The Festival of Our Freedom
On Hebraic Liberty
From Hadesh Vol. 2, Iss. 1 - Freedom
By: Ariel Yaari
“Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth,
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better,
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods[?]’”
Thomas Babington Macauly
Pesaḥ is upon us. Many are frantically cleaning, earnestly checking that not even the minutest granule of Ḥameṣ is left in their vicinity. Children prepare the questions and songs that they’ll sing at the Seder table and everyone is thinking about “freedom”.
Often repeated and more misunderstood, we triumphantly declare at the Seder that “Now we are slaves, next year we will be free.” But, what does “freedom” mean and more importantly, what does it demand of us?
From the outset, there is no mention of freedom as the goal of the Exodus. We tend to have a collective image of Moses going confidently before Pharaoh and proclaiming that the God of the Hebrews demands to “Let My People Go”. Hashem says no such thing to Moshe.
The first time Moshe (and Aharon) go to Pharaoh they proclaim that the God of Israel commands: “Send out my people and they will celebrate for me in the wilderness.”1 This isn’t exactly the revolutionary statement of freedom so many imagine. Subsequent divine commands do not only omit “freedom” as a goal, Hashem commands Pharaoh: “Send out my people that they should serve me.”2 This is another form of submission!
In Hebrew, there are two main words that are used for “freedom”. The first being חופש, which is freedom from oppression and subservience.3 The Torah states regarding a slave who is released from bondage: “And on the seventh [year] he shall go free (לחפשי), without charge”.4 However, the term used abundantly by Ḥazal is that we are “בני חורין” or “in a state of liberty” during Pesaḥ. We refer to the holiday throughout our liturgy as “זמן חרותינו” or “the holiday of our liberation”. Noticeably, the term for freedom from slavery is NOT used by Ḥazal for the holiday when we were liberated from slavery! Why is this the case? To answer, I think it’s important that we turn to the realm of political philosophy.
Liberty in the modern era is largely framed against the backdrop of the American and French Revolutions, which popularized this term. The American Founders assumed a rights-based framework of political organization, based on the theories of John Locke. Men are born free in the state of nature. This condition however, causes men to be isolated, weak, and subject to predation. Therefore, in pursuing their own self-preservation, men sacrifice part of this liberty to form a state in coordination with others that will protect their lives and property.5 Authority is assented to for the purpose of advancing as many individual goods as possible. This permission can be revoked at any time if the authority imposed by this new government is more detrimental to life and property than the anarchist state of nature would be.
There are a plethora of problems with Locke’s formulation. To be brief, no one is “born” free. For as long as there have been human beings, there have been bonds of loyalty between them which connected them to larger collectives. Babies are born to parents who belong to families, who belong to clans, who belong to tribes, etc. all who are bound to one another not because children “consented” to be born. Rather, there are bonds of mutual loyalty which tie these groups together. Those dissatisfied with current affairs in the collective can voice their complaints and ask for absolution, but this does not dissolve those bonds outright. You are part of a nation and subject to its hierarchies whether you like its policies or not.6
Far from being abstract political theory, we see bonds and hierarchies emerge in nature.7 The moment a person enters the world, they are subject to an order and the obligations that arise from their place within it. The state of nature imagined by Locke is just that. Furthermore, the flattening of all human bonds as attributable to consent and inherent freedoms gives one the opportunity to opt out if those burdens become too onerous. It is important to note that Locke himself does not state this to be the case. He was a devout Christian and believed in order, duty, and principle. His later interpreters and subsequent theorists of political liberty8 would take him further than even he intended, so that all human connections became voluntary. The final shape this would take would be the radical subjectivism of the postmodernists. Everything is arbitrary. Everything is meaningless. Is it any wonder that despite being one of the wealthiest generations in human history, we are one of the most miserable?
Modern life for many feels more like a prison than the shining city on a hill we were all promised. People in developed countries are experiencing a “loneliness epidemic”.9 We are experiencing an unprecedented rate of alienation between the sexes and things don’t seem to be letting up. There is a distinct lack of purpose among most. No one knows what they’re working toward anymore and there is a profound sense of being untethered from any concretizing force.
The ancients understood the cost of disenchantment and severely warned against it. Libertas, as understood by the earliest political theorists, was the decentralization of control not the lack of it. If towns and cities are able to implement virtue and guard against chaos then a strong government coming in to restore order was not only unnecessary it was nothing more than a blatant power ploy by the king to install tyranny.10 But in a society where each man is allowed to do “what is right in his eyes” that leads to a complete collapse of social cohesion. We’ve seen this before in Jewish history and we’re seeing it again now.
To be free, one must submit to order. If I took a pitcher of water and started pouring it on the table for the sake of “freedom”, you would (rightfully) look at me as if I were mad. The water’s purpose is fulfilled by it being stored in a container and being used towards a constructive end. I can drink it, or water my plants, or use it to clean. Freeform water, while unconstrained, just ends up making a mess of everything.
According to the Ramban, Pesaḥ and Shavuot are part of the same long holiday.11 Linked by the Omer, they are the tail end manifestations of one event. Yetziat Mitzrayim and Matan Torah are connected. While this seems obvious to most, an added dimension must be added here. None of Ḥazal’s language was arbitrary. When they call Pesaḥ “זמן חרותינו” they are describing the beginning of a liberty that only is achieved with the Giving of the Torah. The Bnei Yisrael were slaves, and then were freed from that slavery. Slavery to Pharaoh was evil because it did not orient us towards a telos. We worked and labored for the vainglorious pursuits of a self made god-king. But boundless freedom rarely produces good results. So, Moshe commands Pharaoh in the name of God of Israel: “Send out my people that they should serve me.” It is only when oriented toward purpose: worship of God, cultivation of our communities, building families, and rearing children, a tethering to order, that we can truly understand what liberation means.
Ḥag Kasher ve’Sameaḥ to all.
Shemot 5:1
Shemot 7:17
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, [1906] 2021), 344, s.v. חָפְשִׁי
Shemot 21:2. Translations taken from the Steinsaltz Humash. I am also grateful to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for this partial insight, though I differ with his conclusion. For more see, Johnathan Sacks, The Johnathan Sacks Haggada, (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2013), 88.
This formulation is Locke’s. It was later reworked in the Declaration of Independence to: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. For more see, John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Also see Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism: Revised Edition, (New York: Basic Liberty, 2025), 58-90 and Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2022), 111-133.
Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, (New York: Random House, 2018), 1-28.
Specifically the radical libertarians and anarchists.
Elizabeth M. Ross, “What is Causing Our Loneliness Epidemic and How Can We Fix It?”, October 25th, 2024, https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it
For more, see Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018).
Ramban on Vayikra 23:36