Bob Dylan’s mid-70’s albums – most notably ‘Blood on the Tracks’ – anchored the soundtrack of my adolescence. That a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota became the poetic and protest ‘voice of his generation’ was for me, and a good many others, a source of pride and the object of intense, even obsessive admiration. I knew, and still know, a great many Dylan songs by heart and spent a good deal of time in high school perfecting my impression of his raspy ‘singing’ voice.
Then, in the middle of my senior year, Dylan found God and became a born-again Christian. It was devastating. Among other responses, I stopped listening to his music. As a consequence I entirely missed his truly outstanding 1979 album ‘Slow Train Coming.’ Much later, and after Dylan had rediscovered his Judaism, I encountered his gospel works and fell in love with the opening track on ‘Slow Train Coming,’ a simple, and simply brilliant, piece called ‘Gotta Serve Somebody.’ Here are a few of its lines –
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
What struck me as simple minded evangelical theology as a young man today feels like a sophisticated commentary on the Torah, and in particular on this week’s parasha. Allow me to explain. The overarching narrative of the Torah tells the story of Egyptian servitude, and God’s redemption of the people of Israel so that they/we might become God’s people. At the saga’s start, the Israelites are slaves to Pharaoh; at story’s end, they belong to God. Pharaoh’s slaves are now God’s servants, and that somehow doesn’t feel like enough of a transformation. To the contrary, it feels like a simple swap: trade in Pharaoh and drive home with God instead!
My friend and teacher, Rabbi Shai Held, sees a clear distinction between service (or slavery) to God and slavery under Pharaoh. “Whereas the latter systematically dehumanizes his subjects, the former values and cherishes them. Work and service come in dignified and degrading versions: the Torah is about a journey from the latter toward the former.” Rabbi Held draws on a verse in Parashat Behukotai to push his point with even greater force. “I the Lord am your God who brought you out from the land of the Egyptians to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect,” says the Torah (Leviticus 26:13). Says Rabbi Held, “The verse implicitly contrasts what it means to be a slave to Pharaoh with what it means to be a servant of God. Pharaoh places the Israelites under a backbreaking and soul-crushing yoke, whereas God invites them to stand tall…one cannot really serve God without a robust sense of one’s own dignity. True divine service depends on those who serve standing tall.” (The Heart of Torah, vol. 1, pp. 214-215; vol. 2, p. 87)
A key verse in Parashat Behar, however, seems to incline in the other direction. “For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 25:55) To Me and not to Pharaoh; God, as it were, has tossed Pharoah out of the ring and taken Israel as God’s own. The early Midrash understands our verse exactly that way. “My deed (of ownership) has first priority.” (Sifra Behar 6:1)
The key word in all of this is ‘eved – which means both ‘slave’ and ‘servant.’ The same Hebrew root in a different form – ‘avodah – simultaneously means ‘hard labor’ of the sort associated with slavery and ‘sacred worship’ of the type connected with priestly work in God’s house. Are they really one and the same? Or does something truly fundamental transpire over the course of the Exodus and the Torah’s grand narrative?
Both my friend Rabbi Held and my adolescent idol Mr. Dylan are right. Over the years, hopefully, we come to learn that we’re ‘gonna have to serve somebody.’ Which is to say that “authentic freedom is found in service of something (and Someone) greater than oneself.” Servitude, I suggest, is transformed into servant-hood over the course of the Exodus and can be similarly transformed over the course of our lives. Sefer Vayikra, the priestly manual that resides at the middle of the Torah concludes with a powerful reminder that the upcoming journey through the wilderness is (hopefully) that truly transformative trip from ‘eved – slave – to ‘eved – servant, and from ‘avodah – hard labor – to ‘avodah – sacred work and worship.
