The Bible Calls Us to Courage and Freedom
Passover has been a compelling holiday for me. My cousin recently reminded me of early elementary school years, claiming to have a snapshot of me and him and his brother allegedly chanting “We want the Seder!” (That’s the meal on the first night of the holiday.)
I am amazed at American freedom. Those who cherish it realize that its blessings are not secured cheaply.
The evening of the Seder follows the liturgy of the Haggada, most of which tells the story of the Exodus. The book has evolved over the years, even in traditional circles, but the basics are the same. Like the best books, it is endlessly fascinating, and every year, some lines stand out.
The paragraph that rose to the occasion this year reads:
God’s promise stood for us and for our forebears. For it was not one alone who stood against us to finish us off. Rather, in every generation, they stand against us to finish us off, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.
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It’s a good long walk from my home to the synagogue, and if the weather isn’t awful, I enjoy the freedom that it gives me — an hour without the continuous feed of the electronics, an hour in the real world, not its digital reduction. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: American Universities Have Squandered the Public’s Esteem)
As I approached the hallway point on Saturday afternoon, returning home, I saw in the distance a scene familiar from the Bush 43 years — a gathering of sign-bearing protesters at a well-travelled major intersection. Some of the faces I recognized from years ago. As they say in the South, bless their hearts.
There were some younger faces, though, and kaffiyehs and Palestine Authority flags, and a sign or two asking not for a cease-fire but to “Free Palestine.” They were soliciting honks of agreement from passing cars and a few obliged. They were all bunched on the sidewalk where lay my path.
I thought at first to avoid the whole thing. Similar demonstrations around the country have been bullying and violent. Why subject myself to that? Let me express quiet disagreement by lengthening my path and walking around them.
But the spirit of the holiday moved me away from that. Passover is called in our prayers the Time of our Liberation and it seemed decidedly unfree to yield to the cheerleaders for Pharaoh’s and Hitler’s heirs. So I walked right through them with my head up, looking at my path and those in it.
I dress in a way that I am unmistakably Jewish. Add a beard to the black hat and biblical fringes, and it all communicates wordlessly. It did on Saturday. No one looked me in the eye. No one got in my way. One young woman snorted, getting the idea that what she was standing for was being somehow defied, but at a loss for anything else to do about it other than making that involuntary sound. My intent was not to provoke, but not to give up a bit of my freedom. It was to testify to their faces that God’s promise is real and will not be denied.
I walked on for about a block when I saw a car turn into a driveway 50 feet in front of me, and a man got out. He said, “Do you have a minute?” His manner inspired my confidence.
He said, “I saw those people back there. I felt that I had to tell you that they do not represent me and that they do not represent most of the people here.”
We talked warmly for a few minutes. He was a Christian, but he only revealed that when I brought up my own partnership with the local chapter of CUFI (Christians United For Israel) and my lasting friendship with the outstanding pastor who led it in earlier days. I also recalled to him how, perhaps 15 years before, I was walking on another Jewish holiday with some friends when some kids drove by screaming something nasty about Jews. Then, too, a man had pulled over and got out of his car, and announced to us, “I am a Christian and want to apologize to you for those people.”
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I am amazed at American freedom. Those who cherish it realize that its blessings are not secured cheaply. Self-indulgence and worse wrap themselves in the word, but their freedom always involves extracting a price from others.
Edmund Burke raised the issue memorably at the time of the Jacobins who provide the model for the progressive mobs of today. He wrote against those who acclaimed the guillotine gangsters as heroes of the cause of freedom. He countered:
The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Long before, the Source of Good spurred the liberation of Israel from Egyptian slavery. As recorded in the Book of Exodus, God did not stop with liberty. His imperative to Pharaoh was: “Let My People go that they may serve Me.”
A humble man did just that in the face of the ignorance and foolishness that was not just then verged into violence, but whose very message approved violence of the most gruesome sort and gives cheer to those who continue to plot it. (READ MORE: From Chamberlain to Biden, Lessons in Appeasement)
The truth to which he testified runs deep. Many others will find their way to testify to it, and it will gather force like a mighty river. The little people green-lighting violence and those going further to threaten and indulge in it themselves, do not in the least understand what they are waking up.
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The father of the rabbi of the synagogue was visiting for the holiday. He is a distinguished man, learned, an author, translator, and teacher, deeply educated in both Jewish and secular literature. He was swept up in the Holocaust and taken to Auschwitz. When the Nazis closed down Auschwitz in the bitterly cold winter of 1945, he and other inmates were set on a death march of hundreds of miles from Poland into the German interior. He was one of the minority who survived it, which he sees as miraculous. He is still healthy and sharp in his nineties — may God bless him.
As the last hours of the holiday went out with the setting sun on Tuesday, twenty of us gathered around a table with him, hearing his stories of miracles and faith, interspersed with singing of songs, some of which date back two hundred years, others more modern. He has devoted his life to inspiring others to understand that the power of God transforms lives and gives the strength to overcome evil. It is the ancient call to courage that shouts out through the Bible and has inspired anyone who will hear it. Its call shaped the hearts of those who founded this country and those who devoted themselves to preserving its liberties.
In my own family, my wife’s father, who was my Talmud professor in rabbinic school, taught in Berlin in the thirties. He met and married my mother-in-law there in Berlin. He was able to get out of Germany in 1940, accepting an invitation to teach in Cincinnati. (READ MORE: No, Red Cows Won’t Spark War in Israel)
My father-in-law took a picture of his intended along the streets in Berlin. Surrounded by swastikas flags, the true power in the photo expresses the words of Song of Songs (by a tradition read in its entirety on Passover): A Godly flame, as fierce as death, which many waters cannot put out.
That flame is burning in our hearts, and it will not be extinguished.
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