Jeremy Rosen
Study the Bible: Exodus Continued

Jeremy Rosen - Study the Bible: Exodus Continued

- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Bible classes. I hope you had a meaningful month so far. And before I start going, I want to give a little bit of a background to this whole course. For those of you who have not been on it before. There’s always a huge question as to how we look at the text of the Torah. Do we treat it as the word of God? Do we treat it as a historical document? Do we treat it as a literary document? Do we just treat as a guide for human behaviour, albeit an ancient one? I don’t believe that there is only one way of looking at a text. The one thing you know for certain about a text is the text itself, and that’s why we like to examine texts. But as I said, you can examine a text and look at it from so many different points of view. And it’s always been my approach to say that it’s important to look at it from different points of view, to understand it from different points of view, and not to feel that you have to choose between them. In other words, as with many things in life, we are not always consistent. We combine a rational aspect and an emotional aspect, and we bring both of these to play when we look at an important ancient text like this. Now according to the text itself, it emerged from a period of time, roughly speaking, three, three and a half thousand years ago, when the two main cultures of that part of the world were the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian. The Egyptian did not have a written code, rather it relied on a system called mat, which is best translated as common sense. But basically each judge was an independent judge, making his own decision. Secondly, the Babylonian version was the first one to have a written code, the famous Hammurabi code. And it’s clear that both of these have influenced the text that we have before us. Certainly that was a world which had its own values. It was a world of slavery.

Everybody was a slave. There was the king and the king owned everybody and could command everybody, could take them as he wished to war and make them die. He could take their, confiscate their children and their goods and their property. And in the ancient Assyrian tradition, as soon as a king came to the throne, he would declare, “I am your king. "If you respect me and worship me, I will take care of you. "I will protect you. "I will protect your family. "I will protect the borders. "I will make sure that there is trade. "I will make sure that the earth produces its products. "I will protect you. "But if on the other hand you disregard me, "I will smash you to pieces and destroy every one of you "and take all your children and rape all your daughters "and whatever I feel like doing, "horrible things are going to happen.” It’s against this background that suddenly this text of the Torah emerges in contrast, but at the same time drawing on a language that will have been familiar to the people living at that time. And therefore, as with all literature, you have to look at it within the context, within the period. We can look at Shakespeare, we can argue about who wrote Shakespeare. We can argue that Shakespeare was a racist or a pro-slaverist, or whatever you like and was not woke. But on the other hand, we can simply say, this is an amazing piece of literature that we can enjoy. We can look at, we could pick up the quotes, we can savour the interaction of the people. This is how we should approach it. And I feel that makes sense when looking at the Torah too.

The other interesting thing is that we assume that in all the commentaries that have been produced over thousands of years of this text, that they have to agree with each other. The fact is that almost all these commentaries also reflect the period in which they were written. You can’t expect Moses to speak in terms of Darwinism or in terms of modern physics. And when Moses says, don’t steal, he might refer to sheep and cows, but that doesn’t mean to say we can’t apply that to modern technology, jet planes and cars and so forth. But the fact was that the rabbis realised that the Torah always needed explaining, that you couldn’t just take it at face value. So for example, there is no really coherent sequence of events in many parts of the Torah. So when we started the Book of Exodus, we noticed that there were different descriptions in different chapters about what happened on Mount Sinai. And we are going to come back to that. We noticed there was a difference between whether the tabernacle was built before or during or after. And so the rabbis of the Talmud write it 1,000 years later, they came up with this important principle that… There is no logical sequence in studying Torah. Doesn’t mean to say we can’t learn from the juxtaposition, but not only that, but 2,000 years ago you had the leader of the Alexandria Jewish community, a man called Philo of Alexandria, and he was the man who went on deputation to Rome. And yet at the same time he wrote the first consistent attempt to explain the Torah to the Greek rationalists.

And in his commentary, essentially, he says, “We do not take this literally, Abraham is an idea. "Moses is an idea. "Giving the Torah is an idea "that gives us a certain lesson.” Now, Philo is being disregarded and is not regarded with in the, shall we say, the Orthodox community. And people will say, yes, he only spoke Greek, his Hebrew wasn’t very good and so forth. But nevertheless, this just shows how for thousands of years people have been interpreting this text and looking at it. So with that background, I want to start with the chapter 21 where we left off last time. And if you’ve got Sefaria, you’ll find it in Sefaria, you open sefaria.org, you go to on the list of of subjects, you go to Tanakh, and Tanakh you’ll find the five books of Moses. You’ll find Exodus and you’ll find chapter 21. Now, it is interesting that this chapter called mishpatim is called mishpat. Mishpat literally means justice. So these are, if you like, the civil laws. We’ve had already Mount Sinai with its 10 commandments, with its principles. Not only that, but there have been earlier examples in the Torah of laws being given, even before Mount Sinai was given. So if you were to look just a matter of comfort, look at chapter 15, verse 25 where you will find an example of laws being given as they’ve crossed the sea, before they come to Sinai. Or you can look also at chapter 16:10 or 16:28 with the manor where you can see they’re talking about Shabbat and not collecting the manor on Shabbat. And these are examples of laws before Sinai. And now we have a list of laws after Sinai that expand on Sinai. So Sinai says, don’t steal, but doesn’t define what stealing is. Says don’t kill.

But it doesn’t define whether that constitutes manslaughter or whether it’s actual murder, what kind of murder. It talks about not stealing, committing adultery. Again, not defining what adultery is. And also it sometimes switches terms and names that mean the same thing, but maybe not. For example, ish and adam are examples of two terms that are used regularly during the Torah. And we don’t know if there’s a difference between the two. Or, for example, something that is now relevant for Sukkot. Sukkot says, you should take the the fruit of a nice tree, you should take some date palms, you should take the leaves of a thick tree and the leaves of a willow. But it doesn’t tell us what a nice fruit is. It doesn’t tell us at all that it’s anything like an etrog, which we have today. It could as well be a kumquat or a banana, for all we know. But nevertheless, when shall we say metaphorically, Moses came off the mountain and said, guys, from now on we’re going to have on Sukkot these four plants, people must have known at the time what they used or what they were used for. And so the rabbis then have what we call the oral law. That is to say the law that was passed down orally that explains and modifies the actual text of the Torah. Another relevant example is, what do you do with these four plants?

We now tend to wave them and shake them. But the Samaritans and the Karaites who split from the Jews, or at least the Samaritans did, the Karaites didn’t, they didn’t wave them. They thought that this was something you should put in the ska to cover the sukkah. So you have different ways of interpreting the text of the Torah. Now what’s interesting in mishpatim is that the first thing we deal with is slavery. Now you may say, well, given the current discussion about slavery, what a horrible subject to take. Why didn’t they just, if this was a moral story, just get rid of slavery? Well answer number one is everybody was doing it at the time. There was, as I said, the opening introduction, every country relied on the feudal system until really relatively recently, the 18th century, in some cases the 19th century. And in some cases it’s still applying in parts of the world. So in that sense, if it’s the thing that everybody is doing, then it would be the logical thing to start with. But what the Torah is going to explain is that there are two very different kinds of slaves. There’s the eved Ivri there is the Hebrew slave, and there’s the eved Kenaani the Canaanite slave. What’s the difference between them? The eved Ivri the Hebrew eved was a normal citizen of the state, of the community. And either he was somebody, or she, who was so poor they couldn’t support themselves.

And so they would go to somebody and say, “Look, take me on as your servant and I will work for you, "whether it’s in the field or whether it’s in your home "or anything like that.” And as we’re going to say that Hebrew slave had to be treated as an equal in every respect. He was an equal citizen. He had equal rights and there was a limit to the amount of time that he or she would stay in this position of slavery. At the end of seven years, they had to go out free. And we’re going to look further additional laws that are going to be applied to what happens when a servant goes out free. He must be given provision so that he can set himself up. The Talmud is going to say, he must have the same pillow as you have. He’s got to have the same conditions, same food, everything like that. The other possibility of an eved Ivri was somebody who committed a crime. He owed money, he had a fine, he had to pay back. Whatever it was he would then be, if he couldn’t afford to, made an eved Ivri in order to pay back that fine or to complete his punishment. In these cases, again, they also had to be treated properly and appropriately and were full citizens of the community. There was another law that’s going to come, which will say that nearest relatives have the right to redeem an eved Ivri, a slave, and take him back to where he came from and they help rehabilitate him. So you see that kind of slave is not a slave the way we understand slavery now, where more or less they have no rights. So look at the other kind of slavery we’re going to come to.

This is the eved Kenaani The eved Kenaani was a non-Jew, either captured in Ortho or sold in the markets, and everybody was doing that. Greeks and the Romans, Christians and the Americans. But there are very strict laws about the eved Kanaani. First of all, when he came into a Jewish home, he was circumcised. And the result was that if at any stage he was freed, he automatically became a Jew. And so for example, the Torah gives an example of a rabbi and his slave turning up at a synagogue and there one short for a minyan and so he frees his slave on the spot and now we’ve got a minyan. And addition to that, there were other strict laws about not injuring the person. That if you in injured the person, he would go free. That if you either, in some way degraded his body, knocked out teeth, eyes, whatever it was, was cruel in any way and caused physical bodily harm, he or she would go free. And they too had to be treated according to the fundamental laws that we now know as the Noahide laws, the basic morality of the Noah laws. So all this is background that you need to have before you look at the text. And so with that, we are now going to come to the text. I also should say at this moment that if you have any questions, I will answer them at the end. I was thinking at some stage of answering them during the course of the lecture. The trouble of that is it’s very difficult to control, but there’ll be plenty of time for questions at the end of the session.

So let’s start with chapter 21, mishpatim. These are the mishpatim, which you should offer them. Command the children of Israel. So the implication is God is speaking to Moses and telling them this is how you should expand the law. There are several words in the Torah for law. There is huqqah, which essentially is a law which has no rational explanation whatsoever, but it is part of a tradition that is, if you like, a subtext to the other aspects of Jewish law. So you have huqqah, you have mishpat, which is what we would call a civil law. And then we have mitzvah, which is a commandment which we would regard as, shall we say, a religious law. Although some people would say that huqqah covers that too. And finally you have this generic term, Torah. Torah literally means teaching. And therefore Torah in a sense is the spirit of the law, or alternatively, the totality of the huqqah, the mitzvah, and the mishpat. In addition to that, there are what we would call meta laws, concepts such as sedek, doing the right thing, chesed, being kind, which are not defined entirely, although in the case of sedek, sometimes they are. And then there’s another question of can you go within the letter of the law or beyond the letter of the law? So here talking about mishpatim, the clear messages, we’re talking about civil law and we start with a Hebrew. If you buy or you acquire, because the word to qanah can mean several things. It can mean literally liknot, to buy something in the market or it can mean to acquire, you can acquire a wife, but you don’t necessarily buy a wife.

So this term to qanah, to acquire, does not just mean buy. And so you don’t necessarily have to think of it in those terms. He must serve for six years. And on the seventh he goes free. And again, it’s not clear is this the beginning of the seventh or the end of the seventh? We need clarification. And then it goes on to say this. If he comes with his body, his body alone, He goes out with his body. But what happens if he was married? And if he has a wife naturally, She goes with him. You can’t hold her back while he goes free. But then here comes something else. If his master gives him a wife, now, he may have sons and daughters and you’ll ask yourself, “Hold on, what if he’s married already?” Well, one way of looking at it is to say this is a single slave, doesn’t have to do with everyone. It’s an option. And it’s an option that might only apply if the situation allows it. So that you might say, “Well, in those days a man could have more than one wife. "Nothing wrong with that.” And not only that, but unfortunately, and I say this ‘cause I feel this way, the owner of an eved Kenaani, a Canaanite servant could use her to procreate. And this might be a reference to that situation, but we’re not certain. And this is why the Talmud has pages and pages of debate and discussion to clarify what the law is.

So it says in verse four. If his master gives him a maid, so a wife, and she gives him sons or daughters, the wife and the children remain with the master and he goes out free. So clearly this is an overlap between a Hebrew slave and a Canaanite slave. Now in verse five, If the servant were to say at the end of his period of time, “I like my master. We get on very well. "This is a great job "and he’s promoted me and I have a career. "I love my wife and my child who I have given birth to from "my other wife, whether she was Canaanite or not.” “I don’t want go free, I want to stay.” Then says the Torah in verse six, they bring, the master brings him to Elohim. Now normally Elohim means God. Before God? Well, as we see, not likely because then these Elohim, bring him up to the doorpost. To the upright stanchion. And his master then pierces the ear. And he serves him forever. My gosh. First of all, the term Elohim is also used in the Torah. We came across it in Genesis as the judges. They are the administrators. So you can see going off track for a moment how the words, the names for God that are used in the Torah and there are seven of them all together, all have different nuances. Doesn’t mean to say they are different gods, but different aspects of how people understood God at that time. The God of mercy, the God of justice, the God of judgement , whatever it was. And so here clearly, Elohim does not mean God doing it because we wouldn’t be able to harness that energy. It clearly means judges. And then the question is why pierce the ear?

The rabbis were very, very concerned about this and essentially the explanation goes like this. Before Sinai, everybody was a slave. We were slaves in Egypt, but the Egyptians were slaves in Egypt as well, we were all slaves. And we had very little say about our lives, about what we could do. Mount Sinai comes along and tells us, “You are now the servants of God. "I am releasing you from being servants of human beings "and now you are the servant of me. "And in that sense, I am freeing you.” This is what was so amazing about the idea of the Torah, freeing and not differentiating. Like for example a Hammurabi code, which differentiated between if you kill a woman or if you kill a man, which punishment is stricter and which one is more lenient. Or if an aristocrat kills a peasant, there’s no problem, if a peasant kills an aristocrat, he gets put to death. These differentiations don’t apply. And it’s interesting that although Judaism of that period drew a distinction between the role of the woman and the role of the man in ritual and ceremonial affairs, when it came to civil laws and the value of life, everybody was equal. There was no such distinction. This was an amazing development at that time. So as the rabbis say, why the ear? 'Cause the ear heard on the Sinai that you are my slave, says God, and not slaves of other people. I don’t want you to be subservient.

I don’t want you to serve other people, if you have no choice, if you’re forced, if you’re conquered or what have you, that’s a different matter. But it’s not an ideal state of servitude. We want people to be independent and not codependent or not subservient, which again, as I mentioned before is why when a slave went free, he was given what’s called provisions. So this idea of serving is interesting. And then what does this last word mean, li'olam? Normally the term olam means forever, until he dies. But the rabbis didn’t like that. They said, look, we know according to later law in the Torah that after seven sevens, seven years of shmita, there’s going to be, the 50th year is going to be the jubilee, the yovel, which is a very controversial matter because it’s very difficult to find any record of the yovel actually being carried out. And it’s difficult enough to have a seventh year where you don’t till your fields and you don’t plant your crops and so forth. But to go two years in succession, that would be very difficult. But nevertheless, the rabbi said the one thing about yovel is that it is the release of all releases. And so when the yovel comes, even the eved mitzah, even the servant who is ears pierced that still is, has to go free. There’s no such thing as permanent perpetual servitude. So whether it happens or not, the idea that there should never be perpetuity is a very important perpetuity, patent idea. Now then we have verse seven, which is another law that strikes us as highly problematic, which is based on the idea that until a child leaves home, until a child either reaches maturity, which would be 12 and a half for a girl or 13 for a male, they are subservient and subject to their parents.

After that time, they are not, they are free to determine their own fate. That seems a bit strange to us. But if you think about it, think how many people mistreat their children, how many people abuse their children, the idea of her parenthood was regarded very, very significantly. And very, very importantly in this ancient society, one of the 10 commands is to respect one’s parents and one expected the parents to respect one back, but also life was transactional. And so when a child was still dependent on the parent, and this would apply even after maturity, like nowadays, children are often dependent on their parents for the whole of their lives. They are no longer, in a sense, the free agents. But according to biblical law, her father could sell a daughter to somebody else. But what did it mean? It didn’t mean selling like a slave. It meant basically he betrothed her to another family on the understanding that she would marry into that family when she became mature. So in a sense, it was a form of trial to see if she fitted in, didn’t fit in, if it would work out, if it wouldn’t work out. But also consider this, that in many families, poor families who couldn’t afford to feed their families, they would often hand over their child to somebody else. But that child stood had to be treated according to Jewish law.

Now what happens if a man sells his daughter to a Jewish owner? She does not go out in the same way as slaves go free. So now we can’t be talking here about slaves who are Canaanite slaves, but in the same way as an ordinary eved Ivri who has sold himself, so to speak, to be taken care of and fed. If for example, if her master doesn’t like her, the boss thinks she’s not the right person for his daughter and he does not perform the ceremony of yichud, the ceremony of yichud is when you take this maiden and you officially transfer her status from being an eved Ivri to being a free woman and a married woman. Then he must allow her to go free, completely free. He may never sell her on to anybody else outside of the bounds of Jewish law for an eved Ivri. That would be a betrayal. He must not betray her. If on the other hand, in verse nine, he marries her off to a son. He must treat her like any other daughter-in-law. And then goes on to say, and if this son were to take another wife, and you could do it in those days, he must not stop feeding her, clothing her, and having sexual rights with her. Now this was taken as, by the rabbis, as the condition generally of marriage.

That a husband, when he marries a woman, has to provide for her clothes, has to provide for her food, and has to provide sex. And if a husband refuses to do that, these are the grounds on which the woman goes in and demands a divorce. So this requirement defines, in that sense, the rights of the wife. And bear in mind, rights of women is a very, very recent thing in England in the 1950s, and I’m told in parts of America a woman couldn’t open a bank account in her own name without permission for her husband. And the rape in marriage has not been recognised, in some parts of the world is still not recognised. But in so-called civilised, recognised is a very recent event. And therefore this is amazingly ahead of its time. In verse 11, if these three things are not done, she goes out free and in kesef means that she doesn’t have to buy her freedom, her relatives don’t have to rescue her from it, she goes free, absolutely no charge whatsoever and can start a new life. We now come to number 12, different question altogether, If a man strikes another man and he dies, then the death penalty applies. This is dependent on the fact that he did it intentionally, but if he did not lie in wait, this wasn’t a planned act of murder, and here we’ve got the word Elohim, this time does it mean God or does it mean a human being? It could mean either. Somehow forced his hand, it was an accident.

He didn’t mean, this looks like manslaughter, which isn’t mentioned in the 10 Commandments. I will provide a place of refuge. So here we have a very interesting law that’s going to be clarified many times during the course of this course. There is an idea that when somebody has killed somebody else in those days, the automatic response, and it still is in so many parts of the world today, is the blood feud, the vendetta, I must take a death for a death. Somebody’s got to die to atone for this. Now that was the norm and they expected this. But the biblical law as explained and developed, said there should be a place called an Arei Miklat, a city of refuge. And in this city of refuge it would be a normal city, a city with Levites, a city with normal agriculture activity going on with families together. And if somebody had accidentally or intentionally killed somebody, they could go to those cities and wait there until their judgement was decided. If they were found guilty, they were punished. And if not, they had to stay for a period of time, which was defined at a later stage by for as long as the priest was still a high priest was still alive, but there’s a lot more detail that goes into it than that. Now, this idea was clarified in terms of the . That is to say somebody has to redeem the dead person. Does that mean that the dead, that person had the right to kill the fugitive?

The rabbis were concerned about this because this was allowing for extra-judicial murder. And they clarified it to mean that the Goel Hadam’s responsibility was to see that justice was done, to see that this person was handed over to justice, and that then would follow the normal course of a legal process. So this person would run to this place and wait there to be judged and he could bring his family with him and live there as a normal life while the process was going on. Now compare that with the situation that we have today of jails. First of all, when you go to prison, you are taken away from your family. You’re taken away from your children, you are taken away from your wife, you are taken away from society. You are not able to earn anything except within the framework of the prison. That is prison nowadays. In those days, there wasn’t prison that way. They were holding chambers sometimes to hold somebody until we could go from one place to another, but by and large, this was how the penal system worked. You allowed somebody to be with his family and not deprive the family. So this was of an amazing innovation at the time. And of course this became adopted later on, this idea of refuge when people would run to the altar in the temple to find refuge as happened in the reign of King David.

Or in England when Thomas Becket was being pursued by the agents of King Henry, he ran to Canterbury Cathedral, held onto the altar and they dragged him away from there and killed him. But that was the idea of refuge and the idea that one had to give somebody a fair chance to explain his position and why something happened, or to convict if the person was considered to be a danger. This is another feature that one has to bear in mind in regard to Jewish law. That according to Jewish law, as we are going to see in due course, you needed, always needed to have two witnesses. Two witnesses who are not related. And these two witnesses had to appear before the courts and say, “We actually saw this.” In other words, no, shall we say, evidence based on circumstances. You had to have actually seen the crime. Not only that, but also you required two other witnesses who had to testify that the person knew not only what the law was, but what the punishment was. Now if you consider these two things, the chances of conviction are pretty rare. So you see a man run into a whorehouse with a sword, you hear a scream, you see a man run out with a sword, you go in and you discover a decapitated body. You can’t necessarily convict him if you don’t have two witnesses.

Now that doesn’t mean to say he’d go free, you might consider that he was a danger to society or need to protect society from him. And so other options were available so that the capital punishment was very rare and you will find within the Talmud those rabbis who say it should never be applied, or in one case, once in 70 years, if a bet din put somebody to death, they’d be considered a bloody bet din, as opposed to Hanging Judge Jeffreys in England who delighted in hanging people every day of the week. So there we have the idea of the city of refuge and the beginning of the laws that clarify murder. So we carry on with this in verse 14. But if a man dares to kill somebody with intent, and with treachery from my very altar. You should take him to die or to face the death penalty. So this is, if you like, the law of refuge. People will wonder about this because mizbeah is the altar. An altar has not yet been built. That’s not going to come until later on in this book. And then there’s of course, the temple has not yet been built. So one of the questions is what did they mean at the time by mizbeah? Did they mean any holy place? 'Cause remember that the patriarchs had little holy places in different spaces in the land of Israel where they sacrificed and where they worshipped . So it could be that sense and not more specifically. So here I’m now going to stop and open up for questions of whatever kind you may ask.

Q&A and Comments:

So apart from Carla saying to me, “Glad you are back, mazeltov,” we start with Roman.

Q: “Surely the scholars realised that most people operate "literally. "How did these later scholars address this?”

A: Roman, that’s a brilliant question. The whole idea of the oral law, and we call it the oral law because it’s the spoken tradition which modified the written text was highly controversial. Eventually these traditions that were handed down and passed on through public lectures, through teaching, and in the early days it was the role of the priest to teach everybody, they were the state educational system, to deal with this question. They argued, the rabbis, as to whether ever it should be written down. And it was under protest that Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi decided to write down what became known as the missioner in the third century because the Roman occupation was so destroying Jewish life that they felt there was a serious danger to the traditions being lost. So the scholars relied, as most people did in the old days, on memory, and not only on memory, but on singing, on songs, on sitting around the campfire and teaching people in that way so that the transmission of the oral tradition through song and through words only later became something that was written down. And even then the oral laws continued through to the present day.

Q: Shelly asks, “Verse five says, 'ahavti’, love my master. "I can’t help contrasting that with Leia saying in Genesis, "God saw she was hated by Jacob. "Why are so strong words used?”

A: Interestingly, I thought you were going to ask something else. I thought you were going to ask, “Hey, love, what about all these people "who are married for dynastic reasons, "married because they’re forced to, married without love?” And yet here the Torah keeps on stressing the idea that marriage should be based on love. But unfortunately what happens is sometimes marriages don’t work out, relationships don’t work out. And there could be for all kinds of reasons, either because there’s something physically incompatible between the two or mentally incompatible between the two. And that might lead to other feelings that may change. Now, I agree that hate is a very strong word and maybe this was her feeling of being rejected rather than what her husband actually did feel. It’s just that he preferred the other one. But sometimes the Torah uses very simple language and basic language in order to make its point.

Q: Shelly then goes on to say, “How could the rabbis of the Talmud, "often living in Babylon a thousand years later, "after what actually happened in the kingdom of Judah, "know how these verses were interpreted?”

A: Well, Shelly, how do any of us know how things are interpreted? When we look at any old text, any book where there are different interpretations of what the author meant? Any painting when we don’t know what the artist intended? That you can only look at something through your eyes and your perspective. And that’s why there’s been this constant innovation in Judaism of new interpretations, time and time again in each generation looking at things in the light of their own experience.

Roman again, “Sadly seems non-Jewish world have never forgiven the Jewish "people being able to combine faith and reason. "I see it as envy.” It’s either envy or absolute ignorance. I mean, sometimes I don’t think people know enough to think that way. And I think there is a lot of envy of the fact that we can survive despite everything people throw at us. But because we can cope with setbacks and come back, because we have this long tradition, because we have a tradition of education where we educate everybody, there are all kinds of reasons. But I agree with you that we do combine faith and reason, which might seem strange to you because in the very orthodox world, in parts of the very orthodox world reasons seems to be the last thing that they take into consideration. But on the other hand, consider Maimonides was a great rational Aristotelian philosopher, but then there’s some people who tell you he got it wrong and that’s why the Jews of Spain, or at least many of them, converted.

Richard, I’m glad you’re happy with the course and you Esta Elle, Thank you. I’m glad you are happy with the course too. If anybody has any suggestions or recommendations, I’m happy to have them. So please let me know. And thank you, Saul.

Q: Steven asks, “When a slave is released after seven years, "is that seven years for enslavement "or does it coincide with the seven year cycles "leading for Jubilee year?”

A: Very good question. The answer is simply that it is on the seventh year. So if you come in to serve at the end of the fifth year, you only serve one and a half years, so it depends on that. And similarly, when you buy somebody out of slavery, you reduce the cost of redemption according to the, so the maximum you could see would be right through six years and the seventh you’d be released. And there’s some argument about exactly whether the beginning or at the end, and that’s how it worked.

Rita, thank you. I’m glad you are happy, and thank you Susan.

So please God, we will meet again next week. Bye everybody.