in the later centuries,Reviewed Work: Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber
by Paul Finkelman. ''Journal of Law and Religion'', Vol 17, No 1/2 (2002), pp. 125-28
Refutations of charges of Jewish prominence in slave trade:
* "Nor were Jews prominent in the slave trade. Of the 40 slave merchants in South Carolina, only 1 minor trader was a Jew." aragraph goes on to list similar breakdowns for other US states– Marvin Perry, Frederick M. Schweitzer: ''Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present'', p. 245. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002;
* "In no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship." – Wim Klooster (University of Southern Maine)
Review of ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'' by Eli Faber
(2000). "Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History", ''William and Mary Quarterly Review of Books. Volume LVII, Number 1''. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
* "Medieval Christians greatly exaggerated the supposed Jewish control over trade and finance and also became obsessed with alleged Jewish plots to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews... Most European Jews lived in poor communities on the margins of Christian society; they continued to suffer most of the legal disabilities associated with slavery. ... Whatever Jewish refugees from Brazil may have contributed to the northwestward expansion of sugar and slaves, it is clear that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery." – Professor David Brion Davis of Yale University in ''Slavery and Human Progress'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 89 (cited i
Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/american/wiesenthal.center//web/historical-facts

* "The Jews of Newport seem not to have pursued the lave tradingbusiness consistently ... henwe compare the number of vessels employed in the traffic by all merchants with the number sent to the African coast by Jewish traders ... we can see that the Jewish participation was minimal. It may be safely assumed that over a period of years American Jewish businessmen were accountable for considerably less than two percent of the slave imports into the West Indies" – Professor Jacob R. Marcus of Hebrew Union College in ''The Colonial American Jew'' (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), Vol. 2, pp. 702-703 (cited i
Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/american/wiesenthal.center//web/historical-facts

* "None of the major slave-traders was Jewish, nor did Jews constitute a large proportion in any particular community. ... probably all of the Jewish slave-traders in all of the Southern cities and towns combined did not buy and sell as many slaves as did the firm of Franklin and Armfield, the largest Negro traders in the South." – Bertram W. Korn, ''Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865'', in ''The Jewish Experience in America'', ed. Abraham J. Karp (Waltham, Massachusetts: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), Vol 3, pp. 197-198 (cited i
Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/american/wiesenthal.center//web/historical-facts

* "here wereJewish owners of plantations, but altogether they constituted only a tiny proportion of the Southerners whose habits, opinions, and status were to become decisive for the entire section, and eventually for the entire country. ... nly one Jewtried his hand as a plantation overseer even if only for a brief time." – Bertram W. Korn, "Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865", ''The Jewish Experience in America'', ed. Abraham J. Karp (Waltham, Massachusetts: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), Vol 3, p. 180 (cited i
Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/american/wiesenthal.center//web/historical-facts
and to show that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.Anti-Semitism. Farrakhan In His Own Words. On Jewish Involvement in the Slave Trade
an

. adl.org (December 31, 2001). They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every Spanish territory in North America and the Caribbean, and "in no period did they play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades" (Wim Klooster quoted by Eli Faber).Herbert Klein (Journal of Social History)
Review of ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'' by Eli Faber
"Journal of Social History" 33.3 (2000) 743-745

American mainland colonial Jews imported slaves from Africa at a rate proportionate to the general population. As slave sellers, their role was more marginal, although their involvement in the Brazilian and Caribbean trade is believed to be considerably more significant.''The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America'', p. 43
by Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael, (Columbia University Press, February 12, 2008); . "During the 1990s, allegations that Jews financed, dominated, and controlled the slave trade captured wide attention and were widely accepted in the African American community (on the latter point, see Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars", ''New York Times'', July 20, 1992, p. A15). Subsequent extensive research demonstrated this was not the case, see David Brion Davis, "Jews in the Slave Trade", ''Culturefront'' (Fall 1992): 42-45
* Seymour Drescher, "The Role of Jews in the Transatlantic Slave Trade", ''Immigrants and Minorities'' 12 (1993): 113-25
Eli Faber, ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight'' (New York, 1998)
Saul S. Friedman, ''Jews and the American Slave Trade'' (New Brunswick, NJ, 1998).
For numerical data demonstrating the minute role played by mainland colonial Jews in the importation of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean and their marginal role as slave sellers, see Faber, ''Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade'', pp. 131-42"; retrieved from Google Books on January 28, 2013. Jason H. Silverman, a historian of slavery, describes the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United States as "minuscule", and writes that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the American South. Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves.

The Exodus

The story of the Exodus from Egypt, as related in the Torah, has shaped the Jewish people throughout history. Briefly outlined, the story recounts the experience of the Israelites under Egyptian enslavement, God's promise to redeem them from slavery, God's punishment of the Egyptians, and the Israelite redemption and departure from Egypt. The Exodus story has been interpreted and reinterpreted in every era and in every location to suit or challenge cultural norms. The result over time has been a steady increase in the governance of masters in favor of slaves' rights and eventually the complete prohibition of slavery.

Biblical era

Ancient Israelite society allowed slavery; however, total domination of one human being by another was not permitted.Hezser, p. 6 Rather, slavery in antiquity among the Israelites was closer to what would later be called indentured servitude.Kushner, 457. Slaves were seen as an essential part of a Hebrew household.Hezser, p. 382 In fact, there were cases in which, from a slave's point of view, the stability of servitude under a family in which the slave was well-treated would have been preferable to economic freedom.

It is impossible for scholars to quantify the number of slaves that were owned by Hebrews in ancient Israelite society, or what percentage of households owned slaves, but it is possible to analyze social, legal, and economic impacts of slavery.

The Hebrew Bibleite slaves (Lev 25:45-46).Hezser, p. 29 The main source of non-Hebrew slaves were prisoners of war. Hebrew slaves, in contrast to non-Hebrew slaves, became slaves either because of extreme poverty (in which case they could sell themselves to an Israelite owner) or because of inability to pay a debt. According to the Hebrew Bible, non-Hebrew slaves were drawn primarily from the neighboring Canaanite nations,Schorsch, p. 63 and religious justification was provided for the enslavement of these neighbors: the rules governing Canaanites was based on a curse aimed at Canaan, a son of Ham, but in later eras the Canaanite slavery laws were stretched to apply to all non-Hebrew slaves.

The laws governing non-Hebrew slaves were more harsh than those governing Hebrew slaves: non-Hebrew slaves could be owned permanently, and bequeathed to the owner's children, whereas Hebrew slaves were treated as servants, and were released after six years of service or the occurrence of a jubilee year. One scholar suggests that the distinction was due to the fact that non-Hebrew slaves were subject to the curse of Canaan, whereas God did not want Jews to be slaves because he freed them from Egyptian enslavement.

The laws governing Hebrew slaves were more lenient than laws governing non-Hebrew slaves, but a single Hebrew word, ''ebed'' (meaning slave or servant, cognate to the Arabic '' abd'') is used for both situations. In English translations of the Bible, the distinction is sometimes emphasized by translating the word as "slave" in the context of non-Hebrew slaves, and "servant" or "bondman" for Hebrew slaves.Jewish Encyclopedia. ''Ebed'' is also used, throughout the Hebrew Bible