LOOKING BACK

The Meaning of Freedom

DATELINE: April 22, 1932

SOURCE: The Sentinel

"NOW THERE AROSE a new king of Egypt, who knew not Joseph" [Exodus i:8].

Joseph had dreamed of greatness of royalty. Instead, he was sold into slavery, followed by imprisonment. Were his dreams abandoned? Did his royal ambition die within him because of lack of nourishment?

No! Joseph was never resigned to his fate. One thought was uppermost in his mind, Liberty! And when it came, it found Joseph ready to meet it.

Israel, too, is a dreamer. Sold into slavery by a Pharaoh, he refused to surrender his dream. Apparently submissive yet inwardly rebellious, Israel never lost the hope of redemption. They waited for the coming of a Messiah.

When a Jew died, he bequeathed the hope to his children, and they in turn to theirs. And whenever I read in the Bible that the children of Israel sighed and moaned because of their bondage, while I sympathize with them, I rejoice in the fact that their minds remained free, though their bodies were cruelly enslaved.

Pharaoh knew not Joseph, nor Israel. Pharaoh thought that Israel, like all other peoples, would gradually become a willing, submissive slave, in whom the urge for freedom would never again be articulated.

But Pharaoh knew not Joseph; Joseph's enslavement did not deter him from the path of royalty, nor did Israel's persecution weaken his determination to await the dawn of Liberty.

Now I understand why Hillel introduced the first sandwich in which Matzo and Maror share one another's company. Is not Matzo a symbol of freedom? Is not Maror a symbol of bitter servitude? How can the two, one the antithesis of the other, be placed together in close proximity?

But now I see it! Bitterness of servitude is a prelude to freedom. Retaining the hope of redemption makes enslavement bitter to endure. But it is a sign of hopeful promise. The free man is still alive within the slave. He pretends to be asleep, but in reality is watching to avail himself of the first opportunity for freedom.

Is a Free-Thinker Free?

Who is free? Is the drunkard free because he speaks his mind freely? Of course not! He is enslaved to liquor. He speaks without control.

Who is free? Is the freethinker free because he does as he pleases without religious restraint?

Why, no! He is enslaved to passion and instinct. He claims to be free, but he is enslaved to habit, to his business, or to his money. He is enslaved to his materialistic outlook upon life, from which he cannot emancipate himself.

Behold the religious man denying himself food because it is forbidden. There you have freedom and mastery. Freedom expressed in one's ability to choose; mastery, in the determination to deny one's body in order to satisfy one's soul.

Recently someone said to me, "I want my child to be free. I don't want to impose my religion upon him. Let him choose when he is able. I want to endow him with complete freedom."

There are two refutations to this most erroneous interpretation of freedom.

First: Your child will make his choice because of some influence exerted upon him. If you don't, someone else will, and someone who is less interested in your child's welfare than you are.

Let's have the truth. You don't want to influence your child because you have nothing to transmit to him. Furthermore, you are neutral, not because the arguments on both sides are equally convincing but because you haven't the courage to decide.

Second: There is no unrestrained freedom. All liberty involves some restraint. Laws, public opinion, some regard for other people's rights, act as restraining influences that confine the orbit of our freedom to certain limitations.

Freedom is an achievement. It is not a gift. Let those Free-thinkers who have earned the name because they think they are free, let them, too, come [to the Seder] and be convinced that the American Jew is blessed, not with "freedom from religion/' but "freedom for religion." Q (Excerpts)

[Author Affiliation]

By Rabbi BENJAMIN A. DASKAL

[Author Affiliation]

Benjamin Daskal (1894-1974). the first native Chicagoan to officiate as a rabbi, was the spiritual leader of Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Hyde Park from 1919^3. and from then until his death Rabbi Emeritus.

"Looking Back" reprints articles about events or issues in the past which have a renewed signifaxince in our day. Topics liave been selected and edited by the Jewish Star, and appear exclusively in these pages.