The holiday of Passover, which will soon be upon us, reminds us of the crucial role of freedom in Jewish life. To be sure, freedom to the Jew has a much different meaning from that which governs the life of contemporary man. Today people regard freedom as the right to “be yourself,” “do your own thing,” “find your own space,” and “get yourself together.” The essence of this freedom is the removal of strictures upon your conduct, the notion that no one can tell you what to do, when to do it or how to do it.

In Jewish tradition freedom was far more limited. It consisted essentially of the right to be subject to God’s law. Indeed, the significance of the Exodus was that it marked the exchange of one bondage for another. Instead of being enslaved by Pharoah the Jew would henceforth be enslaved by God. In fact, even while the Jews were still in Egypt they already were given laws by Moses to carry out. Of course, the ultimate goal of the Exodus was to travel to Sinai where the Jew would receive the Torah whose rules and regulations would spell out his behavior every day of his life to all eternity.

The traditional Jew has a great deal of trouble in accepting the very popular notion of freedom as the absence of restraint. There are just too many directions in which it is possible to move. To be sure, there is a legitimate negative dimension to freedom. One must first be liberated from tyrannies of the mind, body, and spirit which Pharoah symbolized. But it can’t stop there. Ultimately, freedom is meaningless unless it is channeled in a positive direction. Erich Fromm, the eminent psychologist, described this dual aspect of freedom as “freedom from” and “freedom to.” Thus, freedom presupposes liberation from autocratic restraint, but one must likewise move forward at the same time and utilize his freedom to achieve something meaningful.

Abraham Lincoln once said that truly free men are ready to accept discipline. In his time, that involved the discipline of service in a war to preserve the Union and a national commitment to prevent the spread of slavery. There are those who misunderstand the essence of democracy. They think of it simply as a form of government in which the state does not interfere with the individual’s life. If that’s all there were to it, the fiber of such a society would be soft, weak, and confused. You must go on to ask the next question: “Why doesn’t the state interfere with the life of its citizens?” The state’s self-limitation exists only to enable each person to choose his own ideals and to select restraints that are as free as possible from limitations that he did not choose. However, restraints there must be. Blessed is the state whose denizens accept the restraints set forth by Lincoln which lead to shared goals and cooperative endeavors for the general welfare.

The most urgent need of our time is to get past the negative side of freedom, which is consumed by a sense of self and isolated from the community. Freedom may begin with the self but it must move on to positive effort on behalf of the community for whose well-being we are all morally responsible. To reach that august goal we need a maximum of learning and knowledge. Maybe that is why the wise son is so highly esteemed in the Haggadah. The more we know about our past the easier it is to move from the self to the community, from “freedom from” to “freedom to,” from negative freedom to positive freedom.

Miryom, Sarah, Lewis and Sarah, Danny and Debby, Judah and Bennett join me in the prayer that our Passover observance will stimulate us all to the realization of our total potential as free, concerned, responsive, and committed human beings. Chag sameach v’kasher!