On a recent Shabbat, we began again to read the Book of Exodus, the story  of a minority — a small sector of society — that somehow threatened the Egyptian hunger for globalization. This is how the story of slavery begins — large entities trying to wipe out the identities of smaller or marginalized groups to keep them in servitude and under control.

In our last “Ethical Life” class, we discussed the topic of modern-day slavery and the ethics of consumerism. One of the midrashim (Pirkei de‐Rabbi Eliezer, Chapter 5) contends that consumers benefit from the invisible servitude of others, and thus bear an ethical responsibility to modify their practices. According to Rabbi Yehoshua, “the depth of the earth is a distance of 60 years’ walk, and one tehom (a deep wellspring or fountain), which sits directly over Gehinnom (i.e. a fiery hell), flows from there and brings forth warm waters that provide pleasure for human beings.” Just as paradise is warmed by the waters of hell, our own enjoyment is enabled by the oppression of others. Whenever we see poverty and degradation in the world, we must entertain the possibility that it sustains our comfort.

Whether one serves another person or God, the Torah uses the same Hebrew word — eved — which can be translated as servant or slave, depending on whom is being served. The rabbis relied on the notion that we are servants to God to argue against slavery.

This week we also remembered the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Slavery in America is a good example of enjoyment enabled by the oppression of others. But the end of Black slavery in America, did not end slavery in our society. Three days before he relinquished the presidency to JFK in 1961, President Eisenhower warned against the power of the “military industrial complex” to undermine all other values and judgments of our society. Security, he feared, could be perceived as the only value worth pursuing. With so much money and power concentrated in the hands of a few, corruption would be an easy result, he felt. The need to maintain balance — balance between the private and public, balance between the cost and the hoped-for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future — these, said Eisenhower, should take precedence over the power of the few.

When the world leaders meet yearly for the Economic Forum in Davos in pursuit of cooperation and globalization, we can applaud the goals, but we must caution our leaders against trading individual freedoms for those ambitions, which can create heaven for one and hell for another.

With hopes for a freer world, Rabbi Gadi Capela