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Connections between The Slave and the Bible

The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer is a story about a young Jewish slave named Jacob that falls in love with a gentile girl named Wanda. The story in set in the 17th century in a Polish village. This story depicts the animosity between the Christian and Jewish religions and greatly mirrors several stories of the Bible. Since the story has a Jewish theme it is very much rooted within the Old Testament. The story helps illustrate the troubles that people have with interpreting the Bible and the superstitions and hostilities it creates. The story also goes deep into Jewish tradition and how the Jews are looked upon by the outside world.
The main connection with the novel to the Bible would have to be the story of Jacob meeting Rachel. In Genesis, Jacob travels to his Uncle Laban’s house and finds Rachel with whom he instantly falls in love with. Jacob says, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” (29.18-19) In Singer’s novel Jacob is a slave to Jan Bzik and has been for seven years. Wanda is the slave owner’s daughter and both Jacob and Rachel are madly in love. Unlike the Genesis story where Jacob willingly marries Rachel, Jacob is very apprehensive to show his love for Wanda, because he knows that it is against the laws of the Torah for a Jew to marry a gentile. Jacob’s abstinence of Wanda for the duration that he was a slave directly mirrors the work that Jacob did to acquire Rachel. (It should be known that after the first seven years that Jacob worked for Laban he received Leah instead of Rachel. He Had to work for another seven years to acquire Rachel.) Jacob realized his connection to his namesake in the bible:
“The analogy between him and his Biblical namesake had already occurred to him. Jacob Had left Beersheba and journeyed to Haran for love of Rachel and had toiled seven years to win her.” (134)

Jacob, after being freed from bondage from his fellow Jews, returned to the small Polish village to get Wanda and bring her back to his village. If Wanda was to be brought to a Jewish village she had to change her name. She must start anew and be reborn into the Jewish tradition. Jacob baptized her in the river and renamed her Sarah. This is a representation of the sign of the covenant that Abram and Sarai made with God. Abram was circumcised and renamed Abraham and Sarai was renamed Sarah.

“As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.” (17. 15-16)

Jacob of Josefov, being a scholar of all the Jewish religious texts, also made contradictions to his religion and namesake. After he had been sold into slavery and heard of all the terrible things that the Cossacks had done to his town and his people he questioned “Thou Shalt Love Thy God. No, I cannot, Father, not in this life.” (108) Jacob had been taught that good would prosper and the wicked would be punished, but through the trials of his life he had only seen the good raped and enslaved and the honest tricked and robbed. Even though Jacob was a slave to the Bziks, he saw that they were decent people. He would also always tell Wanda the idea of retributive justice, but he began to question his logic.

Jacob said that God was just, that He rewarded the and punished the wicked, but Stephen, idler, whoremaster, assassin, flourished like the oak, while her father, whose life had been dedicated to work and who had done injustice to no one, crumbled into ruins. What sort of justice was this? (81)

This section of the book correlates with the lesson in the Book of Job. Job becomes part of a wager between God and Satan. Satan arguing that Job is obedient, because he has all of the luxuries of life. So God willed that Job would lose his family, property, and become infested with sickness and boils. Job is then chastised by his friends, for they believe he must have been wicked to receive such bad luck.

"Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?" Job, 6:8-11

In the end of this story Job’s questioning of God is justified. The moral of the story being that people can question God’s plan within reasonable boundaries. Jacob also respects God’s decisions to kill the just with the wicked saying, “Well, now I have seen it… “These are those abominations which prompted God to demand the slaying of entire peoples.” (57) Jacob was speaking in respect to the corruption of the gentile’s he was enslaved too and their savage partying and lust which would be an allusion to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Jacob of Josefov also questions God’s plan in respect to the laws of the Torah. His desire for Wanda is so great that he can no longer accept the rules of the Bible and begins to reason with himself about the logic of his situation. “The Jew does not tempt Evil by denying the body but harness it in the service of God.” “Moreover, he should obey the precept: “Be fruitful and multiply.” (112) Jacob has been placed in a position where the traditional rules are no longer befitting him. He has been taken from his homeland and been made to start a new. With the Torah being his only guide he relates his situation once again to his namesake and contemplates; “But, perhaps, Jacob thought, he was an emissary of Esau, sent by those powers who wished Jews and gentiles to mate.” (134) This idea helps connect Jacob of Josefov to when Jacob and Esau are reunited after their separation and after the blessing.
One of the last connections to the bible that the Slave introduces is the naming of Sarah’s son. Sarah is in labor for a long time during the birth of her son and barely makes it to see him survive. Jacob decides to name him Ben-oni (Benjamin) after the last child that Rachel had before her death. The name Benjamin means a child born of sorrow and that seems to be the case for both Rachel and Sarah, since both of them lost their lives giving birth to a Benjamin.
The story of the Slave and the correlating stories of the Bible show how dogma has been used throughout the early ages of Judaism and Christianity and how it still functions today. The stories portrayed in these books describe life lessons and situations that have proven to be timeless archetypes for the world. Just as Jacob of Josefov questioned and reinvented how the bible is followed and interpreted, the modern world will have its own story that relates to Jacob and Sarah and Jacob and Rachel.