The comparison
between American capitalism to slavery is common. However, for many the link may be nebulous. Meaning, it is a cute comparison, but everyone
knows that slavery and late hours in the work place are ultimately
different. For one, a worker receives
compensation, and technically, a person in American society is free to do as he
chooses. But perhaps, the link between the
two is deeper than we think. Capitalism
does enslave in a way that circumscribes it next to slavery.
Shortly after Joseph’s
generation passed away, enslavement began in Egypt. It says that they were given ‘crushing’
labor. However, it was not only physical
pain, but they were also encumbered with spiritual pain. In other words, much of the work was
meaningless and the jobs were not dispensed according to people's strengths. Finally, G-d took note of what was happening
to His people and it says, ‘And G-d saw the children of Israel, and G-d knew (וידע)’. [1] Apart from the strange dichotomy between
vision and knowledge, what does it mean that G-d knew? Obviously He did not gain a new knowledge, so
what type of knowledge was it and why did we need to know about it?
There are various types of
knowledge in the world. One type is general wisdom or ‘chochma’. This is informational wisdom, an input from a
higher source. Then, there is the
ability to take that information and abstract it to other situations for
application. It finds commonality between things that seem unrelated This is a knowledge that is
built and is thereby called ‘bina’. Finally, there is the knowledge
of where the abstraction ends, and a thing is defined as its own thing and not
related to anything else, and this is called ‘daas’. In
other words, this final knowledge is the ability to distinguish between two
objects, two periods of time, and two people.
It is the knowledge that not everything is monolithic, but that there is
a time and place for everything. For this reason, the blessing we make to
distinguish between the Sabbath and rest of the week is placed in the prayer
where we ask G-d for this type of knowledge.
Which begs the question, why is this the knowledge we so desperately seek,
the ability to distinguish?
The reason is because growth necessitates
that there be a realization of what a person really is and what he really is
not; the first step in growth is to distinguish. In other words, if a person is on a sports
team with an all-star, and a lesser player with latent potential views the all-star
as similar to him but more experienced, then he is poised to fail. What the lesser player needs to see in the all
star is a player that is fundamentally different than him so that he can strive
for that other level. Without that initial
recognition, then the hard work to move levels will not be there.
This is precisely the danger of
slavery- the loss of identity both internally and externally. Every day is the same and the work
monotonous. There is nothing to look
forward to and it becomes difficult to mark changes in time. Slowly, our ability to have the knowledge to
distinguish between the mundane and the holy is impaired. We have trouble with respect as everyone who
is a slave is on the same playing field- we lose the ability to distinguish between
people. If everyone is the same, there
is no room for growth, no levels to aspire to.
So why did we need to know that G-d 'knew'? Because it was a sign that as slaves we lost
our ability to have this knowledge and in order for redemption to take place,
we needed G-d to restore it to us as a gift. Without this knowledge, growth is impossible and there is no reason to
give a Torah to a people who cannot grow with it. And that is the danger of a modern capitalist world. The smart phone has blurred the boundaries
between work and home, and the competition has blurred the boundaries between
the weekend and the work week. Therefore,
perhaps the comparison between capitalism and slavery is accurate. In a capitalist environment, we are losing the
ability to distinguish between what really matters, and what doesn’t and who we
really are and what we are not, but could be.
