On Passover and liberty
[The following is an edited version of a previous post.]
Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish holiday Passover. This is the second Passover to take place with hostages still in Gaza, and therefore Passover – one of the deepest and most significant of all Jewish holidays – takes on even more depth and significance.
I’ve long been impressed by the fact that Passover is a religious holiday dedicated to an idea that’s not solely religious: freedom. Yes, it’s about a particular historical (or perhaps legendary) event: the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But the Seder ceremony makes it clear that, important though that specific event may be, freedom itself is also being celebrated.
A Seder is an interesting experience, a sort of dramatic acting-out complete with symbols and lots of audience participation. Part of its power is that events aren’t placed totally in the past tense and regarded as ancient and distant occurrences; rather, the participants are specifically instructed to act as though it is they themselves who were slaves in Egypt, and they themselves who were given the gift of freedom, saying:
“This year we are slaves; next year we will be free people…”
With hostages still in Gaza, the connection is obvious and powerful.
Passover acknowledges that freedom (and liberty, not exactly the same thing but related) is an exceedingly important human desire and need. That same idea is present in the Declaration of Independence (which, interestingly enough, also cites the Creator):
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
It is ironic, of course, that when that Declaration was written, slavery was allowed in the United States. That was rectified, but only after great struggle, which goes to show how wide the gap often is between rhetoric and reality, and how difficult freedom is to achieve. And it comes as no surprise, either, that the Passover story appealed to slaves in America when they heard about it; witness the lyrics of “Let My People Go.”
Yes, the path to freedom is far from easy, and there are always those who would like to take it away. Sometimes an election merely means “one person, one vote, one time,” if human and civil rights are not protected by a constitution that guarantees them, and by a populace dedicated to defending them at almost all costs. Wars of liberation only give an opportunity for liberty, they do not guarantee it, and what we’ve observed in recent decades has been the difficult and usually failed task of attempting to foster it in places with no such tradition and with neighbors dedicated to its obliteration.
We’ve also seen many threats to liberty in our own country – more potent in the last couple of decades. This is happening despite our long tradition of liberty and the importance Americans used to place on it.
Sometimes those who are against liberty are religious, like the mullahs. Sometimes they are secular, like the Communists or their present-day Russian successors. Some of them are cynical and power-mad; some are idealists who don’t realize that human beings were not made to conform to their rigid notions of the perfect world, and that attempts to force them to do so seem to inevitably end in horrific tyranny, and that this is no coincidence.
As one of my favorite authors Kundera wrote, in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
…human beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.
Note the seamless progression from lyricism to violence: no matter if it begins in idealistic dreams of an idyll, the relinquishment of freedom to further that dream will end with humans being crushed like insects.
Dostoevsky did a great deal of thinking about freedom as well. In his cryptic and mysterious Grand Inquisitor, a lengthy chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, he imagined a Second Coming. But this is a Second Coming in which the Grand Inquisitor rejects what Dostoevsky sees as Jesus’s message of freedom (those of you who’ve been around this blog for a long time will recognize this passage I often quote):
Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
Freedom vs. bread is a false dichotomy. Dostoevsky was writing before the Soviets came to power, but now we have learned that lack of freedom, and a “planned” economy, is certainly no guarantee even of bread.
I think there’s another very basic need, one that perhaps can only really be appreciated when it is lost: liberty.
Happy Passover!
A Happy Passover to all those celebrating — although they won’t see these good wishes until Monday after sundown, when Shabbat and then the first two days of Passover are gone.
Meanwhile, my prayers are also with the IDF soldiers active in Gaza even as Passover is happening.
During this time of remembrance, wishing peace and security for Israelites of the Jewish faith, no matter where they may be.
Happy Passover!
“Freedom vs. bread is a false dichotomy. Dostoevsky was writing before the Soviets came to power, but now we have learned that lack of freedom, and a “planned” economy, is certainly no guarantee even of bread.”
It is also the case that plentiful availability of bread is no guarantee of a commitment to liberty. Plenty of people are willing to throw it away for things that they find of more value, such as participation in what Kundera referred to as Circle Dancing.
There’s a very interesting SF story, clearly inspired by the Grand Inquisitor chapter in Dostoyevsky….the whole thing is online here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-way-of-cross-and-dragon/
“It is ironic, of course, that when that Declaration was written, slavery was allowed in the United States.”
In his draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the slave trade, calling it a “cruel war against human nature”. It was left out of the final draft to avoid the possibility of offending southern ‘sensibilities’.
In considering its future abolishment, Jefferson lamented the predictable future economic difficulties for the uneducated slaves. On slavery, he viewed it as a “hideous blot” and a “moral depravity” and later used the phrase “we have the wolf by the ear,” to illustrate the difficult position the country was in regarding slavery.
The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery was founded by the Quakers in 1775. Benjamin Franklin was elected the Society’s president in 1785. Following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Franklin became an outspoken critic of slavery, publishing several essays calling for slavery’s abolition. Earlier in his life, Franklin had owned slaves. Perhaps it was partly to slavery that he was referring when he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions.”
Every major founding father is on record stating their opposition to the institution of slavery.
During the Constitutional Convention there were fierce arguments over slavery with the northern delegates well aware of the obvious hypocrisy if slavery was legalized. The issue was finally settled when a delegate from S. Carolina arose and stated, “Gentlemen, the question is not whether there will be slavery. The question is whether there will be union…”
The delegates were also well aware that absent union, Great Britain might well seek to restore its sovereignty over its rebellious subjects. Franklin’s admonition still applied, “We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately”.
A concern later confirmed in the 1812 war. When in an act of no strategic military value, the British burned down the White House. A clear indication of their still lingering resentment of the traitorous ‘ingrates’.
Just think, had the revolution been lost, we’d be part of Canada, with only privileges wrapped in a facade of ‘chartered rights’. Confirmed by none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who declared that “the notwithstanding clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is “a loophole that allows a majority to override the fundamental rights of minorities.”
“…(or perhaps legendary)…”
neo, I’m not calling you out with this, I know there is a lot of debate over whether Moses even existed and your aside is logical, however, there are certain Biblical accounts that almost certainly have to be true, regardless of whatever “proof” we may have from archeologists.
It’s not too difficult to imagine embellishments being added to the Passover tale over years of telling, and retelling. Facets of the account of Moses closely resemble most hero origin stories. But there are also many aspects of the account that make the Jewish people look foolish, primitive, ungrateful… The very fact that they were enslaved. Why would people settled in Canaan create a story out of whole cloth where they came from Egypt? And how do you do begin that tradition? And why make their ancestors seem so ungrateful and small?
So, there’s this whole, thriving society of Jews living in Canaan with their own ancestral stories and one year someone says, “Hey, here’s all this information about your ancestry none of you have ever heard and now you have to do this special ceremony to commemorate it?”
It’s like telling Americans in 2025, “There was no Columbus, there was no King George III or Washington. Americans came here from Tierra del Fuego where they were fleeing an evil ruler who had enslaved them and next Tuesday you have to all join for a meal and recite this script.” How do you start an origin story as serious as the Passover celebration with the first generation unless it is truly their ancestral history?
Thanksgiving. There is debate about whether it happened, how it happened, were there two? There was a false start or two getting Americans to honor the tradition; but the bulk of the facts are accurate. People from Europe fled religious persecution and struggled to survive and native Americans helped them and they had harvest festivals. Did they eat Turkey? Was it in Plymouth, MA or St. Augustine, FL? Did they watch football? Some things were probably added later, but when Lincoln initiated the tradition (or was it Washington 100 years earlier? or one of several other possible beginnings none of those proposing a day of celebration?), it couldn’t be stated it was due to colonists from China who settled in Iowa in 1400 and had a harvest meal with the Cherokee. Everyone would know that never happened because of written and oral traditions already in place.
It seems highly unlikely to me Jews living in Canaan would invent the Passover Seder out of whole cloth unless some contingent of Jews who had settled in that land truly were captives in Egypt.
some details here,
https://biblearchaeology.org/research/chronological-categories/conquest-of-canaan/2579-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-13th-century-exodusconquest-theor
y
perhaps it’s not as crazy considering the 1619 project of course it’s a fraud, but they have tried to subvert the Founding of America, in this means, replacing 1776 with 1619, there is a host of other evasions,
I am going to a Passover Seder with a Jewish friend of mine.
She is of Sephardic heritage. Her mother taught her how to cook the delicious dishes she grew up with in Morocco. Her mother often said to me that there is no better food than Moroccan food. My reply was that I wasn’t going to argue with her!
Unfortunately, the food will be Ashkenazi, which cannot compare with Sephardic food. So be it.
freedom has been a short interval in human history, despotism or rule by the strong has been the standard, in the case of Egypt and the Babylonians we were talking of men who saw themselves as Gods, the Persians less so, even within those empires you see those who held the Jews with a certain respect, and those that didn’t, even within the history of Israel you had wise kings and foolish ones, the latter seem to predominate over the former,
the greek democracies and the roman republics, followed by Empire and a 1000 years of tyranny, then you have the western democracies as they have evolved in the last two hundred years, yet their seems to be a desire for feudalism in various forms, see China’s Mandate of Heaven, and Russia as examples,
the right to free speech seems to be a luxury in much of the West, perhaps not yet enforced at the end of a knout or a rope, but when the sentiment has become so pervasive,
I know sometimes he is disregarded as a source, but demille noted him in the ten commandments along with Philo,
https://sophiachristianacademy.com/lesson/in-the-footsteps-of-moses-chapter-12-josephus-and-the-exodus/
things you notice as you get older, which you didn’t before,
It’s too early to tell what the creep who fire-bombed the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion had in mind. He’s been arrested. I have to agree with Gov. Shapiro, who posted defiantly that his family would celebrate a second Seder this evening despite this attack. There is no valid excuse for this, no matter what the suspect’s intention was.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/04/suspect-arrested-in-arson-attack-on-pennsylvania-governors-residence/
The fellow arrested is named Cody Balmer, aged 38. He appears to be an everyman. The first speculative salvo on a motive concerns a piece of property of his in Harrisburg due to be auctioned consequent to a foreclosure.
@Rufus T. Firefly: How do you start an origin story as serious as the Passover celebration with the first generation unless it is truly their ancestral history?
There is something like this described in the Old Testament, regarding what may be the Book of Deuteronomy, which is very unlike the other four books in that it constantly mentions kingship, which according the other four books the Israelites didn’t have yet. Of course Moses was a prophet, and perhaps he did write it all down, and it was lost for a while because no one thought it made sense before the days of the kings….
Anyway, if we take this at face value, and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin just forgot about Deuteronomy, then maybe they forgot about Passover at some point.
miguel and Niketas,
Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing! I will do more reading on those two topics.