This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (משפטים, meaning “ordinances”), begins pointedly, as the Hebrew Bible translator Robert Alter notes, with “the regulation of slavery, addressed in the narrative situation to an audience of newly freed slaves.” A keyword that appears repeatedly in the first few verses (Exodus 21:2-4) caught my attention. That word is יצא (go out).
כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי, שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד; וּבַשְּׁבִעִת--יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי, חִנָּם
If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
אִם-בְּגַפּוֹ יָבֹא, בְּגַפּוֹ יֵצֵא; אִם-בַּעַל אִשָּׁה הוּא, וְיָצְאָה אִשְׁתּוֹ עִמּוֹ
If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him.
אִם-אֲדֹנָיו יִתֶּן-לוֹ אִשָּׁה, וְיָלְדָה-לוֹ בָנִים אוֹ בָנוֹת--הָאִשָּׁה וִילָדֶיהָ, תִּהְיֶה לַאדֹנֶיהָ, וְהוּא, יֵצֵא בְגַפּוֹ
If his master give him a wife, and she bear him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
The word יצא caught my attention because of its appearance in other places. Earlier this week, I led a discussion with my students about Judah Leib Gordon’s 1866 poem הקיצה עמי (“Awake My People”), which includes this famous line:
היה אדם בצאתך ויהודי באהלך
Be a man in the streets [when you go out] and a Jew at home [in your tent]
Translated literally (be a human being when you go out and a Jew in your tent), it alludes to Deuteronomy 33:18, part of the blessing of Moses to the tribes of Israel:
וְלִזְבוּלֻן אָמַר, שְׂמַח זְבוּלֻן בְּצֵאתֶךָ; וְיִשָּׂשכָר, בְּאֹהָלֶיךָ
And of Zebulun he said: Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and, Issachar, in thy tents.
The great medieval Bible commentator Rashi interpreted the verse this way: “Zebulun and Issachar made a partnership. ‘Zebulun shall dwell by seashores’ [Genesis 49:13] and depart in ships to engage in commerce. He would earn profit, and put into the mouth of [i.e., provide financial support for] Issachar, and [the men of the tribe of Issachar] would sit and engage in [the study of] Torah. That is why [the younger] Zebulun is put ahead of Issachar, for Issachar’s Torah came about through Zebulun.” So Rashi understands the verse to mean “succeed [Zebulun] when you depart for trade,” and “succeed [Issachar] in sitting in your tents for Torah.”
According to Abarim Publications’ Biblical Dictionary:
The verb יצא is one of the most occurring verbs in the Bible. It means to go, and specifically to go out or forth (Genesis 31:33, 2 Samuel 11:8, Micah 4:10). Its opposite is the verb בוא meaning to come. The difference between these two verbs lies not simply in the direction of motion relative to the observer, but rather in a motion relative to either a focal point on one end or a state of dispersal on the other. The verb בוא (to come) is predominantly used to describe a motion away from being all over the place or considering various options, and toward one specific place or one final decision. The verb יצא (to go) is predominantly used to describe a motion away from the focal point (being perhaps a point of origin or pause) and towards the wide blue yonder where everything is possible (Genesis 24:50, 1 Kings 5:13, Isaiah 28:29).
This source adds that יצא is associated with the rising sun, which goes out in Hebrew (as in Psalm 19:6); the east (as in Psalm 75:6), the spatial point of origin from whence the sun goes out; and the past, the temporal point of origin from which one goes forth to the future. I’m reminded here of Werner Sombart’s line about Jewish migration: “Wie die Sonne geht Israel über Europa: wo es hinkommt, spriesst neues Leben empor.” (Israel passes over Europe like the sun: at its coming new life bursts forth.) In the Biblical Creation story, new life is brought forth (תּוֹצֵ֨א), a causative form of the word to go forth (יצא).
So what are we to make of all this? Gordon is clearly urging his readers to do more than go out into the world to earn a living through commerce (Rashi’s interpretation of Zebulun). Gordon’s line is typically understood to mean that Jews should abandon public expressions of Jewishness and instead privatize Judaism in the home. As Karl Marx had put it two decades earlier in his essay “Zur Judenfrage”: “Man emancipates himself politically from religion by expelling it from the sphere of public law to that of private law.” And as Marx went on to argue, this kind of bifurcation divides man against himself. But perhaps the appearance of יצא in this week’s portion, where it is linked to emancipation and freedom, lends the word another meaning in Gordon’s poem. It’s noteworthy that in our portion the Hebrew servant goes out after six years of service—a clear parallel to the seventh day of Creation on which God rested (Genesis 2:2), the seventh year in which the land rested (Leviticus 25:2-4), and the cancellation of debts every seven years (Deuteronomy 15). When Gordon urges the reader to be a human being when he goes out, maybe he is calling on Jews to emancipate themselves from servitude and embrace the wide open possibilities of freedom that he saw (however mistakenly in his time and place) bursting forth like the rising sun.
