A drash on freedom for the Seder

Freedom is more than doing what we want. It is the ability and the responsibility to get up and go. To be active. Now. It is about calling for the release of the hostages. It is about saving democracy and defeating the governing coalition’s efforts to destroy democracy. We have the freedom to do it, and the responsibility.

Judaism is big on freedom. It is recorded in the Torah that the tablets were inscribed,  engraved by God on Mount Sinai; the Sages in the Talmud say it should be read not as inscribed (harut) but as freedom (herut). The Ten Commandments, and all of the Torah and Torah law, are to bring us freedom.

In Jewish tradition freedom is not just about the Self – not only that I can do whatever I want – but about respect for the Other: the other human being, other people, and God. This is close to Kantian thought insofar as Kant talks about autonomy as the duty of respect: according to the Kantian categorical imperative a rational human being can decide upon his behavior using reason, which is universal, only on the basis of what other rational beings would also decide to do. A person’s chosen acts have to be something that would be applicable on a universal level for the whole world. Autonomy is a duty: an obligation of respect. In Judaism, freedom and duty are on a continuum. They’re always close together. For instance the freedom to live comes from the duty not to kill. Freedom is about Self and Other, and about duty.

Freedom is also about the necessity of acting. It is about taking responsible action. A commandment in the Torah says that a person must build a guardrail, when they build a house. Why? So that no one falls off and gets hurt. Discussion in the Talmud brings up the question: but if God wants someone to fall off, they’ll fall off; what difference does it make if there’s a guardrail or not? The answer given is: to make sure that no one falls off of your roof. Every individual is responsible to safeguard others.

Where else can we see the importance of taking action? An example is Bubby – my great-grandmother – coming from Russia when she was young. She was married at 18 and had two babies, and she travelled by herself with the babies. They were at the bottom of a ship crossing the Atlantic, as she went to meet her husband who had come a few years earlier. We called him Zaide. They lived on the lower east side in New York City. They came to the Goldene Medina. America was considered the land of opportunity. It was a place without the pogroms in Russia and Poland where Jews were killed. They brought their family to freedom in the new land. Talk about get up and go! Bubby was twenty years old and knew she would never see her family in Russia again, but she made her way by herself with two babies, to a new land, and a new life.