The Legal Status of Jewish Slavery in Egypt and the Loss of Vision

Rabbi Zweig addresses a series of perplexing questions about the chronology and nature of the Egyptian slavery. The Midrash states that when Yosef died, the Jews stopped performing bris milah, yet all the other brothers were still alive. How could an entire generation abandon this fundamental mitzvah (מצוה) under the leadership of the Shivtei Kah? Additionally, there are contradictory statements about when the slavery began: one Rashi (רש"י) says it started with Yaakov's death (Parashas Vayechi), another says with Levi's death (Parashas Vaera), yet the pesukim in Shemos suggest it began only after all the brothers died and the nation multiplied greatly. The shiur's central thesis is that slavery in Egypt was fundamentally a legal relationship, not initially a practical one. When Yaakov died, the Jews were granted Egyptian citizenship. However, Egyptian citizenship meant legal ownership by Pharaoh—the entire Egyptian population had sold themselves and their land to Pharaoh during the famine years, as detailed at the end of Parashas Vayigash. This legal slavery status had profound halachic implications: a Jewish slave owned by a non-Jew loses his status as a Jew and becomes subject only to the seven Noahide laws, not the 613 mitzvos. The proof for this is found in Parashas Behar, where the Torah (תורה) explicitly prohibits a Jewish slave of a non-Jew from engaging in avodah zarah, giluy arayos, and desecrating Shabbos (שבת)—prohibitions that would be unnecessary unless the slave's legal status actually permitted such behavior under the laws governing his master.