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March 26, 2010
Freedom in the people’s psyche
The Exodus planted an innate repulsion of subjugation and an inherent quest for liberty.
ESTHER TAUBY
More than three millennia have passed since our ancestors left Egypt as slaves. That is quite a long time. Yet we, their descendants, still commemorate this event annually. Passover is the most widely observed and celebrated festival by Jewish people of all denominations.
This significance cannot be overstated. Why is this a fact? It’s easy to celebrate freedom when one is free, but for most of our history, the Jewish people have not been. We have found ourselves exiled, oppressed and dominated – physically, emotionally and religiously – by tyrants, kings, dictators and leaders of all types. Whether it was after the Babylonian destruction of the first holy Temple in Jerusalem, or after the Greek, and then Roman, conquests of Jewish land and its people. Whether it was after the second holy Temple or the horrific Hadrianic persecutions, the Spanish inquisition or the European pogroms. Or, in recent history, the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, or Syrian, Iranian and Russian Jews forbidden to leave their countries.
Could Jews in those places and times still sit down to the annual seder and sincerely declare, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and G-d has liberated us so that today we are free?” How did they manage to do this? Were they oblivious to the reality surrounding them? To their predicaments? Of course not. They knew full well what was going on. Perhaps the Jewish people, wherever they found themselves and in whatever circumstances, were celebrating something very authentic that they felt in their souls every Passover, despite the often unbearable conditions just outside their doors.
Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the famous Maharal of Prague, was a 16th-century scholar, author and the chief rabbi of Prague. He was one of the most influential Jewish personalities of his era. During his time, it was blood libels of which his fellow Jews were falsely accused. He raised this question: How could Jewish people celebrate their freedom during times when they were plunged back into the darkness of exile?
The Maharal answers brilliantly as follows: the Exodus from Egypt, he suggests, was not merely a political and geographical event, it was also that the gift of freedom was “wired into the very psyche of the people.” An entire new type of person was created – the “Free Man” – the individual who would never make peace with oppression and would forever yearn for liberty. The Exodus implanted, within the soul of every Jew, an innate repulsion toward subjugation and an inherent quest for liberty.
Jews would discover, and be responsible to impart, this discovery to all of humanity – that the primary responsibility of every society is to preserve the freedom and dignity of every individual human being. This would be done under the sovereignty of a free G-d who desires that human beings choose to construct a world founded on freedom, the dignity of the individual and the moral calling to build a fragment of heaven on earth. That is our responsibility – to be a light among the nations.
G-d has given us the freedom of choice to do so or not.
This knowledge gives us the power to endure the tortures, oppression, abuse and humiliation we suffer in every generation, and yet never cease to see ourselves as free people. We remain focused in our belief that a society in which evil and corruption rules cannot endure. We know it and history has proven it to us over and over again. The Maharal posits that this is what a Jew celebrates every year at the Passover seder, no matter what their circumstances. Jews of the past were not living in denial, nor are our fellow Jews in parts of the world where they are still unfortunately being persecuted.
The Baal Shem Tov said it well: “You are where your will is.” This means you are essentially free because, if you crave freedom, you are, indeed, free.
Chassidic philosophy develops this idea even further. Our yen for freedom is one of our most divine qualities. Man yearns to reflect G-d. Just as G-d is utterly free, not bound by a physical body or physical location, man, created in G-d’s image, yearns to be completely divine, i.e. free. It is this G-dliness inherent in human beings that drives us to constantly challenge and transcend the limits imposed on us, even the limits of our own natures.
Since freedom is an intrinsic property of the human soul and a manifestation of its G-dly nature, we must be extremely cautious to encourage, rather than be threatened by, its full and intense expression. Hashem, in His wisdom and kindness, has given us just such an outlet for this expression. It is called the seder. We have a whole night to retell and relive the experience of being slaves and becoming free people. Through storytelling, songs, tears and laughter, we get to reenact the emotional rollercoaster that our ancestors lived through. They survived and we will too. We are here to continue their story.
The word seder means order, and we follow a specific order consisting of 15 steps that each symbolize or commemorate one aspect of our experience in Egypt. For example, we take a bitter herb to recall the bitter slavery and dip it into charoset, a paste made of wine, fruit and nuts, made to resemble the mortar used to make the bricks for Pharaoh, and we make a blessing on it. A blessing? Yes. To demonstrate that, even when we feel bitterness, its purpose and objective is not bitter, but to reach a greater freedom. As it was in Egypt, the more they were oppressed, the more they proliferated and grew. We are taught that G-d blessed them with six babies per pregnancy! The more we suffered, the more we called out to G-d to rescue us, His beloved children, which He did, and took us out of Egypt, through the desert, where He provided us all our needs, gave us the Torah (see the “Dayeinu” song in the Haggada), until we eventually reached the Holy Land.
Whether in Israel, Russia, Cambodia or South Africa, Jewish people will be celebrating with family, friends and guests this Passover. How fortunate we are in Canada in 2010 to be able to celebrate Passover without worry. Let’s remember that freedom is an attitude of hope and can inspire us, not just during this holiday, but throughout the coming year as we may have to endure pain. May the lessons of freedom, true freedom, stay with us all as we relive the footsteps of our ancestors once again. Wishing one and all a happy and kosher Passover.
Esther Tauby is a local educator, writer and counselor.
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