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of Egypt as an example
of a society that deprives
people of liberty, enslaving
populations and making the
many subject to the will of
the few. Time and again the
Torah explains its laws as
ways of preserving freedom,
remembering what it was
like, in Egypt, to be deprived
of liberty.
The Torah is also
committed to the equal
dignity of human beings in
the image and under the
sovereignty of God. That
quest for equality was not
fully realized in the biblical
era. There were hierarchies
in biblical Israel. Not
everyone could be a king; not
everyone was a priest. But
Judaism had no class system.
It had no equivalent of Plato’s
division of society into men
of gold, silver and bronze, or
Aristotle’s belief that some
are born to rule, others to
be ruled. In the community
of the covenant envisaged
by the Torah, we are all
God’s children, all precious
in His sight, each with a
contribution to make to the
common good.
The fundamental insight
of parshat Behar is precisely
that restated by Piketty,
namely that economic
inequalities have a tendency
to increase over time, and
the result may be a loss of
freedom as well. People
can become enslaved by a
burden of debt. In biblical
times this might involve
selling yourself literally
into slavery as the only way
of guaranteeing food and
shelter. Families might be
forced into selling their land:
their ancestral inheritance
from the days of Moses. The
result would be a society
in which, in the course of
time, a few would become
substantial landowners while
many became landless and
impoverished.
The Torah’s solution, set
out in Behar, is a periodic
restoration of people’s
fundamental liberties.
Every seventh year, debts
were to be released and
Israelite slaves set free. After
seven sabbatical cycles, the
Jubilee year was to be a time
when, with few exceptions,
ancestral land returned to
its original owners. The
Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
is engraved with the
famous words of the Jubilee
command, in the King James
translation: “Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land to all
its inhabitants.” Lev. 25:10
So relevant does this vision
remain that the international
movement for debt relief for
developing countries by the
year 2000 was called Jubilee
2000, an explicit reference to
the principles set out in our
parshah.
THREE THINGS
TO KEEP IN MIND
Three things are worth
noting about the Torah’s
social and economic
program. First, it is more
concerned with human
freedom than with a
narrow focus on economic
equality. Losing your land
or becoming trapped by
debt are a real constraint
on freedom. Fundamental
to a Jewish understanding
of the moral dimension of
economics is the idea of
independence, “each person
under his own vine and fig
tree” as the prophet Micah
puts it. (Mic. 4:4) We pray
in the Grace After Meals,
“Do not make us dependent
on the gifts or loans of
other people … so that we
may suffer neither shame
nor humiliation.” There
is something profoundly
degrading in losing your
independence and being
forced to depend on the
goodwill of others. Hence
the provisions of Behar are
directed not at equality but at
restoring people’s capacity to
earn their own livelihood as
free and independent agents.
Next, it takes this entire
system out of the hands of
human legislators. It rests on
two fundamental ideas about
capital and labor. First, the
land belongs to God:
“And the land shall not
be sold in perpetuity, for
the land is Mine. You are
foreigners and visitors as
far as I am concerned.” Lev.
25:23
Second, the same applies
to people: “For they [the
Israelites] are My servants,
whom I brought out from
Egypt, they cannot be sold as
slaves.” Lev. 25:42
This means that personal
and economic liberty are not
open to political negotiation.
They are inalienable, God-
given rights. This is what lay
behind John F. Kennedy’s
reference in his 1961
Presidential Inaugural, to
the “revolutionary beliefs for
which our forebears fought,”
namely “the belief that the
rights of man come not from
the generosity of the state but
from the hand of God.”
Third, it tells us that
economics is, and must
remain, a discipline that
rests on moral foundations.
What matters to the Torah is
not simply technical indices,
such as the rate of growth or
absolute standards of wealth,
but the quality and texture
of relationships: people’s
independence and sense of
dignity, the ways in which
the system allows people to
recover from misfortune, and
the extent to which it allows
the members of a society to
live the truth that “when you
eat from the labor of your
hands you will be happy and
it will be well with you.” (Ps.
128:2)
In no other intellectual
area have Jews been so
dominant. They have won
41% of Nobel prizes in
economics. They developed
some of the greatest ideas
in the field: David Ricardo’s
theory of comparative
advantage, John von
Neumann’s Game Theory (a
development of which gained
Professor Robert Aumann
a Nobel Prize), Milton
Friedman’s monetary theory,
Gary Becker’s extension of
economic theory to family
dynamics, Daniel Kahneman
and Amos Tversky’s theory
of behavioral economics, and
many others.
Not always, but often, the
moral dimension has been
evident in their work. There
is something impressive,
even spiritual, in the fact
that Jews have sought to
create — down here on
Earth, not up in heaven in
an afterlife — systems that
seek to maximize human
liberty and creativity. And
the foundations lie in our
parshah, whose ancient
words are inspiring still.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
served as the chief rabbi of the
United Hebrew Congregations of the
Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teach-
ings have been made available to all
at rabbisacks.org.