(Author: Charlotte Cohen, Vol. 65 #1, Pesach 2010)
Each Jewish festival seems to give expression to a particular aspect of human experience.
As Rosh Hashanah deals with renewal and rebirth, and Yom Kippur with remorse and remission, so the underlying message of Passover is one of deliverance and redemption.
Passover reminds us each year of its underlying message of liberation.
Because there were several Jewish members in the Toastmasters club to which I belonged, it was decided that although the next meeting did not actually fall within the week of Passover, as it coincided with the celebration of Easter, we would organise a combined Easter and Passover theme. The Christian members of the club would bring Easter eggs and speak about the meaning and customs of Easter, whereas the Jewish members would bring matzos and Passover delicacies and discuss the significance of the rituals and practices associated with that festival.
Taking into account its fundamental message of emancipation, my assignment was to speak on ‘Freedom.’ There was only one problem: I could think of nothing to say about ‘freedom’. For days I tried to imagine an illustrative story; or how to explain the concept of freedom in an inspirational way or how to present this abstract noun as identifiable ….
But nothing came to mind.
With only three days before the meeting, I decided to look up the word in a dictionary in the hope that this would provide a spark to alleviate my impasse. As well as several synonyms, the dictionary also described ‘freedom’ in antonyms: It was not being in bondage; it was not being in captivity; it was not being enslaved. It evoked no interpretive response.
I decided to check the thesaurus: Under the heading ‘Freedom’ I found this quotation by Franz Kafka: “It is often safer to be in chains than it is to be free.” It made no applicable sense of relevance …..
How does one define ‘freedom? What state of existence must one be to be free? It may mean something entirely different to each individual person. Is a mother free when she has three children to look after, has to work to assist with the household finances, and has an elderly parent to care for as well? Is a man free to resign from a job in which he is unhappy, when he is committed to the hilt with home and business commitments, and a family dependent on the income it provides? Is one free when one is beset by ill-health or physically dependant by being confined to a wheelchair or worse? Does freedom mean doing or saying whatever one wants – ignoring protocol or convention?
Finally, I decided to go to the root of it all: As the reason for speaking about ‘freedom’ in the first place was its association with Passover and the emancipation of the Jews, I began to wonder how Moses and the children of Israel must have felt when they finally reached the promised land – after forty years wandering in the desert? … I wondered whether the Bible gave any insight into their emotions at that time and whether one could reach into that experience.
I fetched a Bible from the bookshelf. I paged through it to find the part where Moses finally reaches the Promised Land. In doing so, the journey on which I had embarked in a quest to find something meaningful to say about freedom, would bring two discoveries: The first – simply a fact that I did not know – and which, it appears, very few people are aware of either…
The second, although simple, was in my terms, more of a revelation! Besides providing me with the topic for my speech, it provided me with a concept which had a profound effect on my thinking ever since.
I found what I was looking for in Deuteronomy. As we know, Moses does not enter the Promised Land – but looks across at it. And then, Chapter 5 verse 6 reads: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage”, followed by “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me; Thou shalt not make thee any graven image ….”, thereafter continuing to recount the rest of The Ten Commandments.
What struck me as odd was God’s reference to the ‘house of bondage’ and that after the 4th Commandment (– but the seventh day is the Sabbath; in it thou shalt not do any work ….) one finds the interjection: “And remember thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee thence through a mighty hand and a stretched out arm.” What bearing did these reminders about being a slave in the land of Egypt and now being free, have to do with The Ten Commandments? Why was it interrupted like this?
My son refuted the notion that there was any interjection made during The Ten Commandments. We took out the Bible again. He opened it at Exodus – where Moses receives the Commandments from God. There were no reminders or interpolations in it! I insisted that I had seen it. He said I must have been hallucinating.
And then, of course, the penny dropped: We had read ‘The Ten Commandments’ in two different places! He had seen them in Exodus. By focusing on when Moses reached the Promised Land, I had looked in Deuteronomy – which is where the commandments were repeated by Moses and the interjection, of course, made by him….
But still, why would he make it? What did the liberation of Jews from being slaves in Egypt have to do with The Ten Commandments anyway? .…. The close connection between ‘freedom’ and The Ten Commandments could be no coincidence. How were they bound?
And then suddenly, the implication of it, hit me: What a contradiction! What a paradox!
Here were the Israelites finally to enter the land of freedom, and with them, they carry ten of the most prescriptive laws ever given to mankind!! In fact, ‘freedom’ was implicitly secured with laws that unequivocally forbade certain things, and which vividly and decisively drew boundaries.
Now I began to understand what Kafka meant …
“It is often safer to the in chains than it is to be free.” A lamb put out in the wilderness is not free at all. It is doomed. Yet, within the confines of a pen, it is safe. There it is able to eat and play without risk. The lamb is ‘free’ because it is protected.
Therefore, freedom is not freedom, unless it has parameters, and when we are protected by the confines of just and prescribed laws.
If we refer again to the Ten Commandments, we find that the first four deal with man’s relationship to God, whereas the last 6, with man’s relationship to other men. There is no Commandment which puts a limit on our thinking (perhaps with the exception of the personal responsibility which comes with “thou shalt not covet”).
Therefore, the only unconditional freedom we have as human beings is freedom of thought. Here we are free to question, to contemplate, to consider, to imagine, to plan, to calculate and to choose. Our power to choose (described as a power even greater than the Angels as they can only choose to do good) is the greatest power bestowed on any living creature!
Although one may be free inasmuch as one is not at someone else’s beck-and-call, real freedom is dependant on the restraints of conscience and integrity. These are our controls. These are our limits. Provided the laws are just, there can be no freedom without parameters.
If then, the truest meaning of freedom is the application of our Divine power of choice within the confines of a moral and ethical code of behavior, then the message of freedom which we learn at Passover, extends itself to every decision we make every single day of our lives. For it is then – where we have the freedom to contemplate and consider; to reposition ourselves; to rethink and reaffirm our values – that we genuinely exercise freedom in this miraculous power of choice that we have been given.
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein spoke recently on the necessity for bringing principle and honor back into our thinking; and particularly in South Africa, despite our individual faiths, to have a common code of morality. He emphasized that as a nation, we can be ‘individual yet united” by the simplicity of implementing what is ‘good or bad’; starting with ourselves, and acting from the standpoint of what is clearly right or wrong.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Charlotte Cohen is a frequent contributor of essays, poems and short stories to a wide range of South African publications, both Jewish and general.
