By Daniel Greenfield @ 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.
Slavery
did not end with the fall of Pharaoh. Since then 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 of oppression ends. What is this freedom that we
gained with the fall of a Pharaoh, his drowning armies, and the last
sight of his pyramids?
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.
"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.
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