Quite interestingly, the Gemara here compares the bill of divorce to the bill of manumission, in that both are valid if brought by the person the bill concerns, as divorce is in the interest of the woman and manumission is in the interest of the enslaved person, the rabbis here established a parallel leniency that does, however, not extend to monetary matters within the same bill as indicated above.
The comparison of the two bills of severance implies, of cours, a comparison of the two relations that are being severed – marriage and slavery. The comparison seems not too far fetched, as both modes of relation are based on a system of hierarchic difference, as Plaskow writes:
This hierarchical understanding of difference is perhaps the most significant barrier to the feminist reconceptualization of the Jewish community, [...] chosenness provides a warrant and a model for ranked differentiations within the community and between Israel and others.
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai
According to Plaskow, hierarchical difference implicit in chosennes cannot help but impact the way relations are structured within the community. This, of course, stands in stark contrast with R. Faur's view of the society as envisioned by the Torah as inherently horizontal. How does he dissolve the conundrum?
The rabbis declared that every single human being – not only Jews – "constitute a complete world" (Mishnah Samhedrin 4:5). 'Slaves' too are included. It is worthy of note that the Hebrew 'ebed is the equivalent of a 'domestic' in Western society, rather than 'slave' in its common semantic connotation:
"To us it means hideous cruelty, the selling of a human being into the absolute possession of another person who could do with him exactly as he pleased. We think of the terrible slave-trade which existed a century ago, and we shudder. We, who love the Bible, may perhaps feel some regret that it tolerates slavery; and when noble-hearted men tried to abolish it, even leaders of religion opposed them with the argument that it had the sanction of God's Revelation. They who dared to argue in this manner either spoke in shameful ignorance or told consciously a conscious lie. In fact, the Hebrew term 'ebed does not correspond to the modern term 'slave'." (R. Abraham Cohen, Sabbath Sermons)
R. José Faur, The Horizontal Society and Political Thought
When encountering a societal injustice only partially, inadequately addressed by the Torah, such as in the case of enslavement, we can take two discourse routes: one, to take the text as a sign post, picking society up where it is at the moment of revelation and pointing in a direction that will, when followed through, abolish the category legislated here in the end. The second option, which, in part, seems to have been chosen by R. Faur here, is to take the Torah as establishing an ideal society and thus any injustice perceived in the text must simply not correspond to our modern understanding of said injustice. Anyone who has in person seen or experienced the conditions domestic workers are forced to endure will be aware that R. Faur's argument is not as potent as he might think it to be.
This mode of thinking of the society as envisioned by predominant readings of the Torah as the best possible is one we also often find in the treatment of women and mitzvot – thus, the parallel drawn in the Gemara is one that endures to our days. R. Barmash describes, in her teshuvah on the topic, that women's prohibition of performing positive time-bound mitzvot was primarily based on women's subordinated status, and later reinterpreted as being a result of women's spiritual status – they simply don't "need" tefillin. We see, thus, a similar pattern: what is a clear hierarchic difference is, rather than being challenged, of reinterpreted as not being hierarchical while leaving the mechanism rendering it hierarchical intact.
That is, however, not even within Orthodoxy, the only approach to injust hierarchies:
Rav Messas also offered a powerful affirmation of women's tefila spaces. In Nahalat Abot, his commentary on Pirqe Abot, he records the longstanding custom of learned and devout women in Spain who gathered early each morning to pray together – wearing talet and tefillin, reading from the Torah, and appointing one woman as shaliah sibbur. Though not halakhically obligated, they undertook these misvot with sincerity and devotion. Far from dismissing the practice, Rabbi Messas calls them "lionesses of prayer" (le'viyot ba'alot tefila) and [...] frames this not as innovation, but as a revival of sacred precedent – a testament to female spiritual agency grounded in tradition.
Rabbi Messas' support for women went beyond leniencies – it affirmed their capacity for serious Torah study. In a public shiur on Pirqe Abot 6:1, he emphasised that kol ha-lomed Torah lishmah – "everyone who studies Torah forvits own sake" – truly includes women. This was not a vague ideal, but a view grounded in historical precedent. He cited Algerian manuscripts recounting women who chose Torah study over marriage, including one who told Rabbi 'Ayyash her soul was bound to Torah like Ben Azai. He ultimately affirmed her choice, recognizing it as sincere lishmah learning.
Denise Zami Samstein, Reclaiming Sephardic Female Idenity, in From Generation to Generation: Insights from the Past, Present, and Future of Jewish Education
We see thus that, as per usual, the Torah does not grant us the comfort of leaning back and saying, for better or for worse, "this reading is the only correct one", but rather holds us ever responsible to set precedents that will steer us in the right direction, as R. Faur writes:
Although resolved by the court, the verisimilar character of laws unfolding through the process of "leaning" (להטות) remains constant. A judicial decision does not render the law unchangeable. Another court, at a different time and situation, could point in a different direction. Since each court is in fact inspired by the same Shepherd, each pronouncement, in turn, is 'the word of the living God'. The purpose of judicial dialectics is to arrive at a consensus through persuasion, and point to a course to follow. In this connection, it would be helpful to note that halakhah suggests 'walking' and 'way', rather than 'theory'; and it is thus semantically analogous to 'jurisprudence' (composed of jus and prudentia, practical wisdom). It is semantically anologous to Torah. As noted by R. Abraham ibn Ezra, the word Torah stems from the root YRH, in the sense of "pointing out the right path". The magistrates, teachers, and society choose to lean towards one path and decide to walk in the direction pointed out by one opinion rather than the other. [...] This implies the polysemic quality of the revealed Law (and therefore the essential ambiguity of legal texts). It also implies the perennial need to ascribe meaning and legal precision to these texts.
R. José Faur, The Horizontal Society and Political Thought
We can see here clearly the danger that would then result from reading the text to consider certain categories – enslavement, womanhood – to be prediscursive.
