MISHPATIM - EVID

 February 24, 1993

"If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and he in the seventh he sahll go out free for nothing."  Exodus 21:2

The Chumash says about an evid Ivri (Jewish slave) "Six years he will work", and then on the seventh he goes out.  The words are almost identical in the discussion of Shabbos: "Six days you will work". Why the similarity of words?  The evid Ivri usually finds himself as a slave because he stole something and couldn't reimburse the owner.

Mankind was given a sentence of having to work after Adam committed the sin of disobeying Hashem.  So the punishment is that six days a week we have to work.  But just as an evid Ivri is freed at the start of the seventh year, we are 'freed', liberated from the weekdays of work by the seventh day, Shabbos.

The big difference is that when Shabbos is over, we have to return to work, while the evid Ivri remains free.  Why this difference?

The Gemorrah says that if all of the Jews observed Shabbos together, Moshiach would come and liberate us permanently.  Perhaps on Shabbos we have the opportunity to show Hashem that we are able to rectify the sin of Adam, and so are worthy of redemption.  But by not making that rectification, we are re-condemned every Motzi Shabbos to another 6 days of work, to get another opportunity of permanent redemption next Shabbos.

And perhaps that is why we smell the spices during Havdallah.  We need to be revivified upon the realization that this Shabbos, now that is over, did not represent the permanent redemption, but that we are now condemned once again to work.  To bear the disappointment, we smell the spices.

In a sense, the 'remaining' an evid is similar to the choice of the Nirtza, the evid Ivri who chooses to remain a slave.  He is freed in the Jubilee year, when trumpets are blown to herald the freeing of all Jewish slaves.