Bringing my Series 1 of BlogPosts to a close, today I am discussing how faith is often misunderstood as obedience.  Rules. Boundaries. Submission. Constraint.

I understand why that perception persists. From the outside, Jewish life can look dense with obligation — mitzvot, calendars, customs, expectations, prohibitions. In a secular age that prizes limitless choice, Judaism can appear like a narrowing rather than an opening.

But lived Judaism tells a very different story.

For me, faith has never been about restriction. It has been about freedom — not freedom from responsibility, but freedom within it.

This piece was inspired by listening to Rabbi Gideon Sylvester speak at Limmud. He reflected on the idea that mitzvot are not rewards for moral purity nor badges earned by the righteous, but acts that stand on their own. A mitzvah, he suggested, counts because it is done — not because of who the person was before they did it.

That idea stayed with me. It resonated deeply with both my Jewish life and my work in criminal justice.

Freedom is not the absence of limits

Modern culture often defines freedom as the removal of constraint.  No rules. No expectations. No inherited commitments. No friction. Yet Jewish tradition has long been sceptical of that vision.  In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon teaches:

“You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Freedom, here, is not the absence of obligation — it is the dignity of participation. Judaism does not imagine liberty as endless choice, but as purposeful action within a moral framework.

Anyone who has lived through rupture — trauma, loss, imprisonment, displacement — knows that limitless space is not liberating. It is disorienting. Judaism offers something quieter and sturdier: structure that holds when life fractures.

Faith does not remove uncertainty.  It makes uncertainty survivable.

Mitzvot count now

One of the most radical ideas in Jewish thought is how little interest it shows in freezing people in their past.

The Rambam, in Hilchot Teshuvah, teaches that a person who turns toward better action is, in a moral sense, no longer the same person. The past is not erased — but it is not allowed to dominate the future.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik later framed Jewish obligation not as submission, but as agency: the power to respond, to choose responsibility, to act meaningfully even when circumstances are constrained.

This is why mitzvot are not character references. They are present-tense acts.

A candle lit counts.
A prayer said counts.
An act of kindness counts.

Not because the person is flawless. But because the act is real. That, to me, is freedom. The freedom to re-enter moral life without performance. The freedom to contribute without needing absolution. The freedom to belong without erasing complexity.

Freedom in constraint

Some of the freest people I have known have lived within profound constraint. People in prison who discovered prayer not as escape, but as orientation. People returning to community after long absence, choosing practice not because it was easy, but because it anchored them. People in Israel living with daily uncertainty who nonetheless insist on building, teaching, loving, and marking sacred time. Judaism has never promised safety. It has promised meaning.

As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often wrote, faith is not certainty; it is the courage to live responsibly without certainty.

Faith does not eliminate fear.  It refuses to let fear make every decision.

Belief as a social freedom

Belief, in Judaism, is not only internal.  It is also communal.  When a community believes that your actions matter — that your presence counts — something loosens. You are no longer trapped inside a fixed identity. You are allowed to grow.  This is why Jewish law insists that mitzvot are valid even when performed imperfectly, even when motivation is mixed. Participation matters. Practice matters.

Communities wound deeply when they confuse purity with safety.  They heal when they understand that moral life is sustained not by perfection, but by engagement.  Belonging, when it is real, is itself a form of freedom.

Choosing faith, again and again

Faith is not something I possess permanently.  It is something I choose — sometimes easily, sometimes with effort, sometimes almost against myself.  I choose it when ritual feels thin but still matters.  I choose it when prayer steadies me even if belief wavers.  I choose it when community is imperfect but still worth committing to. I choose it because without it, freedom becomes exhausting.  Judaism does not promise resolution.  It offers a way of walking forward without it.

Freedom, redefined

Faith, for me, is the freedom to live responsibly without being paralysed by fear.  The freedom to act meaningfully without waiting to be redeemed.  The freedom to belong without pretending to be uncomplicated.  The freedom to hold light without needing to shout.  In a world that increasingly equates freedom with isolation, Judaism insists on something countercultural:  That freedom is found not in standing alone,  but in choosing — again and again — to stand within a tradition that asks something of you,  and in doing so, gives something back.

As I draw my 2025 blogs to a close, I borrow a line from Downton Abbey that says everything I’ve been trying to write toward:
I would like to be celebrated for my virtues rather than publicly forgiven for my sins.

This blog has allowed me to do just that.