In popular culture, we posit that slavery and freedom are opposites. Lincoln freed the slaves, after all.
But I think that this might be something of a false dichotomy. Work-for-survival is not unique to slavery – it is a fact of life. We all have to work, sooner or later (even welfare states cannot indefinitely finance indolence). As even children recognize, there is no clear, shining line between required chores and slavery.
It is impossible to live a productive life and be “free” of dependencies. No person in this world is truly self-sufficient for absolutely everything they use or need. Everyone has interconnections with others.
True freedom is not freedom from work or obligations or dependencies. Freedom is instead the ability to make our own choices about our dependencies!
Which might help explain why, in the source of the famous “freedom from slavery” story (one that has inspired humanity for thousands of years), the word for “service” is used interchangeably for anything from brutal slavery to serving idols, serving G-d and even being an advisor to Pharoah! The Torah’s message is clear: service and dependencies are inevitable. What really matters is what we choose to serve.
In other words: yes, we must have freedom to choose. But whatever choice we make, we still end up creating obligations! Which might explain why the Torah does not ultimately distinguish between industrial, impersonal slavery, and being an advisor to the king. Everyone is obligated, one way or another. Service is not wrong in itself. Everyone should serve someone or something. Service is a way to invest in others, to make one’s life about more than one’s own self. If we do not serve, we are wasting the opportunities we have.
If we are right about this, then in order to understand the nature of “service,” we should ask: what does service really mean?
In the Torah, the word for service has a very specific and surprising meaning! It is first used/defined in Genesis:
When no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because G-d had not sent rain upon the earth and there were no human beings to serve (eved) the earth.
Service is about making things grow!!!
Think about what this means. It means that when we serve something or someone, we are making that thing grow.
So then the question is not whether we serve, but whether or not our service is for a productive or meaningful end!
When we Jews recall being slaves in Egypt (especially on Pesach), we wallow in victimhood. But this might be missing a much more important point: perhaps we should instead focus on the wastefulness of building store-cities for Pharoah, and pyramids for the dead. Sure, life was miserable. But perhaps just as importantly, what made life miserable was that our work was so unproductive! Jews, like any other people, have strengths and weaknesses. (Mis)-using Jews as physical slaves would be like encouraging Jews to become professional athletes. It is not what we do best.
There is a mental/spiritual element to this as well. Now that we have connected “service” to agricultural growth, we can understand that serving G-d is a way to make Him grow! If we follow His commandments and seek to walk in his paths, then we grow G-d’s presence in this world, and in our minds, and in the minds of all who observe us.
Conversely, serving an idol makes that idol grow!
At the University of Maryland, there is a statue of a turtle, named Testudo. Students bring offerings to Testudo, and write about the proper protocol for serving the idol, in order to ensure easy exams or good grades. Is it any different from throwing coins in fountains for luck, or even, in the case of Chinese infrequent fliers, paradoxically throwing coins into jet engines for a safe journey?
In every case: false turtle, statue or jet engine, in the minds of the offerors, the deities have power. Service of those gods makes the power of the deities grow. That is the nature of service. Indeed, the offerors seek the dependency! They would rather believe in gods that can be appeased, than accept that jet engines, like the weather, cannot actually be bribed.
The more people who make environmentalism the center of their world, the more the idea of Earth Worship fills the hearts and minds of people. The Torah warns us about serving idols not because the idols have an underlying reality, but because, by virtue of our service, we create and grow that idol as important in our world.
There is only so much room in each person for these kinds of thoughts: doing one thing means we have less time and energy to do something else. Serving Nature thus displaces serving G-d – we cannot fully do both. This is analogous to a marriage. Nobody who commits adultery can simultaneously and fully invest in their marriage: there is always an opportunity cost.
Which helps us understand why the Torah repeatedly forbids us from worshipping other deities, from idols of wood or stone or metal, to the sun and moon. Serving those deities pushes aside our ability to fully serve G-d. And when we practice idol worship, we make the idol a larger part of our mind-space; we make it grow.
As and when we displace the important things in our lives with idol worship, we have chosen to yoke our dependencies, as happened in Egypt, to unproductive and even wasteful ends. The problem is not the slavery: the problem is when we have the freedom, but we choose to waste the opportunities we have been given.