Our Precious Holiday of (Limited) Freedom: חג החירות המוגבל

Over the past few months,  three thinkers have helped me to understand a more layered approach to the concept of freedom, one that I will bring to the Seder and Pesach this year.  

Oliver Burkeman,  Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals 

In this amazingly thoughtful book, Burkeman says  that while we often think and frame ourselves as free,  our “freedom” is actually very limited.  Our capacities, our abilities and our time, are undeniably finite.  And, ironically, that limit can sometimes be freeing.  

He writes,   “it’s not that you’ve been cheated out of an unlimited supply of time; ..it’s almost incomprehensibly miraculous to have been granted any time at all……There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you’ll never be liberated. You don’t get to dictate the course of events. 

And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.”

We are not really free in the strictest sense.  We are bound by our human limitations.  While we have no idea how much time we will be gifted, our freedom lies in how we navigate, budget and spend that precious commodity of time.

Rav Pam, (1913 – August 16, 2001) Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn, New York.

“Free people often work long hours doing arduous tasks…A slave works until he or she is allowed to stop. A free person decides when to begin and end. 

“Control over time is the essential difference between slavery and freedom. Control over the calendar gave the Israelites the power to determine when the new moon occurred, and thus, when the festivals occur. They were given authority over time. The first command to the Israelites was thus an essential prelude to freedom. It said: learn how to value time and make it holy. "Teach us rightly to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom, לִמְנ֣וֹת יָ֭מֵינוּ כֵּ֣ן הוֹדַ֑ע וְ֝נָבִ֗א לְבַ֣ב חׇכְמָֽה׃

(Ps. 90:12)”.

It is the ability to make our limited time matter and sacred that is one of the true gifts of freedom. 

Sebastian Junger, Freedom

While we often look at freedom as independence, Junger helps to frame the concept of freedom differently.  He sees freedom as something that carries along with it a strong element of debt.  He writes, 

“For most of human history, freedom had to be at least suffered for, if not died for, and that raised its value to something almost sacred. In modern democracies, however, an ethos of public sacrifice is rarely needed because freedom and survival are more or less guaranteed. That is a great blessing, but allows people to believe that any sacrifice at all—rationing water during a drought, for example—are forms of government tyranny. They are no more forms of tyranny than rationing water on a lifeboat. The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return is literally infantile. Only children owe nothing.” 

Once again, our freedom lies in our ability to decide to whom we want to commit, sacrifice and self constrict.  

On the one hand, yes the Haggadah tells us

 עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ הָיִינו. עַתָּה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין  

"We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Now we are free." 

Yet, on the other hand we are told  from Pirkei Avot (2:16)  

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה.

"You don't have to do all of the work, but you are not free to walk away."

We are free people and we are also not free.  Living a life of freedom is living a life of realizing that our freedom lies in how we truly reflect and prioritize, and how we focus and commit our most precious limited life resources– our time, our possessions, our energies and our deep human connections.

Chag sameach.