Daniel Greenfield March 30, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog
As
the first days of another Passover conclude with the echoes of "Once we
were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" recited
at the Seder nights ringing in our ears, we know that freedom is a lot
more than being able to board a plane and fly off to Jerusalem.
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.
Slavery, as all our ancestors learned at one time or another, is a state of mind.
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. He does not want to be free and he resents the very
idea of freedom. The Jews in Egypt were not merely restrained by chains
and guards. If they had been, then the task of their liberation would
have been much simpler. But just as an addictive drug crosses the
barrier from physical to psychological dependency, they were enslaved
not just with external, but internal chains. They moaned not at the fact
of slavery, but at the extremity of it. When their taskmasters
complained to Pharaoh, it was not about being enslaved, but of not being
given the straw with which to build the bricks that had become their
duty.
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 superiors 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 on our long journey from slavery to freedom. Not just
the journey of the Jews, but of humanity.
Having
escaped from Pharaoh, the Jews 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 expert 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, and whose scriptures are to be
found in the smeared ink of the New York Times. 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, not just smashed, but
discredited. 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 slave, into civil rights
seders and eco-matzas with donations to Planned Parenthood which will
do what the midwives did not.
"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 to worship G-d or to worship the system? The system
proclaims that it is god. And that is the great lie which ends in the
death of the system and its slaves.
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 pharaohs and czars of D.C.
and the EU bare their teeth at the 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.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and
the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center
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