Chaim Shine’s Pesach

I don’t usually send out the ideas of others. But this is an exception.

The modest man who wrote it in Hebrew (my translation), is neither a rabbi nor an academic scholar, but a successful businessman with a strong moral conscience not only about Israel and Judaism but humanity in general. He is passionate about his Judaism but scorns politics and hypocrisy. He is self-taught to an impressive degree. His spirituality has made him one of the most impressive people I have ever encountered. Here is what he sent me for Pesach…

‘Passover, the holiday of freedom, describes a revolutionary process – the exodus from slavery to freedom. But from the very first moments of liberation, we encounter a profound paradox: the people of Israel are freed from the yoke of Pharaoh, only to enter under God’s yoke. Externally, it seems that we have exchanged one slavery for another. But this is precisely where the great secret of Jewish freedom lies – the freedom that leads to the burden.

As the Rebbe of Kotzk put it: “You have no free person but one who is engaged in Torah.” (Avot 6:2)

It is not about escaping from commitment, but about recognizing that there is a deeper value than simple freedom – the ability to choose what to commit. Only a truly free person can accept a burden – not out of coercion, but out of a conscious choice of higher values, of a meaningful life.

But this question is not only the domain of Judaism. In every culture and in every era, man was faced with the dilemma: Is there complete freedom without obligation? Can a person who is not committed to anything really achieve development and inner growth?
The philosophical and artistic literature abounds with different answers, but many of them point to the fact that freedom without content becomes empty, and sometimes, despair.

Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, describes man as holding the burden of the absurd. Pushing the stone up again and again, only to see it roll back. But in doing so, he discovers a new kind of freedom – the freedom to choose meaning. Not to be free from everything, but to create something within it. Commitment, then, does not contradict freedom – but derives from it.

Viktor Frenkel, an Auschwitz survivor, wrote: “Man is a creature looking for meaning. It is not freedom that is the supreme condition of man’s existence – but the finding of meaning.”

In other words, we don’t live to be free – we are free to find something to live.

Tolstoy, in his story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, presents a man who succeeded on every social scale but lived without inner commitment. It is only in his last hours that he realises that the life he lived was a “life of lies,” because he did not truly commit to any value, and that is where the awakening comes.

And even Nietzsche, who is considered a philosopher of extreme freedom, wrote: “The greatest freedom is not lawlessness, but the power to choose to commit to something greater than yourself.”

The Exodus from Egypt is not only a movement of “fleeing from” – but also of “going to.” Not just a departure from bondage, but an entry into a system of moral, divine, spiritual life.

This is freedom that bears fruit. Not a freedom of “me for myself”, but one that leads to a way of life that allows a person to refine, to grow, to be sanctified.

This is the depth of the words of the Rambam, who wrote about the commandments of the Torah is a way to refine the human soul, and about the words of the Torah, which are “alive to all his flesh.”

The paradox remains, but is now more understandable: A person is liberated – so that he can choose his commitment. And when the choice is right, when the burden is taken consciously, it is not a burden, but a burden. He does not diminish – but rather elevates.

The Exodus from Egypt was not the end, but the beginning of a journey. A journey into true freedom – the freedom to be who you really are, not who the world dictates you to be. In this sense, receiving the Torah is not a contrast to the Exodus from Egypt – but rather its purpose.

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.