출애굽기 21:6의 Halakhah

Rav Gestetner points out that the Rambam (Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 12:11) and the Shulchan Aruch (Y.D. 180:1-4) do not limit the prohibition to permanent tattooing, thus implying that one violates the kitovet ka’aka prohibition even if the markings are not meant to last permanently, as the Nimukei Yosef believes. Moreover, Rav Gestetner suggests that when Rashi writes that kitovet ka’aka lasts “l’olam,” he does not mean “forever” literally. Elsewhere, (Shabbat 111b s.v. V’eilu Kesharim) Rashi uses this term in a context from which it is fairly obvious (in light of his comment on Shabbat 112a s.v. B’d’chumrata) that he means for a long period of time, not necessarily forever.²See the Mishnah Berurah’s introduction to O.C. 317, wherein he defines “l’olam,” in the context of tying a knot on Shabbat, as when one does not set a time to undo the knot and the knot is capable of lasting permanently.
Ariel Herzog notes that the Torah (Shemot 21:6) states that if a Jewish slave elects to stay with his master at the end of his six years of servitude, he remains in bondage “l’olam,” which the Gemara (Kiddushin 15a) interprets to mean until the yovel (the fiftieth year of the agricultural cycle). This is another instance in which the term “l’olam” does not mean literally forever. Indeed, the Ibn Ezra (Peirush Ha’aroch to Shemot 21:6) proves from elsewhere in Tanach that the term l’olam means for a lengthy time and not forever. Rav Gestetner rules that three years is considered “a long time,” and thus even semi-permanent cosmetic tattoos that last for three years are biblically prohibited even according to Rashi.

If individuals fall from the status of free men and women and, forgetting their inherent nobility, are made into servants—“the ear that heard the words at Sinai, ‘the children of Israel are My servants’³²Lev. 25:55.—My servants, and not the servants of My servants”—and yet in spite of this he went and acquired a human master for himself³³Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 22b. The Talmud here censures the Hebrew slave referred to in Exod. 21:6, who elects to remain a slave beyond the mandatory period. His choice shows that he has not internalized the innate freedom and dignity that attaches to being a servant of God, not of man. Rav Kook understands the return of each person to his ancestral land as the remedy for the indignity of selling oneself as a slave.—now his freedom and self-respect are returned to him. Holiness flows into our lives from the highest source, the place from which the nation’s soul suckles light and “freedom is proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”³⁴Lev. 25:10. Inequality in landed property, which resulted from bodily and spiritual weakness and error, sapped his strength, until he was forced to sell his ancestral patrimony. Now, however, restitution comes, corresponding to the people’s status at the beginning of its journey. The original property returns to those who have suffered from the vicissitudes of life, distorting their sense of their true value: “In this Jubilee, everyone shall return to his original holdings.”³⁵Lev. 25:13.