For the Rev. Ginny McDaniel
As Passover wanes and our journey to freedom continues, I want to take a moment and try to answer another puzzle question. Just before Passover a dear friend and colleague called. Ginny McDaniel is a retired UCC pastor who has been called on to preach for four weeks. She and I go way back. I attended her ordination. She was the president of the Greater Lowell Interfaith Leadership Alliance (GLILA) when I was vice president. She moved to Florida and I became president. GLILA was formed one Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, partly to combat rising hate in that decade. (The 80s maybe?) We wrestled through the Passions of the Christ together. Tough movie! She sent me her rainbow tallit which I proudly wear on some Shabbat mornings
Here is her question. Explain the difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to.”
Freedom from and freedom to. Let’s add “freedom of” to that mix.
Passover is called Zeman Heruteinu, the time of our freedom. Another word for freedom is hofesh, which I usually think of as break or vacation. Hafsakah is another word meaning break.
What does Zeman heruteinu look like? I spent the next couple of weeks thinking about this, studying it and asking everyone I knew.
I still love the reading from Simon’s compiled Haggadah, which is what I immediately sent Ginny:
“Tonight, we participate as members of multiple communities. As Jews, the Exodus is our heritage, and equality, justice and peace are our dreams…
Freedom from bondage and freedom from oppresion
Freedom from hunger and freedom from want
Freedom from hatred and freedom from fear
Freedom to think and freedom to speak
Freedom to teach and freedom to learn
Freedom to love and freedom to share
Freedom to hope and freedom to rejoice.”
Freedom includes the ability to ask questions, central to the Passover seder. People who are not free cannot question authority. Freedom includes the ability to rest, to take a nap, People who are not free cannot take time off work, cannot take a nap if they are tired, cannot celebrate Shabbat. Freedom includes the ability to wear what you want when you want to. It is about having choice, freewill and self determination.
There was a robust discussion about the whole topic as part of our Friday night service. Freedom from are the negative things, things we run away from. The Israelites were running away from Pharaoh and slavery toward freedom. As the reading above illustrates, we hope for freedom from bondage, oppression, hunger, want, hatred, fear.
Freedom to things are more positive. We have the freedom to teach and learn, to ask questions, to rest, to practice religion how we want, freedom to love (yes, still, at least for now in this country!)
This parallels a discussion of Isaiah Berlin’s negative and positive freedom. (Thank you to Doug and Melissa, a Lutheran couple in Grand Rapids, MI, for introducing me to this writing).
“Negative liberty is defined as freedom from–the freedom from restraint on one’s actions, enshrined in such concepts as human and civil rights. Positive liberty is defined as freedom to–the freedom to pursue a good life personally and communally, expressed in such rights as the right to vote, the right to organize, the right to education, and the right to pursue economic stability.”
A fuller analysis of Isaiah Berlin from a Jewish perspective can be found here: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/negative-and-positive-freedom/
Our US Constitution guarantees some freedoms as well. Freedom of religion. Freedom of the press. Freedom of assembly. Freedom of speech. And yes, even the freedom to bear arms. But we are not totally free. We cannot yell fire in a theater if there is none and claim freedom of speech as a defense.
Freedom seems like such a good idea. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want. Not so fast. We have a moral code, the Torah and as we move from Passover and count up to Shavuot, we celebrate freedom and know we need Torah.
With freedom, as was quickly pointed out, comes responsibility. We have a responsibility to ensure these freedoms, to take care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the most marginalized among us precisely because we were slaves in Egypt and did not have the freedom to do so. We knew what it was like to be a stranger so 36 times in Torah it exhorts us to take care of the stranger the same way with the same laws we take care of each other.
The Jewish Funder’s Network says it this way: “Judaism understood that true freedom is not the absence of bondage, but the presence of justice and purpose. Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased the prophets when he wrote that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
“True freedom is the experience we feel when we can live up to our full capacity and potential. The discipline it takes for one to live by the morals and standards with which God has tasked him or her is the greatest liberating experience. One who lives by the whim of his or her desires and impulses is not liberated but enslaved to his natural inclinations and does not have the capacity to truly be free,” says Rabbi Mendel Polter in the Detroit Jewish News.
As part of our community seder, we wore our neon x-ray glasses to search for freedom. Rabbi Lord Sacks of blessed memory taught that in order to understand the structure of the seder. These x-glasses help us to search for freedom. Our own individual freedoms. We are taught that G-d led us out of Egypt, out of the narrow places with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. We need both. Strength and compassion. Each of us is to see ourselves as we left Egypt, out of the narrow places. In a sense we are reborn into freedom.
On Sunday we took our Torah School students on a search for freedom. We found our neighbor, Vicar Andrea across the street and we learned that we have the freedom to say, “Happy Easter,” even if that is not our holiday. She sees freedom as water. She called me back. She also sees the flowers that three congregations planted, daffodils, on our corner as a symbol of freedom. We had the freedom to stop and smell the flowers. We even had the freedom to take that walk and be outside, even without coats on a beautiful spring day. We have the freedom to run, and skip, and jump and even do cartwheels. We have the freedom to sing and dance. To sing at the shores of the Sea of Reeds. Mi Chamocha or something else.
Moshe Dayan said, and this resonated with me, “Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” May we be enriched with ours search for freedom. Whether freedom from or to.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01193/full
https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2017/freedom-to-vs-freedom-from/