Liberty at last

During the Exodus, G-d assures Moses that although his initial intervention with Pharaoh made things worse, liberation will indeed arrive eventually:

"Tell the Israelites: 'I will bring you out from the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being their slaves, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, to be your G-d…who is liberating you from Egyptian subjugation.’”

Pharaoh finally surrenders after the ten plagues crush Egypt. On the fifteenth day of Nissan, the Jews leave tyranny, and embark on the road to freedom.

3,320 years have passed since that day, yet the descendants of the slaves who departed Egypt still commemorate this event annually. Passover remains the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday; even Jews who feel far from tradition participate in some Seder.

It is certainly easy to celebrate the miracle of freedom when you are free. Yet for most of their history the Jewish people were exiled, oppressed, dominated – physically, emotionally and religiously – by tyrants and dictators. What became of Passover’s journey from slavery to freedom after the destruction of the First Temple that drove Israel back into exile? Or after the Greek and Roman conquest of the Jewish land and the exile of its inhabitants? What happened to this celebration of liberty after the destruction of the Second Temple, the failed Bar Kochba rebellion, the Hadrianic persecutions and the series of events that led to the longest exile? How could Jews celebrate emancipation under oppressive circumstances? How could Jews sincerely declare, “We were slaves and G-d liberated us?”

Liberty under oppression?
This question was raised by the great Rabbi Yehuda Low (1512-1607), known as the Maharal, chief rabbi of Prague, a historic figure and author of major works. In his time, Jews suffered from the infamous blood-libels, accused of killing Christian children to use their blood for matzah. Rabbi Low is said to have created a Golem ‘robot’ through Kabbala to combat the libels afflicting the Prague community.

The Maharal of Prague, too, wondered how Jews could celebrate their freedom during times when they were deep in the darkness of exile and persecution. Could a 2nd century Jew truly celebrate Passover? How about an 8th century Yemenite Jew? A 14th century Spanish Jew? A 17th century Polish Jew? Or a German Jew in 1938? A Russian Jew in the 1960’s?

Yet celebrate they did. Whenever Passover came around, this stubborn people was determined to re-experience freedom. Under the Inquisition, in Stalin’s Gulag, in the Warsaw Ghetto, the same question: “Why is this night different than all other nights?” was answered: “Because tonight we were set free!”

How did they do this? Were they irrational escapists, oblivious to reality?

The Maharal answers that on Passover, we Jews celebrate something very deep in our souls within, despite the oppressive conditions without.

The Exodus of Egypt was not merely an isolated political and geographical event that allowed slave laborers to leave. It was also an existential mutation, in which the gift of freedom was “wired” into the Jewish psyche. The divine liberation created a new type of Free Person, an individual who will never make peace with oppression and forever yearns for freedom. The Exodus implanted within us an inherent quest for liberty and an innate repulsion toward subjugation.

Hence, the entire drama that led up to the Exodus from Egypt: In an era when oppression was the norm, when kings were believed to have divine unlimited power, and the ordinary human being was at the mercy of whimsical leaders and gods, the Exodus changed the landscape of the human imagination for all of eternity. The Jews discovered – and would be responsible to impart this discovery to all humanity – that society must preserve the freedom and dignity of every individual, under the sovereignty of G-d who desires that humans choose to construct a world founded on freedom, and to build heaven on planet earth.

Thus, even if subsequently conquered and oppressed and hunted, the Jew never ceases to see himself inherently as a free man. He would never stop seeing oppression and exile as the ultimate aberration of reality and the distortion of human enterprise. His very being would cry out in protest against tyranny and cruelty, and he will remain obsessed with the belief that the future will be better, that Moshiach will bring the Redemption, that a society of evil cannot endure.

This is what Jews celebrate each year at the Seder, notwithstanding their deprived circumstances. They were not living in la-la land. They knew very well they were exiled, yet they relived the Exodus, because it implanted in them for eternity the awareness of freedom.

As the Baal Shem Tov brilliantly put it – you are where your will is, this means you are essentially free. If you crave freedom, you are indeed free.

The Chassidic masters develop this idea further. In Jewish mysticism, our yen for freedom is an ingrained divine consciousness embedded in the human spirit. Man yearns to reflect G-d. Just as G-d is utterly free, man created in G-d’s image yearns to be utterly divine, hence utterly free. This G-dliness inherent in a human being drives us to constantly challenge and transcend the limits imposed on us, including even the limits of our own nature.

(How interesting — and tragic — to compare the Maharal’s inspiration with the hateful observations of a philosophical leader of modern Islamic fundamentalism, Sayyid Qutb. In his book “Milestones” Qutb argues that during their Egyptian captivity the Jews acquired a ‘slavish character.’ As a result they became craven and unprincipled when powerless, and vicious and arrogant when powerful, accounting for their perfidy, greed, hatefulness, diabolical impulses, and never-ending conspiracies and plots against Muhammad and Islam.)

The Independent Streak
The Maharal’s idea may give us a positive approach to educational challenges. Because freedom is intrinsic to the soul, a manifestation of the soul’s G-dly nature, we can be encouraged, rather than feel threatened, by its intense expression.

If this is true of every person, how much more so with children and teenagers, who have a particularly profound quest for freedom, for individual self-expression, to make their own choices. This is not sinful; it is a good quality that can be channeled to produce the greatest blessings. If we suppress their liberty, it may compel them to express it in undesirable ways.

For example, when parents and educators impose on children and students values and traditions by coercion, upon adulthood they may reject these values. This is their way of proving to themselves and their environment that they are indeed free.

Education, of course, requires authority and discipline. Children who have license to do whatever they want, often end up with unhappy lives, lacking stability, direction, and security. In the long run, children are unhappy when they are given too much power. On the other hand, when faith is about dogma rather than depth, when passion is completely replaced by obligation, love by habit, the voice of the soul with the burden of tradition, the values we hold dear can be perceived as instruments of oppression. In their need for freedom, we sometimes give them no choice but to rebel.

A delicate balance between anarchy and suppression must be maintained. Youth must be shown why the traditional, moral and religious values of their parents and grandparents are means for self-actualization, self discovery – and the ultimate freedom. And they must be given wise opportunities to experience the glee of having the freedom to choose that which constitutes the path to a dignified and deep life; the freedom to choose freedom.