True Freedom

Regardless of one's level of Jewish observance, Passover (Pesach) holds a special significance in the life of every Jew. It's actually amazing to see how long Jews, from various backgrounds worldwide, have observed this holiday. I remember once as a teenager in high school, attending a party, that happened to be during Passover. While everyone was consuming beer, I saw out of the corner of my eye a group of Jewish teens drinking bottled wine, kosher for Passover. While it warmed my heart (not that I advocate underage drinking ;), it drives home this amazing power of Passover for every Jew, even those that don't observe very many Jewish practices during the rest of the year. What is this spiritual energy of Passover? And how come we are so obsessed with it, enough that we mention the leaving of Egypt throughout our daily prayers?

The spirtual theme of Passover is freedom. Of course we commemorate the freedom of leaving Egypt and its slavery over us. But what does that mean for us today, free to do as we please? What does it mean to truly be free?

The mistake comes in our way of thinking. We think that freedom is when all constraints on a person are taken away. Meaning, we assume that freedom is the natural state of a person - that if one is liberated from external forces that limit him, we have a "free" human being. The message of Passover is that a much greater and truer freedom can be attained. When G-d took us out of Egypt, this was but the 1st step toward Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah. When we left Egypt, we were free in the conventional sense - no one ruled over us. But then, as we proceeded through the desert, we began to rid ourselves of the depraved culture and Pagan habits we had developed during hundreds of years in Egypt. So too, today, we can free ourselves in so many ways. TV, phones, social media and the materialistic culture that surrounds us - all trap us into thinking a certain way. Is that freedom? On a deeper level, there is ego, anger, impatience, depression - each of us has our own personal trigger reactions to our surroundings, buttons that when pressed, don't exactly elicit the finer elements of our inner selves. We have to work to free ourselves and not be subservient to our habits. Through hard work (represented by the 49 days between Passover & Shavuot when the Torah was given), we can help free ourselves from the shackles of our evil inclination, revealing the massive amount of good within.

But then we received the Torah. Then we were empowered to achieve a yet greater freedom: The ability to transcend even our good inclination. Meaning, to always improve and reach greater heights. The Torah and its divine wisdom are sometimes looked at as the opposite of freedom - limiting us with rules and regulations. But if we take a deeper look, we can see that at the end of the day, no matter how hard we work, we can't really be free. Because no matter how "great" we improve, it will always be "me." Defined by the boundaries of self. Torah & Judaism came to raise us beyond self, to a G-dly plane, an infinite one. It draws out the divine within each of us, the infinite potential we have to constantly "Pass-over" the level we were on yesterday.

May this year's Passover (Night of April 6th - 14) unleash the divine, infinite potential within each of us, infusing us with spiritual power to break all of our boundaries; to leave our personal Egypts.

Shabbat Shalom!

-Daniel