We know how the story goes.
We huddle in wait all night, blood on our doors and sandals on our feet, waiting for the sign to run.
If we are lucky, we have some inkling of a Land one man long ago was told to go to. A Land one man, long ago, was promised. A Land into which he dug wells, wells his son dug up after him.
If we are lucky, this means that when we flee, spears at our back, towards the scent of saltwater, we have a destination in our dreams. That when we thirst, at the banks of bitter water not yet sweetened, we have a passed down memory of rich milk and date honey.
Yet we have to wonder, on our long journey from Goshen to Sinai, not only where are we going, but to what purpose? After generations of slavery, do we have a sense of what freedom means?
Is freedom relief from the overseer’s strike, or is freedom striking down the overseer? Is rest a day to refrain from labor, or is rest a day during which others labor for us?
Or is there something more than that? Some new task to set upon, some new covenant to be drawn. Not the unconditional love of the Covenant of the Pieces, the Covenant with Abraham, but the new endless labor of the Covenant on Sinai.
An endless labor known also as be holy.
God’s promise to Abraham said the Land will always be ours. God warns us at Sinai that if we stray from our new path, the Land itself will vomit us up.
So we ask, is this what freedom is? Covenants with clauses, contracts with conditions upon conditions upon conditions. Couldn’t it be enough to have been taken out of Egypt? Couldn’t it have been enough to have the seas split and be led onto dry land?
Couldn’t that have been enough?
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“No,” says God. “For it is to Me that the Children of Israel are slaves, My slaves whom I took out from the Land of Egypt – I am the Eternal your God.” (Leviticus 25:55)
Because freedom is never an end, nor is independence, nor is sovereignty. They are means, modes of existing in this world that allow us the ability to choose how we act.
Are we free of Pharaoh only to set up new Pharaohs of our own? Have we achieved independence and sovereignty only to deny it to others?
Have we been released from Egypt to serve ourselves?
“No,” says God, “Let My people go so that they might serve Me.” (Exodus 7:26) Be slaves to Me — choose holiness and in doing so be holy.
It is a long journey from Goshen to Sinai, a journey we remember now as we count up through the days of the Omer. A journey from serving Pharaoh in distress to serving God in joy. But always, always serving.
It is not inevitable that our independence, our newfound freedom, will bring with it righteousness. In fact, while powerlessness can look like goodness — forcing solidarity with others who are oppressed or merely withholding from us the chance to oppress others — power hands us the means and the gold to build idols.
And we have built them. We have taken our own freedom, our own independence, our own sovereignty, and rather than continuing to ask, “what do we do with this,” we have formed it into an idol. We have taken a dream and have chiseled it away into organs that cannot sense, hands that cannot touch, and throats that cannot form sound.
As we say during Hallel, those who fashion idols, who trust in them, will become like them.
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So now what? Do we double down? “This idol is your God, Israel, who took you out of Egypt!” This violence, this tyranny, this subjugation and mimicry of Egypt is what saves us?
Do we shy away from responsibility? “I hurled the gold into the fire and out came this calf!” What can we do, after all? It’s a tough neighborhood. We’re trying our best. War is hell.
Do we respond with rage, promise plagues and swords, threaten to start over or never begin again?
Or do we follow in Moses’s example? Can we shore up enough strength to break what must be broken — because even our own dreams can become idols, if we fashion them into such — and enough courage to renew what must be renewed?
Enough strength to carve words again into stone, even if those words have been written once before, even if they have not yet proven enough?
Enough strength to write again, and again, and again if needed? Because the day is short, and the labor is much, and the workers are listless, but the reward is great, and the Master of the Dwelling is pressing. And while it is not on us to complete the work, neither are we free to step away from it. (Pirkei Avot 2:15-16)
We must carve and write and declare again, this time with renewed purpose:
We, the members of National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in solemn assembly by virtue of the natural and historic right of Jewish people and of resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations:
Hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel…
The state of Israel will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of shrines and holy places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
We know how this story has gone. And we do not like how it is going.
But we do not know how it will go from here.
Rabbi Amelia Wolf is the rabbi of Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, VA, and a former T’ruah Israel Fellow.