THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK Ki Tetzei

“You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever he pleases; you must not ill-treat him” Deuteronomy 23:16-17

We should remember that the Torah didn’t abolish slavery. So if slavery hasn’t been abolished, why shouldn’t we return slaves to their owners?

Rashi suggests two possible readings: this law applies to a Jew who escapes from a non-Jewish master. When a member of your community is legally in the wrong, but feels scared enough to risk his life in order to flee, then that fear speaks volumes. The Torah here — according to Rashi’s first reading — instructs us to protect him.

The more radical suggestion Rashi advances is this: even if the slave is a gentile, and even if the “owner” is a Jew, but if the Jew lives in the diaspora, and the slave escapes to the land of Israel, then we must not turn him back.

Abraham ibn Ezra reads the verse in terms of gentile slaves fleeing from gentile slavemasters, but like Rashi’s second reading, the slave is escaping to the land of Israel. He writes: “The fact that the slave came there for refuge is an honour to the Divine Name that Israel carries; and if Israel were to hand the slave back to his master, it would be a desecration of the Name. Hence, you must not oppress him.”

Of course, we cannot design an immigration policy on the back of two biblical verses. These matters are complex. But these verses can still inform our perspective.

If a human being is willing to risk her life on the high-seas, or tied to the undercarriage of a train, to cross borders illegally, then which fact is most salient: the fact that she broke the law to get here, or the fact that her life was so desperate that she was willing to risk it in order to flee?

When thinking of asylum and immigration, what is your first thought: the risk to your own prosperity, the cost to the economy, or the great honour done to the name and values of your country, that a person would risk their lives to join it?

RABBI DR SAMUEL LEBENS