Difficult Freedom

Difficult Freedom

 

When did our ancestors leave Egypt? Not in the historical sense – I’m not looking for an archeologically verifiable date or even a traditional chronology. I mean in a deep experiential sense: when did they actually realise they were free? At what point did they say, “we made it”?

 

Was it when they saw the first plague and knew Egypt must be doomed? Was it when, Moshe told them to pack? Was it when they heard the cries after the death of the Egyptian firstborn? Was it when they actually walked out? Or a few days later when they watched the Egyptian cavalry drown?

 

The answer is none of these… and all of them. Real freedom is always actively realised, never just passively ‘lived through’. The full appreciation of a different reality, a now irreversible circumstance, and a new way of being in the world, is essential for becoming free. This realisation can take many forms. Here are two examples and their implications.

 

In his book, If This Is a Man, Primo Levi, the holocaust survivor, described his moment of liberation. It was not when Germany finally surrendered or months before when the Nazis left Auschwitz in January 1945. It was earlier, during the ten quiet days before the Russians arrived at the concentration camp. All the prisoners that could walk had been led out on a ‘death march’, leaving only the gravely ill to fend for themselves. It was then, when they chose to share scraps of food, that Levi realised they were free. Hardly anyone shared in Auschwitz, you lived or died by a crust of bread. But now bread was being shared. Levi wrote, ‘I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change… from prisoners to men again.’

 

Their humanity returned only when a simple kindness could mean more than mere survival. To live is to give, our Chief Rabbi often says. This is one reason why the Seder begins with ha lachma aniya, when we say, ‘Let all who are hungry, come in and eat’. Freedom is born in sharing. The feeling that drives us to share is what lets us know that we are indeed free. This is why we must try hard to seat guests-in-need as well as family around our Seder table.

 

In the penultimate scene of Spielberg’s WWII film, Saving Private Ryan, we see the demise of the last of a band of soldiers who have died saving James Ryan. The dying officer turns to the guilt-ridden Ryan and says, ‘James, earn this... earn it.’ Cut to a military cemetery where the now old Ryan, surrounded by the family he has fathered, breaks down by the grave of the long dead officer. ‘Tell me I have led a good life,’ he begs his wife. ‘Tell me I’m a good man.’ ‘You are,’ she says.

 

Half a century after the war Ryan still feels bound by the last order of his saviour. Paradoxically, he is only freeHalf a century  if he remains bound to live out that challenge. Spielberg’s message is clear: we must earn the freedom bequeathed to us by the soldiers who died in WWII. How? Through the quality of the lives we lead and the good we do. Going back a further 3000 years, this is true of the Exodus too…

 

Would Moshe think us worthy today? Would he think that God’s efforts had been in vain? On Seder night, look around the table and ask, ‘Have we earned it? How do we live that justifies our freedom? How can we now live so that it does?’.