In the Service of the Ancient Sages

Becoming the disciple of a rabbi meant living in his household, eating with him, sleeping under his bed, working with him, accompanying him everywhere, and rendering him all kinds of services. For the free food and lodging he received, the student was expected to assist his master in tasks that, in wealthy families, enslaved people carried out. The fact that many servile tasks are attributed to students indicates the status difference between master and student and the reverence students were expected to show for their masters, which would be rendered both in private and in public. Students who carried their masters’ utensils in public and led the way for them served as substitutes for the servile entourage surrounding urban grandees.

The midrashic text here lists some of the personal duties that students were supposed to fulfill. This includes intimate body-related tasks such as washing one’s master (in the bathhouse?) and helping him to put on his clothes and shoes. This duty to help him with his shoes would require the disciple to kneel in front of his master, a position that was considered degrading for freeborn men. However, the talmudic statement that a disciple was not required to remove his master’s shoes seems oriented toward limiting this perceived degradation; after that rule is presented in the Talmud, a discussion ensues about when the rule applies, with an underlying goal of ensuring a student not be mistaken for an enslaved person.