{"id":68447,"date":"2020-01-12T23:22:17","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T21:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=68447"},"modified":"2023-08-06T09:55:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T06:55:53","slug":"break-every-yoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/break-every-yoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Break Every Yoke"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[413,391,991,403],"acf":{"old_id":"68447","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64460,"related_cahpter":"392","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"On the immorality of imprisonment","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are few words in the religious vocabulary more evocative than \u2018salvation\u2019. It means deliverance from the state of sin and confusion in which we live our ordinary lives. But in what does it consist? What does it mean to be right in the eyes of God? Popular Jewish thinking on the subject often emphasizes Judaism\u2019s practical disposition \u2014 we are a religion of \u2018deed, not creed,\u2019 the claim often goes. Too often, though, that stress on the importance of the deed gets misdirected\u00a0 into a narrow concern with ritual performance; in Isaiah 58 we read of a community who cannot fathom why their punctilious observance of ascetic rituals has not produced the spiritual \u2018results\u2019 they expected \u2014 \u201cWhy, when we fasted, did You not see? When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The prophet answers the community, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>not<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by condemning ritual as such, but by stressing its subordination to what we today call \u2018social justice.\u2019 God is interested, first and foremost, in how we treat one another. One moment in the prophet\u2019s reply is particularly striking: he declares that the act desired by God is that we \u201cunlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break every yoke.\u201d There seems to be something particularly offensive, from the prophet\u2019s perspective, about the idea of physical confinement \u2014 binding and chaining our fellow human beings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although in contemporary society we are used to thinking of imprisonment as a more humane alternative to corporal punishment, it is noteworthy that traditional Jewish sources do not share this assumption. Although there are some exceptions, it is generally the case that no option of imprisonment exists at all in the criminal justice system as imagined in rabbinic literature. Ben Zion Meir Chai Uziel, the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, wrote that \u201cthe punishment of imprisonment is distant from and opposed to the laws and punishments of the Torah of Israel.\u201d His student, Hayim David Halevi, argued that this was the case because \u201cthe Torah\u2019s perspective on human freedom and the social nature of the human being, created in the image of God,\u201d implies that \u201cno other person has the right to confine the human spirit, or his freedom of movement, or his freedom, which are holy of holies among all creations in the image of God.\u201d Although Halevi accepts the existence of prisons within the modern state, he remained deeply uneasy about them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The unmistakable message of this chapter is that our salvation depends in the first instance on creating a society in which each individual is honored as an image of God. One of the ways in which that image is most dishonored is when it is bound and fettered, unable to move in the world or commune with others. The prophet\u2019s rebuke to the people urges us to imagine a world in which human freedom is truly unfettered, assuring us that in such a world our light \u201cwill burst through like the dawn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":68448,"id":68448,"title":"is58-break free","filename":"is58-break-free.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/is58-break-free.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/break-every-yoke\/is58-break-free\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"is58-break-free","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":68447,"date":"2020-01-12 21:21:56","modified":"2023-09-24 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