You shall not pervert the judgement of a stranger or an orphan. You shall not take the garment of a widow as a security against a loan. And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and Hashem your G-d redeemed you from there …..(Devorim 24;17-18)
The Torah has an ethical instruction for a creditor. When it comes to a debtor who is disadvantaged – deal humanely and sympathetically with him. This is derived from the juxtaposed verse of the experience of our ancestors in Egypt. The Jews, who were once persecuted strangers, must be especially sensitive to the plight of the downtrodden.
The mention of Egypt in connection with the prohibition of taking a security pledge against a loan recalls a famous ‘loan’ in Jewish history:
It mentioned that you were slaves in Egypt, in connection with the prohibition against taking a security for a loan from a widow, in order to say that you should remember that you were a slave and I gave you favour in the eyes of the Egyptians and they lent you silver and golden vessels and garments (commentary of Baal Haturim).
Some years ago, in September 2003, these words were recently taken apparently literally when an Egyptian academic Dr Nabil Hilmi, Dean of Law Studies at Egypt’s al-Zaqazik University filed a lawsuit against all the Jews of the world for recovery of property allegedly stolen during the Exodus from Egypt 3,300 years ago.
(https://www.haaretz.com/1.5372541)
Citing the verses from the Torah, he claimed the return of “gold, jewellery, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing and more”, taken by the ancestors of today’s Jews in the middle of the night – a clear theft of a host country’s resources and treasure. Mathematical computations – which include an annual doubling in value of the material in question – put at 1,125 trillion tons the amount of gold owed by the Jews for each of the 300 tons estimated to have been taken.
Fortunately, though, the Jewish people has been through this one before. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 91a) relates that over two thousand years ago the representatives of Egypt came into some form of court in front of Alexander the Great, and made just that claim against the Jews for all of the silver and gold that our ancestors ‘borrowed’ on their way out of Egypt.
A Jewish man called Geviha ben Pesisa offered his services and successfully defended his people against the charge. Since you are using the Bible to accuse us, I will use the Bible to defend us. The verse says that the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt for 430 years. For 430 years a whole people were enslaved – they built storehouses for Pharaoh, probably pyramids, slave labour without pay. 600,000 men slaved for 430 years. Let us make the computation on that one, on the basis of the minimum wage, and let’s index link it as well. That is our counterclaim. You owe us. The case was quietly dropped.
The Jewish people is an old and well-experienced nation. We can defend ourselves against the charges that are brought against us. For those charges are always based on falsehood. Falsehood has no permanent base to it; sheker eyn lo raglayim. The truth of our Torah is eternal.
Shabbat Shalom,
Good Shabbos to all,
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag
