"What is Freedom?" - A Passover Reflection
The Rabbis teach us that every year when we sit down at the Passover Seder we need to take a moment and allow ourselves to feel as if we ourselves have come directly out of Mitzrayim, which is the Hebrew for Egypt, as if we ourselves have escaped from “the narrow place,” and that we have stepped into FREEDOM. This begs the question, "what is freedom?"
Is freedom being the young adult with a house, children, spouse, and decent job, or is it being the single person who lives in a studio apartment, with no car payment and very little to clean?
Is freedom being the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company with over one hundredemployees and stockbrokers to answer to, or, is it being the homeless person in the street that has nothing to lose.
The Rabbis tell us that when the Israelites left Egypt, they left with tremendous wealth. They took everything of value that they could carry. For some, this meant gold and silver, and for others it was a musical instrument. Was entering the Promised Land with all of this wealth an indication of their freedom? Or, was entering an empty dessert with just the clothes on their back, living like nomads, a way to have been truly free?
What is freedom? What is slavery?
More and more, I am coming to realize that everything worth having in liferequires time, resources, or work. Is this requirement a sort of slavery? We become enslaved by the responsibilities which accompany the things we wish for: when it isliving in a bigger home, we must do more cleaning and maintenance and have greater bills; when it is being in conscious relationship, we must always be thinking about others and keeping ourselves in check; when we desire intimate relationship with our children and grandchildren, we must have very hard and honest conversations; when we have our own business, we must make sure our employees get paid on time and that our customers get what they need in a timely fashion.
One could imagine the "freedom" experienced by the single, homeless person who has no bills to pay, no other person to worry about and no physical place to clean. The heavy price, of course, of that sort of freedom is the enormous stress of not knowing where the next meal will come from or how to protect oneself from the elements. The "enslavement" of the CEO to the company's shareholders and employees is the "freedom" of financial security.
Perhaps freedom is a matter of merely choosing our form of enslavement, recognizing that we, often if not always, have the ability to choose how and where we want to invest our time, energy and resources.
If we say that freedom is having a choice, let us examine something else. During the Exodus, it is said that only one fifth of the Israelites left Egypt, and of that twenty percent, most were constantly complaining to Moses, saying “we would have been better off in Egypt, we should have stayed.” Would you say that these people were free?
Perhaps they were enslaved in their own mind, questioning their decision, second-guessing their choice. Is this freedom, or is this a continued enslavement?
If I make a choice to take a specific job but then constantly complain about the commute, or if I choose to live in a home with the responsibility of family and burdensome finances and constantly complain about my responsibilities with the kids, am I still free within my choices, or am I enslaved by my constant complaints?
I am coming to realize that ACCEPTANCE is the truest freedom. Having the ability to choose is the first step towards freedom but to remain free, to live in the freedom, we must live in acceptance. This speaks to the ongoing reflection about the Exodus from Egypt and how we are asked to continually see, each and every year, how we keep ourselves enslaved.
It is the acceptance of what is, the surrender to the choices we made that provide us with the ability to live a complaint-free life, no matter what the circumstances. It is the ability to look at the choices we have made up to this point and acknowledge them. Perhaps, at one point, while examining these choices we may choose to make a different choice but as long as we have made a choice, we are free when we live in the acceptance of that choice, to rest in it and honor it.
And so my dear friends,
The ability to make a choice, to choose what we desire, to work for it, to struggle for it is the first step toward freedom. The ability to decide what we would like to be enslaved by or deeply committed to is key. But do not forget that true freedom is ACCEPTING the choices we have made and living harmoniously with all the joys and consequences of those choices. Freedom is about making peace with where we are, in this moment.
Ask yourselves:
What life choices were made for you?
What are the choices you have made?
What about those choices that are difficult to live with?
How can you accept the difficulty within the choice?
I bless us all to acknowledge our choices and to find the willingness to accept what is, allowing us to truly live in Freedom.
Happy Passover!
A freilichen Pessach! (Yiddish)
Chag Somayach! (Hebrew)
Chani
Do you or someone you know need a place to go for the seder???
We are having an open seder in Fair Lawn NJ on April 14th at 7:00pm.Please have them contact us at 201-477-0274
Passover begins on the eve of April 14th 2014.
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