And if your brother becomes destitute with you and is sold to you, do not work him with slave labor (Vayikra 25:39)

The halacha states that even though a Jew is allowed to have another Jew as a slave, the master may not treat the other person like a slave. He is not allowed to make the Jewish slave do meaningless tasks. For example, he cannot tell the Jewish slave to dig around a tree for hours even though the master does not need a hole there or the dirt. The master cannot ask the Jewish slave to tie his shoes or do an embarrassing task. The reason is because you must treat him with respect. You must treat him as a person. You are not to look down at him.

I would like to share a thought which I feel is very important. I am guilty of this just as much as everyone else, but I am working on improving, and I think so should everyone else. It goes right along with what was stated in the last paragraph that we need to treat others with respect and treat them as human beings. The thought is that when you are talking to someone else, it is almost always rude to take call-waiting or to check your email while you are talking to them. There is a live human in front of you or on the phone with you. What makes the other person on call-waiting more important than the person in front of you? What makes an email more important than the person who is talking to you? The person is talking to you because they feel it is important to talk to you. Ignoring someone is the worst thing someone can do to someone else. It is extremely disrespectful to the other person and embarrassing for him to be pushed aside.

Now, I must point out, I am trying to be very careful with my words. If you notice, I stated it is almost always rude to do this, but it is not always rude. I understand that there are times when there is an important phone call that must be taken. A few weeks ago, we were waiting for a return phone call from a doctor and he happened to call while I was on the line with someone else. I quickly explained the situation to the other caller and after speaking with the doctor called the person back immediately and gave a longer explanation. The person understood and did not feel that I was rude in any way. This is understandable and there are other understandable times. But to always do this is not nice. It makes the other person feel foolish. I can remember numerous times when I’m talking to someone and then they pick up a phone call in the middle of our conversation. Suddenly, for the next five minutes I’m standing there looking into space while the other person is having a conversation with the person on the phone. I am not going to say that the conversation wasn’t important, but was it so important that you have to make another person feel uncomfortable. Was it so important that you made another person not feel like a person?

We are in a time of Sefiras HaOmer – we are counting the days until we receive the Torah. This is a time to work on our behavior towards other people. I think that being respectful to others and not ignoring them should be an important focus we have during this time. Just like we were commanded to treat a slave as a person, we should treat every person as a person.

Good Shabbos!
-yes
please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]
to see previous Divrei Simcha on the Parsha, please go to www.divreisimcha.com OR www.chesedclub.com > Torah Study