From Slavery to Freedom
By Daniel Greenfield
SulatnKnish.Blogspot.com
As another Passover begins, the echoes of "Once we were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" resound briefly and then fade into the background noise of everyday life. We can board a plane tomorrow and fly off to Jerusalem. Some of us are already there now. But will that make us free?
Since Egypt we have become slaves again, lived
under the rule of iron-fisted tyrants and forgotten
what the very idea of freedom means. And that will
likely happen again and again until the age ends.
What is this freedom that we gained with the fall of
a Pharaoh and the last sight of his pyramids and
armies?
Freedom like slavery, is as much a state of mind as
a state of being. It is possible to be legally free,
yet to have no freedom of action whatsoever. And it
is possible to be legally a slave and yet to be free
in defiance of those restrictions. External coercion
alone does not make a man free or slave, it is the
degradation of mind that makes a man a slave.
What is a slave? A slave is complicit in his own
oppression. His slavery has become his natural state
and he looks to his master, not to free him, but to
command him. Had the Jews of Egypt merely been
restrained by physical coercion, it would have been
enough to directly and immediately smash the power
of the Egyptian state. But their slavery was mental.
They moaned not at the fact of slavery, but at the
extremity of it. When their taskmasters complained
to Pharaoh, it was not of slavery, but of not being
given the straw with which to build the bricks.
The worst slavery is of the most insidious kind. It
leaves the slave able to think and act, but not as a
free man. It leaves him with cunning, but not
courage. He is able to use force, but only to bring
other slaves into line. And most hideously, this
state of affairs seems moral and natural to him.
This is his freedom.
The true slave has come to love big brother, to
worship at the foot of the system that oppresses
him. It is this twisted love that must be torn out
of him. It is this idolatry of the whip before which
he kneels, this panting to know who his superior and
who his inferiors are, this love of a vast order
that allows him to be lost in its wonders, to gaze
in awe at the empire of tomorrow which builds its
own tombs today, that must be broken. These are his
gods and he must kill them within himself to be
free.
The Exodus is not the story of the emergence of free
men who were enslaved, but the slow painful process
by which slaves became a nation of free men, a long
troubled journey which has not yet ended. That is
why we celebrate Passover, not as an event of the
past, but as of a road that we still travel, a long
journey from slavery to freedom.
Having escaped from Pharaoh, they built a glittering
calf, and having left the desert behind, they sought
out a king. Every idol and tyrant was another token
of slavery, a desire to put one's ear up against the
doorpost and become slaves for life. The idols have
changed, but their meaning has not. There is still
the pursuit of the master, the master of
international law, of a global state, the gods of
the superstate who rule over the present and the
future and dispose of the lives of men.
There are far too many synagogues that worship the
Democratic Party, rather than G-d, that bow to the
ghost of FDR, the glittering echoes of Harry, Adlai
and John, and the great golden statue of Hope and
Change squatting obscenely over it all. And in
Jerusalem far too many eyes look longingly to
Washington and to Brussels, to the cities on the
hill which offer order, truth and peace.
It is easy to slip into this kind of slavery. The
pyramids are grand, the slogans are clever and the
future seems assured. It is only when the dusty
messenger comes along to whisper that "He has
remembered". that those who have not forgotten
gather and some among those who have forgotten,
remember that they are slaves.
In Egypt the system of the state had to be smashed,
but not simply smashed, but discredited. It could
not be a mere contest of power, but of reason. The
war between slavery and freedom could not end until
the system of slavery had become ridiculous, until
Pharaoh appeared a buffoon and his power no more
than organized madness. And yet even so for a
generation liberated from slavery, this majestic
system, the only one they had ever known, remained
their template, and in times of crisis, their
immediate instinct was to retreat back to the only
civilization they had known.
The slavery of the present is a more subtle thing.
It grips the mind more tightly than the body. It
still remembers that men enslave themselves best. It
knows also that true power comes from making all
complicit in its crimes so that they are also
complicit in their own degradation. The system only
asks that each man enslave himself and kill his own
children. And once he has done that, he will only
feel it right to demand that everyone else do
likewise.
Do it for the environment, for social justice, for
the Pharaoh of every age and his ideology. Enslave
your mind. Kill your children.
This is the slavery of the system. It requires few
whips and many words. It nudges men to be their own
taskmasters and to reach out their hands to the new
Pharaoh in the hope that he will save them. It is
this slavery which is so pervasive, which Passover
wakes us from, if it has not already been perverted
into the Passover of the system, into civil rights
seders and eco-matzas with donations to Planned
Parenthood which will do what the midwives did not,
if has not become yet another tribute to the Pharaoh
of Hope and Change.
"Once we were slaves," the ancient words call on us
to remember that we have been freed. That it is no
longer Pharaoh who enslaves us, but we who enslave
ourselves. "Now we are free men." But what is
freedom really? Is it the freedom of the system or
the freedom of the self? The system proclaims that
they are one and the same. And that is the great lie
which ends in death.
Like the slaves of ancient Egypt, we are shaken,
dragged out of our everyday routine and commanded to
be free. But how do you command men and women to be
free? You can lead them through the habits of free
men and women who think of themselves as kings and
queens, who drink wine while reclining, who sing
loudly in defiance of all oppressors, who boldly
proclaim "Next year in Jerusalem" while the Pharaoh
of Hope and Change bares his teeth at Jews living in
Jerusalem.
You can unroll the scroll of history and show them
how they were taken out, but all this routine is
useless unless they understand and are sensible that
they are free. Free not in their habits, but in
their minds. Ritual is the gateway to a state of
mind. A ritual of freedom only succeeds when it
invokes a state of mental freedom. Otherwise it is a
rite, a practice, a habit whose codes may help some
future generation unlock its meaning, but which
means little today.
Passover is the beginning and the end. It is the
start of the journey and the end of it and we are
always in the middle, on the long road out of Egypt,
discovering that there are more chains in our minds
than we realized a year earlier or a hundred or a
thousand years ago. Each step we take toward freedom
also reminds us of how far we still have to go.
It is the ritual that reminds us that we are still
on the journey, that though we have been lulled by
the routine of the system, the trap of the present
that like the soothing warmth of an ice storm or the
peaceful feeling of a drowning swimmer, embraces us
in the forgetfulness of the dying moment, concealing
from us the truth that the journey is not over. The
desert still lies before us.
This journey is the human journey. It is the
recreation of what mankind lost when it defied G-d,
when it turned with weapons on each other, when it
built towers, created systems and tried to climb to
heaven on the backs of slaves and pyramids. It is a
transformative road that requires us to not only
endure, but to learn.
Surrounded by willing slaves who preach the creed of
slavery, we must speak for freedom. Though few seem
to remember the journey or the chains, it is our
duty to remind ourselves. The message of Passover
fully begins only when the holiday ends and its
habits carry over into our daily lives. Once we were
slaves, now we are free.