Is Freedom Really Free? What's Passover to you?

The Pesach (Passover) preparation has been over a month in the making. My entire life I have not learned as much about Pesach as I have in the past month. I understood it on a simple level: freedom from slavery.

As impossible as it is to get Jews to agree on the same thing, one thing that all Jews would agree to is that Pesach is a holiday of freedom.

I should also point out the interesting phenomenon that, no matter how much of our Jewish identity we “lose”, reject, or forget, nearly every Jew in the world is always sure to partake in a Pesach sedar.

Most of us don’t even know what a sedar is—I didn’t either. Even the dictionary erroneously defines ‘seder’ as a Passover ritual that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Sedar is the Hebrew word for ‘order’ or ‘arrangement;’ which is often referred to as a learning schedule.

The combination of freedom and strict order seems like a bit of a paradox.

Having grown up a Reform Jew and spending the past 6 months learning in a baal teshuva Orthodox Yeshiva, I now realize how very different the definition of “freedom” is between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox world. In the non-Orthodox world, particularly among reform/liberal Jews, the freedom of Passover is our freedom from bondage and persecution and a newfound liberty to do whatever we like without anyone in control of us or telling us what to do. At face value, it seems like a nice idea, but that’s not what true freedom is, and it certainly does not do justice to the freedom we experience on Pesach.

When we are free to do whatever we want, we are not free. We might appear free, we might even think we’re free, but in truth we become slaves to our desires. A drug addict might think he’s free because he is free to do as many drugs as he likes, but his addiction binds him to the drug like shackles on a prisoner. While this example might seem extreme, the same can be said for us in our everyday lives. How many times have we heard, “I’ll eat this chocolate tonight but I’ll hate myself tomorrow.” So don’t eat it!

The other side of this supposed freedom is that we have no direction whatsoever. Someone who has all the money in the world is technically free to do whatever she wants, but with no direction in life she’ll never be happy. How frustrating was it in college when your professor told you to write a 40 page paper on “whatever you feel like.” Sure, you have the freedom to pick your subject, but then you have no idea what to expect for a grade; you have no idea what the professor is looking for and therefore no idea what the end product is supposed to be like. The same can be said for life. If we are free and have no constraints, how are we supposed to understand our purpose and “end product?”

The true freedom of Pesach, as defined in the original, “Orthodox” teachings, is not at all this idea of freedom from all constraints.

First, we have the freedom from Mitzrayim (Egypt). Mitzrayim represents the purely physical world and the complete absence of spirituality. By contrast, we learn in every narrative where Jews are in Israel, the Jews have to pray, work the land, and establish a relationship with G-d in order to bring rain and produce. In Mitzrayim we see there is no need for this; the Nile, the world’s longest river, is the source of water and “provider of life.” For what would Egyptians need G-d?

Egyptians had gods and idols for everything, and even deified the Pharaoh. The word פרעה (Pharaoh) itself means ‘without boundaries’. If you are without boundaries, you are ownerless and you can do “whatever you want.” But as we just learned, doing whatever you want doesn’t make you free, on the contrary, it makes you a slave to your desires. You become imprisoned, and what is really kept out is spirituality and the essence of who you really are.

The word מצריים - Mitzrayim itself comes from צר (tzar), which means ‘narrow’ in Hebrew. In Mitzrayim, you are confined to live in a completely physical life; life is narrowed to physicality, the essence of Mitzrayim. Therefore, during Pesach we celebrate the coming out of narrowness. After the 10 plagues, G-d took us out of this jail to escape the narrowness of physicality. G-d took us to the desert, which is the complete opposite of Mitzrayim; there’s an absence of water (there’s no Nile), and an absence of all physicality; and this is when we truly become a nation.

One of my Rabbis brought in this idea of narrowness to explain that, in a tangible world that functions with 5 senses, everything we see can be explained within the 5 senses. This is a façade; to assume that something can only exist if I see, hear, touch, smell, or taste it narrows us to a world of finitude and completely leaves out the 6^th sense: the perception of something spiritual. Our challenge is to live outside of this narrowness and see something that is infinite. Everything physical expires, dissolves, or dies, but that which is spiritual is eternal and lasting.

Pesach is a reminder to us that we can’t find lasting meaning in the physical. While physicalities can enhance our lives, they ultimately bring only instant-gratification. If it’s something lasting we are searching, we have to look beyond the physical and be open to the spiritual.

Chametz

Besides being finite and short-lasting, much of physicality is fake. This is why we clean our houses out of chametz (leavened products) and why we eat matzos instead during Pesach. What is bread made of? –flour, water, yeast, and sugar or fruit juice. Our sages teach us that the flour represents our body, water our soul, sugar/fruit juice our physical desires, and yeast our arrogance. Why is yeast our arrogance? Yeast is a fake, superficial additive, which takes just a little bit of bread and blows it up to make it look bigger than it truly is.

How often are we slaves to our physicalites, investing in everything which will make us look and seem bigger, better, richer, more attractive, and more successful than we really are?

The idea of eating matzo is the realization that we don’t need any of these superficialities to sustain us. It is in fact these superficialities that hold us back from truly being free.

The Wise Child

Out of the 4 children who ask questions (the ma nishtana), one child is deemed the “wise one.” Why is he wise? As my Rabbi notes, he is wise because he asks questions about actions—why do we do this and that? It shows an effort to understand something, versus making assumptions or ignorant statements.

How often do we ask and explore about the many intricacies of Judaism or life in general? How often do we make assumptions that block us from pursuing the answer?

My Rabbi added the point that asking questions is a way of completing oneself. If we are able to ask what is lacking, we get an idea of how to complete it. Wherever we decide we are lacking can indicate where we are headed. If we realize we are lacking spirituality and deep-meaning in life, then we can figure out the steps to fill the lack and make our life more complete. If we really feel a lack for a BMW, then it’s the BMW and materialism that will be more definitive of our future path. The problem is that most of us feel we are lacking in the most superficial of areas and we don’t allow ourselves to pursue anything of value and lasting-meaning.

We should all ask ourselves what we’re truly lacking, that is the real us.

Finally, unlike the ‘non-Orthodox’ understanding of the freedom we experience during Pesach, freedom is a means to an end, it is not an end in and of itself. G-d didn’t bring us out of Egypt so we could go party in the desert. He brought us out of Egypt so we could stand at Mt Sinai and commit to a certain amount of responsibility, so we could become a strong, united nation and receive the Torah.

We can call ourselves as free as we want, but if we don’t have order and direction, if we don’t have the 613 commandments on how to lead a better life, then we’re not free at all, and it’s just as much of an illusion as the yeast in our bread.

This Pesach I hope we can all relive this freedom in its purest form. Let’s think about what is truly meaningful to us, what is lacking, how we can obtain it, and what is superficial; so we can get to the essence of who we truly are and begin to understand our purpose for being here.

While this happened over 3,000 years ago, we are all in Mitzrayim right now. The only way out is not to ignore the physical world, but to recognize the spirituality within it and overcome being a slave to our desires for the sake of using that physicality for a higher purpose.

Kasher Pesach Sameach!

Next year in Jerusalem!

A Half-Shekel Jew & the 12 Golden Calves

In this week’s Parshas, Ki Tisa, the two most prominent teachings are of the half-shekel redemption and the sin of the golden calves.

The people of Israel are told to each contribute exactly half a shekel of silver to the Sanctuary. There are many deep insights we can gain from this; I’d like to relay a couple thoughts. Why do we have to use a half-shekel to count Jews? Why is it only a half shekel?

One reason why we can’t count Jews as numbers is because only physical things are counted with numbers (one person, two people, three people). But Jews are not physical beings. Jews are spiritual beings who are meant to see past the physical and can see something deeper. For this reason, we can’t be counted by whole numbers.

Why a half shekel? Wealthy and poor alike contributed this half-shekel in equal measure. A poor man couldn’t contribute less, a rich man couldn’t contribute more. This shows that we Jews are all working together towards the same higher purpose. Additionally, no one Jew is complete by himself. He needs his fellow Jews in order to be complete and to be completely accounted for.
The second major teaching in these Parshas is related to the golden calves. While the King James Bible’s mis-translation might lead you to believe there was only one golden calf, there were in fact 12 golden calves made for each tribe of the Israelites.

When Moses did not return when expected from Mount Sinai, the people felt lost and said to Aaron (the brother of Moses):

“Rise up, make for us judges/gods who will go before us, for this Moses (…) we do not know what became of him!” {Shemos/Exodus 32:1}

While the sin of the golden calves was certainly a grave sin that would haunt us for generations, it did not come from malicious intent. How could the Jews drop so quickly from the intense spirituality and devotion of Mount Sinai to idol worship?
Great Torah scholars hold that’s not what happened. The sage Maimonides wrote that the Jews were just looking for a way to concretize G-d. G-d was such an imminently spiritual being and it was too hard for Man to grasp.

As we can all admit, it is much easier to believe something when it is concrete. It’s difficult to put our minds in a position to accept something on a spiritual level. And thus, the Jews made the golden calves.

There are four faces of G-d, the “neshar” (eagle), “ari” (lion), “adam” (man), and “par” (cow). Each face is an expression of G-d’s imminence, and at the same time, each one reflects a trait that Man carries. Naturally, people are more inclined to one trait—it is Torah that balances them out. That’s why we see when Moses was absent from the people, and they were not learning Torah, they resorted to a meaningless physical expression with the intention of “doing the right thing.”

But why did the people resort to making a calf?

Adam/man represents growing and reaching one’s potential. Eagle/neshar represents keballah, having a birds-eye-view of the world, being omnipotent, spiritual, and above everything. Ari/lion is king of the jungle and represents building society, building civilization; taking charge and bringing G-d out into the world. The word for Cow/par comes from fruit and being fruitful. Cow is the gift that keeps on giving, you can eat its meat, have its milk, use its leather, use it to plow the ground. A cow represents satisfaction and good times.
After being enslaved for 400 years, after wandering through the desert, after being attacked by the Amaleks, all the Jews wanted was to have a good time and have something physical to relate their praise to—they didn’t want to try to connect with some spiritual being that they couldn’t touch.

I find it interesting that while every generation since the generation at Sinai we have known the “sin of the golden calf” to be the worst sin committed by the Jewish people, the Jewish people, at the time of the sin thought they were doing the right thing and for the most part had “good intentions.”

It’s clear how even with good intentions we can be completely lost in life. Whether it’s with work, relationships, family, or whatever we spend our time and energy doing; if we can’t relate it to a higher purpose, there is no deep, lasting meaning behind it. And if it’s not for the sake of a higher purpose, we might put all our efforts into something, while having good intentions and thinking we’re doing the “right thing” or we’re being a “good person” but in reality what we are doing could be completely damaging spiritually and bring us farther and farther from our true higher purpose in life.

The Jews made the golden calves while Moses was on Mount Sinai preparing to receive the stone tablets from G-d. It was G-d who related to Moses what the people had done. And though Moses was on a higher spiritual level than any other human in history, G-d told Moses to “descend” from Mount Sinai, and therefore descend from that high spiritual level. Why should Moses descend because of the sin of his People?

Just like we learned with the half-shekel redemption, us Jews have a combined purpose. When one person descends, we all descend. When one Jew around the world (such as the Bernie Madoff scandal) acts immorally, we feel it in Jewish communities all over the world. On a spiritual level, when one Jew leaves the community, we also descend as a people as it means there is one less Jewish home to help rebuild the Jewish people.
Similarly, when one Jew succeeds, we feel their success around the world as well—even more so with learning Torah, when one Jew learns Torah he elevates the entire Jewish people.

May we all explore the deep, rich birthright of our People. May we find deep, lasting meaning in everything we do. May we look past just the physical and try to connect with the spiritual. May we permit ourselves to search for that higher purpose. And may we all see the true merit in the depths and beauty of the Torah, as we elevate our entire people with each verse we learn.