Every date on the Jewish calendar helps us with the most
important creative work of this life – correcting and refining our human
qualities. Passover is dedicated to one of the most fundamental and eternally
debated concepts – freedom. What is it, exactly? Freedom from what, and for
what purpose? Is it even possible to be truly free? Answering all these
questions is not the goal of this short piece, especially since traditional sources
and their commentaries have much to say on the matter. But there is something
here worth paying attention to.
If you tell me that freedom isn't important to you, I
won't believe you. Human beings are wired to value independence. Many of us
chose to move to a "free country" – the USA (how free it actually is,
that's a separate conversation) – for exactly this reason. After all, the
Creator gave us this right: to choose. And yet there's a saying: you can take a
person out of the Soviet Union – forgive me, out of Egypt – but you can't take
Egypt out of the person. What do I mean by that?
We feel freedom the way we feel air. When it's gone, we
suffocate. But here's what's strange: even after breaking free from external
circumstances – a country, a relationship, a situation – we often find
ourselves in the very same place. Inside. Because Egypt is not a geography.
It's a way of being.
Rabbi Eliezer Reichman reasons as follows: a person
cannot truly be free, because he always serves someone or something. If not the
Creator, then his own destructive habits, becoming their slave and hostage. And
a slave to habits has no real choice.
My teacher, Rabbi Efim Svirsky, in his books, describes
three aspects – three levels of freedom – found in the Torah: chofesh, dror,
and cherut. Chofesh is the freedom a slave receives upon being released.
Dror is the kind of freedom the freed slave is practically driven toward by force.
Cherut appears in connection with the tablets and the commandments. Drawing a
parallel to the Exodus from Egypt, it's important to understand: when we free
ourselves from what we want to leave behind, we don't always know where to go
next. Think of such moments in your own life. And sometimes the Creator Himself
pushes us out of our comfort zone – through a difficult situation, through pain
– so that we rise to the challenge and find freedom on the other side. But we
only become truly free when we understand why we needed all of this.
Freedom is not "doing whatever I want" – it's understanding the right
choice and moving toward your own purpose. And these three levels of freedom
are just as relevant today as they were for ancient slaves – alive in each of
us, at every step.
What drives your behavior – reason or emotion? When
you're in a painful or dependent relationship, how often do you manage to act
from logic? Or do emotions, habits, and old patterns take over? You might
believe that resentment, silence, or a sharp response is your free choice. But
people who are convinced they act purely from logic are often the least aware
of their own emotional motives. True freedom is closer to this: the ability to
look in the mirror at your own reactions, acknowledge the power of your
emotions – and then use your reason to decide how to respond.
Think about how many times you've found yourself – or
keep finding yourself – in the same situations, with different people, but
following the same script. As if something keeps leading you back to the same
mistakes, to help you finally understand what's off, and break free from a
mistaken way of seeing life. Through pain, through bitter experience, through
"I don't want this anymore." Everything that happens to us is a path
toward growth and freedom. Everything we go through is, ultimately, for the
better. And when resentment, anxiety, disappointment, guilt, shame, destructive
desires, anger, fear, and other chains appear along the way – they are not
there to trap us forever. They are there so we can recognize that negative
pull, work through it, and grow toward real freedom and the understanding that
the Creator wants to teach us how to be happy.
That is where true freedom leads – the kind that has room
for our values, for the keeping of commandments, and for the unconditional,
infinite love of the Creator.
May this Passover bring each of us one step closer – out
of the narrowness of our own "Egypt" and toward genuine freedom.
Happy holiday, dear friends!
