EXOD525 He used to say: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? and if not now, when? Pirkei Avot, Perek I, mishnah 14. We know the self is important: self-respect is basic, self-sufficiency and independence are essential for human dignity. It is this consideration which is evidently implied in the biblical law eved nirtzah [this and following verses]. The Jewish slave served his term of six years and then was released. During this period his master could give him a non-Jewish wife, and the progeny belonged to the master. If at the end of six years the man declared, "I love my master, my wife and my children; I do not wish to go free," then the Torah prescribes an elaborate and somewhat degrading ritual to be performed. The slave was taken to the door and a whole bored in his ear, and then he had to serve until the Jubilee Year. But what was his crime that he should be treated so? Surely his declaration of loyalty was suffused with love and a sense of service; why bore his ear? And why the title of opprobrium, eved nirtzah, "the servant with the bored earlobe"? But perhaps there is something radically wrong with the person who, offered freedom, prefers slavery. There is something unmanly and shameful about a choice which prefers dependence to independence. "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"