Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

As a new immigrant to Australia, I am constantly looking for new cultural content to acclimatise myself to our new home. I am grateful to a parent at Emanuel who introduced me to the Podcast Conversations. The very first ‘conversation’ I heard was a story which relates quite profoundly to this week’s Parsha, Mishpatim. It tells the true story of a man called Tony Bull. Tony grew up in Hobart, Tasmania and when he was just 11 years old he started stealing money that trusting people left out for milk and firewood. As he got a bit older and bolder, he would break into peoples’ homes for cash. He and his friends would spend the money they had stolen on cigarettes and treats and in his words, ‘play at being a rich kid for the day’. Tony ended up being sent to juvenile centres and then to prison.  

He describes how when he arrived at Risdon prison for the first time, he was in many ways still a kid. He hadn’t even had his first shave and he was terrified! As the barber shaved his head that first day, he advised Tony that the only way to survive was to mind his own business. But it was just three days later that he had to defend himself at a cards game when someone attacked him out of the blue. The attacks were ceaseless and Tony had to learn to defend himself very quickly.  As terrifying as it was, Tony acclimatised to prison life and describes a psychological phenomenon whereby he started to prefer being on the inside of prison walls than on the outside.

Tony explained that when he would get out after serving a sentence, he struggled with freedom. He said in prison he had become institutionalised. Living without freedom had begun to feel safe and right for him. Essentially, Tony was describing a prison in his mind where he kept himself locked in and that prison was stronger and more powerful than any outside prison.  

Tony’s story reminded me of a strange, ancient Jewish law concerning owning a slave that is found in this week’s Parsha. In ancient biblical times, people were allowed to own slaves with certain limits and obligations. Crucially one could not own a slave forever and interestingly one was required to put the needs of your slave before your own. The law about the slave reads as follows: “If you acquire a Hebrew slave, you can keep him for six years, and in the 7^th year you should set him free”.  However, the Torah is interested in a contingency: if the slave said, “I do not wish to go free, I don’t want to leave”, then a person was told to take the slave to the door and pierce his ear against the doorpost and the slave would remain enslaved for life, based on his own wishes.

This is a curious passage and invited me to ponder, why would any slave not want to be set free? Tony Bull’s story helped me to answer this question. The Jewish people have an archetypal story in our narrative, which could be described as ‘From Slavery to Freedom’.  We value freedom and our story of being slaves remains an impetus for so much of Jewish ethics. If our destiny was freedom, the Torah seems to understand that some people might have become acclimatised to slavery, to the point that they even prefer it as an option to freedom. Like Tony Bull’s dependency on prison, slavery could become habitual and start to feel ‘safe’. 

Unlike the Hebrew slave who gets a piercing and remains a slave for life, something amazing happened to Tony. He was in Risdon prison again for a repeat offence when some of the prisoners encouraged Tony to join the debating team. Tony decided to give it a go and his first debate among the prisoners was ‘The Love Boat is a floating brothel’. Tony typed up his argument, got his cards all mixed up, ditched them and went on his own. And he discovered he was good at debating. He grew in confidence and something happened….debating changed the way he saw himself. The debating club in the prison joined an outside roster and non-prisoners, including politicians, came in to debate with them. Tony Bull’s self-esteem grew and grew. He wasn’t just a thief anymore. He was articulate, he was funny and he was smart. And he was eventually able to leave prison and become truly free.

On the night of our redemption from Egypt, the book of Shemot tells us that we splashed the blood of a sheep on our doorpost so that when the killing of the firstborn happened (a problematic plague, but not for this discussion), the Jewish people were passed over and saved. Perhaps the slave who wants to be enslaved forever has his ear pierced on the door post as a symbolic reminder of the doorpost on the night his/her people were freed. The doorpost is an architectural construct that exists to literally shift people from one space to another. Perhaps by being taken to a doorpost, the slave who wishes to remain a slave is being told, “you were FREED from Egypt, you walked out that door a long time ago, your destiny as a human is freedom, not slavery”. I like to believe that perhaps as they went to the doorpost they’d be reminded of that first doorpost of freedom and remember an alternate destiny for themselves, and opt out of eternal slavery. Maybe the piercing on the doorpost was an ancient form of Tony Bull’s debating club, a way of reminding them of who they could be.

The Torah foregrounds that we need to value and protect the freedom of ourselves and others. It doesn’t matter if you’re an ancient Hebrew slave or a prisoner who can’t handle being on the outside. We all have our places where we keep ourselves in little prisons, where we limit ourselves out of fear, “I can’t do this”, “I won’t do that”. But Tony Bull teaches us that it starts with something as simple as joining the club you didn’t expect yourself to join, trying something you are scared of trying, and being willing to see yourself differently.  

As David Whyte, the poet, tells us:
“The doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you.”

Shabbat Shalom