The Festival of the Child

March 3rd, 2015

When did you last experience freedom? For many of us, burdened by our jobs, our familial and social responsibilities, and the other entanglements of the human state, freedom seems as rare as it is essential, as elusive as it desirable. We want it, we need it, yet how do we achieve it?

But look at the child. Observe him at play, immersed in a favorite book, asleep and smiling at his dreams. Assured that father and mother will feed him, protect him, and worry about all that needs worrying about, the child is free. Free to revel in his inner self, free to grow and develop, open to the joys and possibilities of life.

This is why Passover, the festival of freedom, is so much the festival of the child. For it is the child who evokes in us the realization that we, too, are children of G-d, and are thus inherently and eternally free. It is the child who opens our eyes to the ultimate significance of Passover: that in taking us out of Egypt to make us his chosen people, G-d has liberated us of all enslavement and subjugation for all time.

The child is thus the most important participant at the Passover seder. Many of the seder customs are specifically designed to mystify the child, to stimulate his curiosity, to compel him to ask: Mah nishtanah halailah hazeh… “Why is this night different from all other nights?” For the entire Haggadah, the “telling” of the story of our redemption from Egypt at the seder, is built around the concept of “When your child shall ask you… You shall tell your child.”[1] On Passover, we want to enter the child’s mind, to view reality from his perspective. For how else could we taste freedom?

Four Sons

But children, as every parent will attest, come in many shapes and forms. A closer examination of the Torah’s discussion of the seder dialogue reveals several versions of the child’s questions and the parent’s response.[2] The Haggadah explains that “the Torah is addressing itself to four sons: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask.” Depending on how (and if) the child articulates his question, the Torah offers four different approaches to explaining the message of the festival and the significance of our freedom.

The “wise son” asks intelligent, well-structured questions that reflect the thoroughness of his observations and his desire to know, appreciate and participate.[3] The proud father responds with a detailed explanation of the seder observances from beginning to end, all the way to the law that “one should not serve up any dessert after the meat of the Passover offering,”[4] so that its taste should linger in our mouths long after the seder.[5]

The “wicked son,” observing the labor and expense that go into the making of the seder, asks: “Whatever for is this work of yours?”[6] “This work of yours,” notes the Haggadah—this is something he wants no part of himself. “This is because of what G-d did for me,” replies the father in kind, “when I left Egypt.”[7] “For me… when I left Egypt” implying, explains the Haggadah, that “had he (the wicked child) been there, he would not have been redeemed.”

To the “simple son,” who can manage only a lame “What is this?,”[8] the father responds with an appropriately elementary explanation of the night’s significance.[9] And to the father of “the son who does not know how to ask,” the Torah instructs: “Tell your child.”[10] You initiate the discussion; you prod him into conversation and participation.[11]

There and Here

Of the above responses, our answer to the “wicked son” begs clarification. Why do we tell him that he would have been left behind in Egypt at the time of the Exodus?

Factually, this was indeed the case. Our sages tell us that only one out of five Jews departed Egypt for Sinai on the first Passover.[12] The other four-fifths refused to leave, preferring slavery to Pharaoh over commitment to G-d. These Jews were not redeemed. For though G-d accepted the Jews in Egypt as they were, despite their lowly spiritual station after two centuries of enslavement to the most debased society on earth, there was one condition: one had to desire freedom in order to deserve it.

Still, what is to be gained by telling the wicked son that “had he been there, he would not have been redeemed”? Do we want to further alienate an already alienated child?

In truth, however, our response to the wicked son is not a message of banishment and rejection, but one of acceptance and promise. Had he been there, we tell him, he would not have been redeemed. The Exodus from Egypt was before the revelation at Sinai, before G-d chose each and every Jewish child as His own. There, in Egypt, redemption was a matter of individual choice. Had he been there, he would still be there. But he was not there—he is here.

“Here” is after Sinai. Here, free is what we are rather than something that we might elect or decline to be. True, we are currently in exile, but “on that day,” prophesies Isaiah, “you will be gathered up one by one, O children of Israel.”[13] When G-d shall again come to redeem us, not a single Jew will be left behind.

The Fifth Child

As different as they may be, the “four sons” of the Haggadah have one thing in common: whether involved, challenging, inept or indifferent, they are all present at the seder table. They are all relating, albeit in vastly differing ways, to our annual reliving of the Exodus and our birth as a nation. The line of communication is open; the potential “wise son” that resides within every Jewish child is approachable.

Today, however, in our era of spiritual displacement, there exists a fifth child: the Jew who is absent from the seder table. He asks no questions, poses no challenges, displays no interest. For he knows nothing of the seder, nothing of the significance of the Exodus, nothing of the revelation at Sinai at which we assumed our mission and role as Jews.

To these children of G-d we must devote ourselves long before the first night of Passover. We must not forget a single Jewish child; we must invest all our energies and resources to bringing every last “fifth son” to the seder-table of Jewish life.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Passover 5728 (1968) and 5751 (1991), and on a public letter[14] dated Nissan 11, 5717 (April 12, 1957)[15]

Tags: children, parenting, Exodus from Egypt, seder
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Freedom

March 3rd, 2015

by Jay Litvin

Editor’s note: Each week, the Week In Review brings you a sampling of the Rebbe’s teachings—adaptations of his talks, essays and letters—that propose a way of life instructed by the Torah and illuminated by Chassidic teaching. Perhaps some of you have wondered: What would it be like to actually live this way? What happens when these teachings are accepted as a guide to daily living?

In this column, we bring you a glimpse into one such life. Jay Litvin is a 53-year-old husband, father, writer, filmmaker, public relations consultant and chassid. His articles are based not on any specific talk or essay of the Rebbe, but on his personal experience of the endeavor to incorporate the Rebbe’s vision into his life.

I stood between the train cars, wind blowing in my hair, watching the Mexican countryside flash by. With each passing hour the train wheels carried me further from my obligations, my bills, my job, and the people who knew me. In twelve more hours, my wife and two children and I would get off the train, ride a bus for several hours, and then take a boat to a place where no one knew us. A place where I would receive no phone nor electric bills, because there would be neither electricity nor phones. Nor were there any roads in the small village that would be our home, so there would be no automobile to care for, no insurance fees or gas expense. The palm-thatched palapa in which we would live cost $150 per year. I would live off the land with my hands, my machete, and a crude, Mexican-made fishing device to supply most of our food.

I was free! I had left bills, obligations, the constraints of societal norms, and the expectations of others behind me. My time and my life were my own.

Today, I have seven children. I work 12 to 14 hours a day. I have even less time than money. My obligations to family, work, and community are greater than anything I left behind when I boarded that decrepit train to Mexico. And yet, there is a sense of freedom in these obligations that surpasses the most idyllic, sun-filled days spent fishing in a dugout canoe on the Pacific Ocean.

A hungry person is not free, but enslaved by the need to end the growling in his stomach. In those Mexican days, I was hungry for the connection and fulfillment that I thought I would find in this primitive, natural environment. The freedom and pleasure I discovered were wonderful, but only a diversion from the goal that I had set off to achieve. Late at night, sitting in our palapa, the kids tucked into their hanging bamboo beds, the kerosene lantern casting its glow around the makeshift table, dimly illuminating the palm fronds that surrounded our home, I would feel the same emptiness that had taken me to Mexico in the first place. And though I would not dwell on the thoughts and feelings that crept into consciousness in the silence of the night, I knew that the true purpose of this journey was not being achieved. I was still starving for meaning in life.

My hunger had taken me through many experiences and investigations, much study and exploration. It was a search that had gone from the mountaintops of Oregon to the jungles of Mexico and many places in between. But I didn’t find freedom from this hunger until I reached the gray, workaday city of Milwaukee. Because it was in Milwaukee that I discovered Chabad and Torah-true Judaism.

One cannot be truly free unless one knows who he really is, what he really wants and what he is meant to do. Regardless of how fantastic or romantic, dramatic or adventurous the masks I wore, they were in the end only masks, and not my real face. I am not a machete-carrying Mexican peasant working the land. I am a Jew connected to G-d through Torah and mitzvot. And when I am being who I truly am and fulfilling the purpose for which I was brought into the world, the yokes of worldly obligation are no longer the markers of whether or not I am free. They become the tools with which I exercise my freedom.

I need my car to deliver mishloach manot on Purim. I must earn money to give my children the education they need to become Torah-loving people. The telephone is vital to my work and to the ability to communicate words of Torah or to help a friend. The rent I pay (more dollars per week than what I paid for a year’s use of the palapa in Mexico) provides a home filled with Torah and learning, with mitzvot and good deeds, with warmth and love and nurturing for my children in a community and environment that strengthens, supports and encourages the values upon which I base my life.

The adventure I seek is found in the constant exploration of who I am and who I can be as I stretch further and further in my quest to become the best parent, husband, friend, Jew and chassid I can be.

Today, my soul no longer aches. It is nourished by a connection with the Almighty and a sense of His presence in my daily hours. My hunger is filled, rather than diverted by constantly shifting adventures and pleasures. My life, thank G-d, is filled with purpose, satisfaction and a profound love of my family.

My children are not running barefoot through the sand, but walking sure-footed through life, feet firmly planted in Torah and a way of life that cherishes the finest and highest of G-dly and human qualities.

I don’t fish, have little time for vacations, and carry a tallit bag rather than a machete. I am bound to the yoke of Torah. I am a servant (to the best of my limited abilities) of G-d’s will.

And I have never been more free.

Tags: psycho-spiritual journey, freedom, personal growth
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The Emancipation of G-d

March 3rd, 2015

As You delivered a nation and its G-d… so deliver us.
From the “Hoshaanot” prayers

In our prayers, we refer to Passover as the “season of our freedom.” The plural “our,” of course, refers to us, the people of Israel. But on a deeper level of interpretation, “our freedom” is the freedom of G-d and of Israel.[1] As our sages point out, G-d’s promise to Moses, “I will bring you out from under the hardship of Egypt…,”[2] also reads (by an alternate vowelization), “I will be brought out with you from under the hardship of Egypt…”[3] For the essence of man is “literally a part of G-d above”[4]; as long as man is imprisoned, his deepest yearnings stifled and denied actualization, G-d, too, is not free.[5]

In general, the Torah’s commandments fall under two categories: laws that govern relations between man and man (“good for man”), and those that outline the duties of man to his Creator (“good for G-d”).[6] On Passover, as befits the “season of our freedom,” the two categories fuse into one: “good for G-d” is synonymous with “good for man,” and vice versa.

This is most poignantly demonstrated in the organization of the seder, conducted each year on the night of our liberation from Egyptian slavery. The purpose of the seder is to “remember the day on which you left Egypt”[7] and reaffirm our commitment as G-d’s people. To this end, we eat the matzah and the maror and review the story of the Exodus. Yet the entire seder is constructed as a dialogue, as answers to questions posed by the “four sons”—the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the son who does not know how to ask. One remembers the Exodus not in meditative communion with G-d, but by fulfilling the commandment to “tell your child”[8]—including “your child” in the broader sense of the term: any individual whom you are in a position to teach and enlighten,[9] including “children” who are antagonistic or indifferent to the essence of Passover.

The freedom attained at Passover emphasizes the superficiality of the dividing line between the “social” and “religious” spheres of life. On the day that G-d became free through the redemption of the human soul, it is most obvious that no relationship can be forged with G-d that does not include a commitment to one’s fellow man.

Based on two public letters issued by the Rebbe for Passover, 5735 (1975)[10]

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Tags: Jewish law, teaching, seder
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The Coiled Spring

March 2nd, 2015

Keep the month of spring, and observe a Passover to the Lord your G-d; for in the month of spring G-d took you out of Egypt

Deuteronomy 16:1

Observing the bare branches and the frozen earth of winter, one sees not a sign of life and growth; the juices of nature appear to have run dry. But come spring, the pent-up energies break the surface. Suddenly, practically before our eyes, a seemingly dead world becomes bedecked in green and vitality.

Obviously, the lifeless gray of winter was a deceptive front. Behind a veneer of inertia, the sap of life had coursed along, garnering its energies, rejuvenating its potency. Winter turns out to have been a retreat for the sake of advance, a recoiling only to spring forth life and renewal.

… for in the month of spring G-d took you out of Egypt

For more than two centuries, the people of Israel languished under the yoke of Pharaoh and sank deeper and deeper in the morass of Egyptian paganism and depravity. The seedling planted by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appeared to have atrophied. Generations of slavery had deadened their hearts, numbed their minds, and stifled all outward signs of spiritual life.

Then came the Exodus. In a flash, a clan of slaves blossomed into a free and holy people. In just 49 days, two centuries of repression were undone and a nation of ex-idolaters stood at Mount Sinai ready and worthy to be elected as G-d’s chosen people and serve as a guiding light for all of humanity.

The spiritual winter of Egypt was now shown to have harbored and nurtured the Jewish soul below its frozen surface, forging it in the smelting pit of exile and endowing it with the fortitude to fuel Israel’s birth and growth as a nation.

Keep the month of spring…

In every individual’s life there are patches of barrenness and fruitlessness. Yet to turn one’s back on these seemingly “dead” periods is to forgo the most precious resources that life can yield. Buried beneath these fallow surfaces lie the germinating seeds of renewal, awaiting discovery and utilization as the springboard for the attainment of otherwise unimaginable heights.

Based on a letter by the Rebbe, Iyar 1, 5711 (May 7, 1951)[1]
_____________________

[1]. Igrot Kodesh, vol. IV, pp. 267-268.

Tags: Exodus from Egypt, renewal, seasons
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The Candlelit Search

March 2nd, 2015

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch told:

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi returned from his first visit to Mezeritch–where he had first been exposed to the teachings of Chassidism as a disciple of Rabbi DovBer of Mezeritch–just prior to Passover of the year 5525 (1765). Though a young man of but twenty years at the time, Rabbi Schneur Zalman was already a respected figure in his hometown of Vitebsk, and many of the town’s young scholars regarded him as their teacher and mentor.

Upon his return to Vitebsk, Rabbi Schneur Zalman said to his disciples: “Soon we shall conduct the search for chametz, which Torah law instructs to be held ‘On the eve of the fourteenth[1], by the light of a candle[2]’ and to cover all ‘recesses and crevices[3]’of our homes. Searching for chametz involves more than removing every particle of physical leaven from our domain; it also means eradicating every last vestige of spiritual leaven–self-inflating pride–from every ‘recess and crevice’ of the fourteen elements of our personality: the seven character traits of one’s ‘animal self’ and the seven character traits of one’s ‘G-dly self.’[4] This, too, is a search to be conducted ‘by the light of a candle’–by the light of one’s ‘Candle of G-d, the soul of man[5].’”

On the thirteenth of Nissan of that year, Rabbi Schneur Zalman was so preoccupied with his preparations for the search for chametz that he ate nothing the entire day (he did not fast–it is forbidden to fast during the month of Nissan[6]–he just didn’t eat). The search took all night, though Rabbi Schneur Zalman and his wife lived in a single room at the time.

From the Rebbe’s notes on the Passover Haggadah[7]

Tags: Chassidic stories, chametz
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Speed In Three Dimensions

March 2nd, 2015

And so you shall eat it: your hips girdled, your shoes on your feet, and your staffs in your hands. Eat it in haste, it is a pesach (passover) offering to G-d.

Exodus 12:11

Our endeavors in life can be divided into three general categories. First there is the tending to our own needs, developing our potentials and improving our character. Then there is our involvement with our surroundings: we each have our own “miniature world”–our family, profession, social circle, the natural resources we consume or develop–the people and things we come in direct contact with and influence for the better or (G-d forbid) for the worse. Finally, there is the macro-universe: world events, historical development, creation as a whole. While many of us might consider this beyond our sphere of influence, our every act and endeavor deeply impacts the world we live in, whether we are aware of it or not.

Passover marks our birth as a nation—the time that G-d extracted “a people out of the bowels of a people,”[1] granted them the gift of freedom, and empowered them to realize His goodness and perfection in their own lives and in the world He created. A key theme in the story of the Exodus is “haste”: the children of Israel are described as having “fled” Egypt;[2] matzoh is the bread that didn’t leaven because we were “driven from Egypt and could not tarry”;[3] and the pesach offering, the key to the redemption and the axis around which the entire festival of Passover revolves, was eaten “in haste.”[4] The haste of Passover emphasizes that life, for the Jew, is never again to be the passive and static experience it was for the clan of Hebrew slaves under Egyptian bondage. Life is to be a vigorous, energized movement forward, an unceasing quest to advance and achieve.

The state of haste in which the first seder in Egypt was held was expressed in three ways: “your hips girdled, your shoes on your feet, and your staffs in your hands.” These correspond to the three dimensions of the forward movement of our lives outlined above: our self-development, our effect upon our immediate surroundings, and our universal role.

The hips, which are “the base that holds up the entire body,”[5] represent the human being as individual. The feet are the person’s means of locomotion, with which he moves from his private space and concerns to make contact with his fellows and with his environment. Equip the feet with shoes and you enable them to negotiate their way through hostile terrain that would otherwise impede their movement from place to place. Shod feet thus represent our ability to journey from the enclave of self to influence individuals and places that lie beyond the range of a “barefoot,” home-bound personality.

But man is more than a foot traveler in life. Man is unique among his fellow creatures in that he makes extensive use of “tools”—implements he fashions that enable him to manipulate his environment in ways he could not with his own “natural” powers and abilities. If he can scarcely lift the equivalent of his own weight with his own two hands, he has learned to literally move mountains with the machines he devises. If his own two feet can carry him only so far so fast, he has toured the depths of the sea and the astronomical heights with vehicles of his invention.

Therein lies the significance of the third marker of exodus alacrity—“your staffs in your hands.” The “staff” represents the uniquely human conviction that nothing is impossible, that we can always find a way to extend our reach beyond the distance dictated by our natural arm-span. That we each possess the capacity to positively influence all people, elements and events of our world, no matter how distant and foreign they may seem.

Based on a public letter by the Rebbe, Nissan 11, 5746 (April 20, 1986)

Tags: body and soul, Exodus from Egypt, potential
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Passovering Time

March 2nd, 2015

In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he himself has come out of Egypt

Passover Haggadah

The Baal Shem Tov would eat three festive meals on the last day of Passover. The third meal, which would be held toward the evening, was called “Moshiach’s meal,” because on the last day of Passover there is a revelation of the light of Moshiach.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch

True freedom is freedom from limitation—whether external or internal, whether physical, psychological or spiritual. Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for “Egypt,” means “boundaries” and “constrictions”; yetziat mitzrayim, “going out of Egypt,” is the endeavor to transcend limitation, to rise above all that inhibits the soul of man.

One of the most constricting elements of the human condition is the phenomenon of time. Time carries off the past and holds off the future, confining our lives to a temporal sliver of “present.” But on the first night of Passover, we break the bounds of time, having received a mandate to experience the Exodus “as if he himself has come out of Egypt.” We recall the Exodus in our minds, verbalize it in the telling of the Haggadah, digest it in the form of matzah and marror. As we passover the centuries, memory—those faded and anesthetized remnants of past that generally constitute our only answer to the tyranny of time—becomes experience and history is made current and real.

Leap to the Future

Passover is an eight-day festival, with two opening and two closing days of heightened observance and commemoration.[1] While the theme of freedom runs as a current through the entire festival, the first days of Passover focus primarily on the first redemption—our liberation from Egypt thirty-three centuries ago—while the last days highlight the final redemption—the future era of divine goodness and perfection heralded by Moshiach.[2]

Thus our trancendency of time enters a new, heightened phase: it is one thing to vitalize memory to the point of actual re-experience, but quite another to make real an event that lies in the future, especially an event that has no precedent or parallel in the history of man. Yet in the closing hours of Passover, we enter into the world of Moshiach: having vaulted over millennia of past, we now surmount the blank wall of future, to taste the matzah and wine of redemption.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Passover 5732 (1972)[3]

______________________________

Tags: redemption, Exodus from Egypt
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Passover Greeting

February 27th, 2015

Passover is the original fifteen step program to achieve growth and freedom. Every ritual at the seder is meant to open a channel connecting your inner and outer life. That’s the definition of a mitzvah, a connection.

The Matzah is humility. To grow we need to let go of our self-centeredness and allow something higher into our lives. This process paves the way for allowing other people into our lives, just as they are. From humility we move to self-assessment. This often leads to bit of sadness that we haven’t achieved all we are able with the talent and goodness given us. This is the symbol of the Moror – bitter herbs. But this is a good bitterness. It encourages us to take action and move ahead in life to new forms of expression. This is represented by the wine. Four levels of growth leading to redemption. Redemption can be described as understanding and using the energy from the places where we are stuck in life. Revealing the spark of G-dliness within all creation and freeing ourselves from our personal Egypt, our personal limitations and constraints.

Have a great seder and Passover

Philip Namanworth
Assistant Director, The Meaningful Life Center

Tags: freedom, personal growth, seder
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My G-d

February 27th, 2015

This is my G-d, I shall house Him;[1] the G-d of my fathers, I shall exalt Him
Exodus 15:2 (The Song of the Sea)

There are two basic tools by which we relate to the divine reality: faith and understanding. Obviously, our rational conception of G-d, defined by the limits of the human mind and of intellect per se, cannot encompass His infinite and definitionless truth; faith suffers no such limitation, being the unequivocal, unqualified acceptance of a truth greater than ourselves. On the other hand, what we understand is real to us, while what we believe is abstract and impersonal.[2]

So faith and understanding complement and fulfill each other. Where reason falls short of grasping the full extent of the divine infinity, faith fills the gap with its acceptance of G-d as He is, regardless of the degree to which He is understood. And where faith fails to make it relevant, the mind steps in to make tangible and personalize our perception of G-d.

Thus the Shaloh (Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz, 1560-1630) interprets the above-quoted verse from the ‘‘Song at the Sea.” When ‘‘this is my G-d,” when my perception of G-d is personalized by my own understanding and appreciation of His truth, then, ‘‘I shall house Him,” His truth dwells within me and is made an integral part of my being. The Hebrew word ve’anvehu (‘‘I shall house Him”) can also be read as an acronym of the words ani v’hu, ‘‘I and He,” to say: with my rational perception of G-d I internalize His truth so that ‘‘I and He” are united.

On the other hand, ‘‘the G-d of my fathers”—my acceptance of His reality with the faith I inherited from,[3] and was indoctrinated to, by my progenitors—brings me to ‘‘exalt Him.” This is a more exalted perception of the divine than ‘‘my” G-d, for it is not confined to what I am and what my faculties can generate; but for that very reason it is exalted beyond my pragmatic self, beyond the plane of my daily reality.

Based on an address by the Rebbe[4]

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Tags: faith, faith vs. reason, exodus
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Freedom

February 27th, 2015

And G-d said to Moses: “…Go to Pharaoh… and say to him: G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying: Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”

Exodus 7:14-16

Our sages call Passover “The Season of Our Freedom.” For the Exodus from Egypt was more than one of the many salvations of Jewish history; it was the first and ultimate bestowal of freedom upon man. Before the Exodus, there was no true freedom; and having experienced the Exodus, the Jew is forever and invariably free, and no force on earth can enslave him.[1]

“Freedom,” in the most basic sense of the word, is the removal of all constraints on a person’s development and self-expression. In other words, we assume that freedom is the natural state of man; that if we liberate a person of all external forces that limit and inhibit him, we have a free human being.

But if that were all there was to freedom, Passover would hardly qualify as “The Season of Our Freedom.” For while the Exodus freed us from Pharaoh and his taskmasters, it committed us to a greater, more embracing servitude. “When you take this nation out of Egypt,” G-d said to Moses from the burning bush at the foot of Mount Sinai when He first revealed Himself to him and commissioned him to redeem the people of Israel, “you shall serve G-d at this mountain.”[2] Standing before Pharaoh, Moses did not merely demand in the name of G-d, “Let My people go,” but, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”[3] The raison d’être of the Exodus was to bring us to Mount Sinai to be bound in a covenant with G-d as His “nation of priests and holy people”[4]—a covenant delineated by the 613 commandments of the Torah.

(Thus, the festival of Shavuot, which marks the day on which we received the Torah at Sinai, is the only festival that has no calendar date: the Torah designates it not as a certain day of a certain month—as it does all other festivals—but as the 50th day after Passover. This is to emphasize that Shavuot is an extension and fulfillment of Passover, for the purpose of the Exodus was realized only on the day we stood at Sinai.)

Why, then, is freedom the defining quality of Passover? Granted, servitude to G-d is preferable to servitude to Pharaoh, and every moral person will insist that servitude to G-d is preferable to a hedonistic “freedom” in a lawless world. But servitude and freedom, by definition, are diametric opposites. So why is Passover the quintessential season of freedom? If anything, it should be called “The Season of Our Servitude”!

Endless Lives

To understand the freedom achieved by the Exodus, we must examine the nature of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt.

Our sages state that “All galuyot (exiles and persecutions) are called by the name of Egypt.” The very name Mitzrayim (Hebrew for “Egypt”) means “boundaries” and “constraints.” Every time we are limited—by a foreign power, by a hostile or merely alien environment, by the corporeality of our bodies, the subjectivity of our minds or the shortcomings of our character—we are in Mitzrayim. If freedom means the absence of constraint, Mitzrayim is the limitation of man on all levels —physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally, or spiritually.

But there is more to galut than constraint and limitation. To refer to the Egyptian prototype, our galut in Egypt entailed more than an imprisonment of the body and a stifling of the spirit; we were slaves in Egypt, whose “lives were embittered with hard labor, with mortar and bricks and in all manner of work in the field—all the work to which they subjected them was crushing labor.”[5]

The phrase “crushing labor” (avodat perech) appears repeatedly in the Torah’s account of the Egyptian galut, the text of the Passover Haggadah, and the symbolism of the seder observances.[6] What is “crushing labor”? Maimonides defines it as “work that has no limit and no purpose.”[7] Work—even most difficult work—that has a defined end-point and a defined objective is not as demoralizing as endless, futile work. The Egyptians, whose aim in enslaving the Jewish people was to break their spirit, refused to impart any schedule, logic, efficiency or utility to their work. They worked them at the most irrational hours, gave to each of them the task most ill-suited to his or her abilities, and repeatedly destroyed what they had built only to order them to rebuild it again and again.[8]

Pharaoh had whip-wielding taskmasters to enforce his work-edict. Today, our world has “progressed” to the point that millions voluntarily subject themselves to “work that has no limit and no purpose”: work that spills over from its five-day, forty-hour framework to invade every moment and thought of the week; work that is dictated not by the capabilities and resources of the worker but by status, profitability and vogue; work that is not the means to an end but a self-perpetuating labor that becomes its own aim and objective.

Ultimately, the capacity for such labor can have only one source: the “spark of G-dliness” that is the essence of the human soul.[9] The physical self is finite and pragmatic; how, then, is it capable of “work that has no limit and no purpose”? What can be the source of the drive to scale mountains because they are there or to search for centuries for a way to turn lead into gold? Only the infinite well of divinity at our core. From where stems the bottomless commitment to the ever-receding goal of material “success”? Only from a soul that possesses limitless vigor and fortitude, from a soul whose commitment to its Creator is not contingent upon envisionable goals and calculable objectives.

The soul of man is thus subjected to a galut within a galut: not only is it prevented from exressing its true self, but it is forced to express itself in ways that are completely opposed to its true desires. Not only is it constrained by a material self and world—it also suffers the usurpation of its quintessential powers to drive the material self’s mundane labors. Not only is the soul’s capacity for infinite and objectiveless commitment inhibited and repressed—it is distorted into an endless quest for material gain.

Reclaiming the Infinite in Man

The road out of Egypt passes through Sinai.

The Torah regulates our involvement with the material world. It commands that we may, and should, create, manufacture and do business six days a week, but that on the seventh day, not only must all work cease, but we should assume a state of mind in which “all your work is concluded.”[10] On a daily basis, it tells us to set aside inviolable islands in time devoted to Torah study and prayer. And at all times, a multitude of Torah laws define the permissible and the forbidden in business and pleasure.

The Torah also enjoins us to “eat of the toil of your hands”—to invest only our marginal faculties in the business of earning a living, leaving our choicest talents free to pursue more spiritual goals.[11] And it insists that all material pursuits should be but a means to an end, but a vessel to receive G-d’s blessings and a tool to aid us in our life’s work of bringing sanctity and G-dliness into our world.[12]

In so restricting our physical lives, Torah liberates our souls. By limiting the extent and the nature of our material involvements, Torah extricates our capacity for infinite commitment from its material exile, freeing it to follow its natural course: to serve G-d in a manner of “no limit and no purpose”—in a manner that transcends the parameters of self, self-gain and our very conception of “achievement.”

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Passover 5719 (1959) and 5720 (1960)[13]

Tags: freedom, Exodus from Egypt, Divine service
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