Happy Passover - Chag Pesach Sameach!
Nisan 14, 5782/April 15, 2022
Passover - chag hacherut - the Festival of Freedom! Just say the word freedom and our minds conjure all sorts of pleasant scenarios. Freedom from debt, freedom from taxes, freedom from the draft, freedom from responsibility, free to do our own thing. But none of these things, in and of themselves, have anything at all to do with freedom. On the fifteenth of Nisan, more than 3,500 years ago, the Israelites in Egypt successfully fulfilled the task list given them by G-d. They acquired lambs on the tenth of the month, slaughtered them on the fourteenth, and ate them, with matzot and bitter herbs on the fifteenth - leil HaSeder - the Seder night. Having done all these things, fearlessly, while all of Egypt watched, they gathered up their necessities and marched out of Egypt.
Israel began its great journey to freedom. True, they had shattered the shackles that kept them bound to Egyptian slavery, but they were not yet fully free. They were in a wilderness, both real and metaphorically, for they had no law, no rules or regulations, no does or don’ts.
"Let My people go - that they may serve Me!" This was Moshe's demand on G-d's behalf to Pharaoh: free My people that they may enter into a relationship with Me; that they may be My people and that I may be their G-d. This was G-d's plan from the get-go. And it would involve three stages: extricating Israel from Egypt, making a covenant with Israel at Sinai, and bringing Israel into the land promised by G-d to their forefathers, so that they could fulfill every word of the covenant they obligated themselves to at Sinai.
Unfortunately, today many people have stripped the idea of freedom from its essential burden of responsibilities, from its adherence to a code of ethics, a moral imperative. And too many people are under the illusion that a people without a land and a sovereign society could ever fully achieve freedom. The contemporary love affair with the universal doesn't liberate a single soul. On the contrary, it places us all under the boot of tyranny. And far too many people have removed G-d from their ideal of freedom, inevitably placing themselves back in the shackles of others more powerful than they.
Passover celebrates true freedom - the freedom to attach ourselves to G-d, to be His people and to live the lives He deems best for us. There is no freedom sweeter that this!
The Temple Institute wishes to all our friends and followers, our loyal and generous supporters, to all Israel and to all who truly cherish the gift of freedom - a very happy Passover - Chag Pesach Sameach!
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