Rosh Hodesh Receiving and Responding to the Gift of Freedom

For millennia, the story of the Exodus has inspired movements dedicated to liberation and justice. The Torah itself begins this transformation of myth into moral action, instructing the Israelites over more than 30 times as they wander through the wilderness not to oppress or wrong the stranger because they themselves were strangers in Egypt.

But despite this legacy of human agency, the Exodus story, which we will retell in a few short weeks at our Passover seders, is not a celebration of human opposition to and triumph over tyranny. Sure, there is the heroic defiance of Shifra and Puah, the midwives who refuse to carry out Pharoah’s order to kill the male children born to Israelite mothers, and a few other noteworthy examples. But overall, human beings do precious little in the text of the Torah to bring about the Israelites’ redemption from slavery.

Instead, the Exodus is a story of the Israelites receiving God’s unearned gift of freedom when it seemed least likely, if not impossible. In this myth, freedom is bestowed on people, not secured by them.

It might seem counterintuitive to highlight human passivity in the face of injustice at a time when we desperately need human beings to act against tyranny and oppression, but for the work ahead to be enduring, I think we need the Passover story.

My colleague Rabbi Dr. Jane Kanarek, Dean of Faculty of Hebrew College, has said that part of her role in teaching students sacred Jewish texts is to help them find the eternal in contingent human texts. What I understand her to mean by this idea is that though the text of our tradition were written by particular people who are a part of, influenced by, and responding to their particular time and place, there is also an element within the text that is eternal. This sacred dimension transcends the particulars of time and place and speaks to us in our moment, if we can hear it. The process of attunement to the eternal within a text  transforms the intellectual act of study into a process of sacred listening similar to the connections we build in our deepest human relationships.

The same is true for our engagement with rituals and holidays. The eternal core of Pesach, which is available every day when we invoke the myth in our prayer and especially each year when we celebrate the holiday, is the ongoing Divine gift of freedom from the oppressive, narrow places we encounter in our lives. Implicit here is a Jewish claim about the nature of reality — that the world is not a neutral, indifferent pile of matter. God is within the world, each person and each element of creation, longing for life, for expression, for dignity, for freedom. Part of how God manifests in the world is as that longing within us and those around us. The dream of a more just world, and the trust that we can and will ultimately move in its direction, is an expression of faith in the essential justice goodness of the world.

That is how I understand Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

The invitation and obligation of Pesach is to attune ourselves to God, to that life force that propels life and freedom. When doing this leads to action, we not only emulate, but partner with and channel, God. This is crucial; it means the energy for just action doesn’t have to come only from us. We don’t have to generate it alone or bear sole responsibility for it. Rather, it can arrive as a response to, and be energized by, a far deeper, ever replenishing well at the core of existence.

The Haggadah tells us:
בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלוּ הוּא יֶָָצֶָא מִמִּצְרַָים
In every generation, it is incumbent on human beings to see themselves as they went free from Egypt.

When we tell the story of Pesach, our job is to feel as if we ourselves have received this great gift. The purpose is not to make us passive observers of our world, waiting for God to act on our behalf. It is not to absolve us of the need to build a better, more just world. Rather, it is to enable us to emulate, channel, and partner with God in the enduring work of redemption, now and always.

Rabbi Daniel Klein, Rab `10, MJEd`10, is Dean of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. He formerly served as Dean of Students & Admissions for the Rabbincial School.

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