According to the Torah, when a Hebrew slave wants to remain with his master and continue to work as a slave after his period of slavery is over, the master must pierce his ear. The slave then must serve his master forever.
"But if the slave plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out as a free man,' then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him permanently" (Exodus, 21:5-6).
Piercing the ear, which symbolizes the transition from hired servitude to eternal slavery, is a strange and unusual act. It can be explained by means of historical background – in ancient times, piercing the ear was considered to be a symbol of the master's control and mastery over his slave (Code of Hammurabi, 282). In contrast with the Mesopotamian laws, however, the Torah permits piercing the slave’s ear only when the suggestion to do so is initiated by the slave. On the basis of this significant difference, our sources view the act of piercing in a negative light, attributing it to the distorted choice of the slave.
Two views explaining this are found in the Talmud Bavli in Kiddushin, which agree on the point that slavery is problematic and that the rule of the Torah teaches that man is the servant of God, so he should not enslave himself to anyone – and that this is his sin. In the opinion of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, the fact that the ear is pierced hints to the fact that “This ear heard My voice on Mount Sinai when I said: “For to Me the children of Israel are slaves” (Leviticus 25:55), which indicates: And they should not be slaves to slaves. And yet this man went and willingly acquired a master for himself. Therefore, let this ear be pierced.” According to Rabbi Shimon son of Rabbi, we learn this idea from the placement of the piercing next to the door and doorpost. “The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: The door and the doorpost were witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and when I passed over the two doorposts of houses in which there were Jews (Exodus, chapter 12), and I said: “For to Me the children of Israel are slaves,” and they should not be slaves to slaves. And I delivered them at that time from slavery to freedom, and yet this man went and acquired a master for himself” (Kiddushin 22b).
What is the point of difference between these two approaches?
Perhaps the difference between them lies in the meaning of the ceremony itself. Does it contain a statement about the personal distortion – "the ear that heard" – that this is a person who did not internalize the values of the Torah? Or, perhaps, this emphasizes that in slavery there is a distortion of the degree to which the slave is part of the general ethos of the Jewish people. Slavery is a betrayal of the covenant of redemption.
In order to understand the issue of piercing, it is important to emphasize another matter, namely the personal arrangement related to the piercing. The slave who is about to be freed has two options. He can allow himself to go free and then sell himself again to the same master, or he can allow himself to be pierced and remain with him. The difference between the two arrangements is that once he is released, even if he sells himself afterwards, he will be forbidden to a Canaanite maidservant.
This leads us to the conclusion that the focus of his agreement to undergo piercing may not be to continue his slavery, so much as it illustrates his desire to retain the ability to live with a Canaanite maidservant. The special situation of marriage to a Canaanite maidservant is that any children born of that union will be slaves who belong to the master, and will not be considered the Hebrew children of the slave (see Radbaz, Responsum II:608).
Thus, the choice of the slave to have his ear pierced may not indicate a preference for servitude over liberty, rather it could be a choice to relinquish independence and personal sovereignty, including everything from the sale of his productive labor to the rights to his own children. With this in mind, we can easily understand how the Talmudic sages identify the pierced slave with the leper. In Kiddushin (15a) the sages derive that it is the right ear that must be pierced, based on word parallels between our case and the case of someone suffering from leprosy. This relationship hints to a connection between the leper and the slave. Both are at the margins of society, isolated from the spheres of activity and creativity.
The role of the piercing is to point out that the nature of slavery as a way of life matches the slave's erroneous aspirations. As far as he is concerned, he lives in an idyllic world. He is married to woman he loves, but without the responsibility of a family. He has an orderly place of work. He has an adequate, yet worry-free livelihood. By means of the piercing, the Torah calls upon the slave to break through that circle of existence. He must try to break down the social mold into which he has grown up and become accustomed; he must try to dream of a new range of possibilities. The Torah wants him to give up the protective hothouse, to abandon his place of work, but most of all, to allow himself true freedom of thought. These new possibilities force him to think of himself in terms that he is not used to. It is specifically the master, who may be interested in nurturing the existing state of mind control, who is required to perform a disfiguring act that both causes physical shock and contains deep symbolism. He is the one who performs the piercing – he cannot send a messenger nor turn it over to the court. This stands in contrast with other situations in which the master makes use of his power to dictate to the slave a sense of identification with his inferior status. Here the Torah demands an exceptional act of mutilation. In doing so, the Torah demands that the slave understand that he is choosing to give up his human privilege of independence and freedom. The imposition of a disfiguring piercing is an act of his choosing; it is not a necessary act. Slavery is not a personality trait, rather it is an acquired attitude that can be undone.
An individual is obligated to examine himself and ascertain why he is emotionally and psychologically shackled to his current status, why he wishes to remain in his current state, even though it has become convenient for him for various reasons.
There is one serious problem with this explanation. In the end, although the Torah applies this requirement, in practice it still enables an unfortunate arrangement that allows the slave to remain in a position of inferiority and leaves the master in the position of control. Why does the Torah do this, rather than simply prohibiting this arrangement?
In a well-known story told by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, two people know that the entire world is about to eat poisoned wheat that will turn them all into madmen. They must choose whether to eat from the wheat and join the madmen, or to refrain from eating it and remain sane. Unfortunately, sane people in a crazy world are considered the crazy ones. Therefore, they both choose to eat, but they place symbols on their foreheads that indicate to each other that they are mad. At least they will be aware of their situation, and that will be their advantage over the others.
The joint activity of piercing the slave’s ear by his master, places both master and slave in the doorway – a doorway that symbolizes the possibility of making a different choice, of leaving this situation and putting an end to the vicious cycle of slavery. They both approach the situation recognizing that they are players in a story – that is, in a game called “Master and Slave.” The pierced ear serves as a constant reminder that they are role-playing in a game whose rules are well-known, and it will follow them throughout, symbolizing their common situation. This is the meaning of the piercing in its narrow sense, in the Laws of Slaves.
In truth, the Law of the Pierced Slave symbolizes a game in which we are all participating. This game is our daily life in the everyday world. We are all slaves to reality and societal rules, to the social and cultural dictates that we are drawn into. Observing the act of piercing the Eternal Slave reminds us of our own reality and that there is another option. Even if we cannot quit the game, at least we are aware of its existence.
