Parashat Neetzavim begins with an enumeration of ten parts of the congregation that are now going to be entering the covenant made by Moses with God. The ninth and tenth groups are the “hewer of wood” and the “drawer of water.” These refer to non-Jewish slaves who are known as Canaanite slaves.
Canaanite Slaves Regarding Agency as a Messenger (Shlichut)
Let's discuss some interesting points in halachah that pertain to Canaanite slaves. Why does halachah, and the Talmud, state that the "hewer of your wood" and the "drawer of your water" are Canaanite slaves? What do we learn from this? How does knowing this benefit us?
The Talmud writes that a Jew can only appoint another Jew to be his agent—his shaliach—for performing a mitzvah, such as giving terumah. The exact statement is: "Just as you are members of the covenant, so too your agent must be a member of the covenant."
What is written after all ten categories in the Torah portion? "To bring you into the covenant." Everything is connected to the covenant. From here, the sages learn that one can appoint a Canaanite slave—since he has accepted upon himself the yoke of the mitzvot—as an agent to fulfill a mitzvah, because a Canaanite slave is considered a member of the covenant.
Where is the concept of an agent-messenger found in Kabbalah? In the sefirah of foundation (yesod); the agent is the covenant. The ninth group that corresponds to the tzaddik—since the “tzaddik is the foundation of the world”—is the "hewer of your wood," a Canaanite slave, and the novel teaching we learn from here is that he is an agent of the people of Israel. If it’s a novelty that he can be an agent, it seems that he is the best agent.
The Canaanite Slave: A State of Non-being Between Two States of Being
The Canaanite slave has a special relationship with the tzaddik for another reason. If we look for the letter tzaddik (צ) in our parashah, we find that the first tzaddik is the fifth letter of the parashah and the next tzaddik appears in the “your wood” (עֵצֶיך), part of the Canaanite slave’s description as, “the hewer of your wood.”
Tzaddik is the fifth letter from the end of the Aleph-Bet, which means that in the substitutive method known as Atbash (אתב"ש), it corresponds to the letter hei (ה), whose value is 5.
In fact, between these two letters tzaddik, there are exactly 90 letters, the gematria of tzaddik (צ)!
Let’s explain this in more depth. A Canaanite slave is described by the sages as a person who has no morals
