Freedom from Personal Enslavement

Sermon Shabbat Vayikra 5786

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha 

Pesach is coming up in just twelve days.  The theme of Passover is freedom, of course: Pesach is zman cheiruteinu, the season of freedom, the ultimate festival of liberation, a celebration of the great human need for freedom from slavery, constraint, and bondage.  It is woven into our entire Jewish tradition.

Repeatedly in Judaism we are given the mitzvah, the commandment, to view ourselves as though we personally had come out of Egypt.  That is, we are supposed to think of ourselves as genuinely having been slaves.  Usually, this is explained as the requirement to identify with the downtrodden in every society, to remember that we ourselves were once wretched slaves at the bottom of the heap.  That means that no matter how well we do we are obligated to help those in need, to try to liberate those who are our own generation’s versions of slaves.  Long ago God brought us to freedom, after 400 years of servitude.  Now, we must help those who are similarly in chains.

A great lesson.  But perhaps there is more here.

Repeatedly in the Torah and of course at Passover we are told that we must see ourselves as having literally been slaves.  That may seem like a far-fetched idea to those of us who have grown up and lived in freedom and comfort in a free country.  America is the land of the free, isn’t it?  After all, in practical reality we are not servants to anyone and can make our own decisions about our course in life.

Or can we? The truth is, we are all not really so free as we imagine that we are.  We may not be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we may not wear shackles on our ankles or wrists, but is it possible that we are all slaves to something? 

I remember the way a rabbi I worked with long ago used to explain what being a slave was when he spoke to preschool aged kids at Pesach time.  He would say, “Hold your hands super tight in front of you.  Pull very hard, but hold them so closely and strongly that you can’t get them out.  Keep trying; that’s what it feels like to be a slave.  Now, let them go!  That’s the difference between being a slave and being free.”

As a demonstration for preschool children, it sort of worked, provided the little kids’ hands didn’t fly out and whack the next kid in the nose…

But it was valuable because that’s more or less exactly what we are supposed to be doing this time of year: remembering what it was like to be a slave, the pain, the suffering, the struggle, the constriction.  We create that at the Seder: bitter herbs, memories of hard labor, the bread of affliction, lechem oni.  And always, the knowledge that you could never really just do what you wanted to do.

That sense of being limited, blocked, stuck is an underrated aspect of slavery.  Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of blessed memory, reminded us that the name for Egypt, Mitzrayim, includes the word Tzar, narrow, at its heart, a place of contraction and constraint. 

So, what does this mean for us today?

My friends, I’d like you to try a little thought exercise.  Imagine that you are a slave.  That is, what enslaves you, personally?

Is there something in your own life that holds you, personally, captive?  And what is it that keeps you there?

The physical, practical goal of the Exodus from Egypt was to free us from slavery.  But what God has Moses request from the Pharaoh initially is not physical freedom at all but spiritual freedom, the ability to go and worship God as the Israelites wished to do.  In other words, the real goal of the Exodus was spiritual, emotional, and psychological freedom.  Before the Israelites could value physical freedom, they needed to experience spiritual freedom.

In today’s world we may be physically free.  But by the standards that the story of Exodus establishes, in truth we may not really be so free.

So, I’ll ask again, what is it that enslaves you? 

We know that there are, in every community, people who are slaves to their addictions to alcohol, to prescription drugs, to illegal drugs.  We know that there are, in every community, those who are slaves to their addictions to food, to gambling, to other seriously damaging behaviors.  Less toxically, there are many who are addicted to social media or video games, to viral news feeds and other seemingly harmless but addictive behaviors.  Addiction is a kind of slavery, isn’t it?  

We also know people trapped in damaging relationships, in toxic work situations, in careers that are unfulfilling and unhappy.  And there are many people who are enslaved by financial pressures.  Others are workaholics, unable to free themselves from the prison of eternal obsession with their jobs and careers.  And we all know people who are slaves to physical illness or incapacity, trapped by their own body’s limitations. 

Then there are those people who remain in mourning after a great personal loss, unable to heal from it, still in servitude to grief.  We also know people who are slaves to their own dysfunctions: some who simply can’t show up on time, others who can’t make a simple decision, some trapped by their inability to tell the truth. 

So, as we approach Passover, when we will tell the story of the Exodus of our people from slavery, what is it that enslaves you, personally?  To be able to answer this question requires something akin to absolute honesty.  It can be hard to admit, but we must answer nonetheless: What traps you, controls you, chains you?  To what are you a slave?

It is possible that you can think of more than one thing that subjugates you and keeps you from being truly free.  But if you can focus on just one thing that makes a slave out of you, that is the crucial first step to becoming free. Because until you know what it is that enslaves you, what chains you, you can’t begin to try to become free.

To begin to seek liberation from that restricting enslavement, that challenging limitation, we each have the ability to imitate what our ancestors were supposed to do first: to seek spiritual liberation.  The first step is to realize that you are enslaved in some way.  The next step—and it’s a big one—is to free your spirit.  It is to realize that you are a unique and sacred image of God in this world, that you can to connect with the great power that belief and hope bring.  Because when you begin that process of freeing your spirit, you can begin to free yourself from the ways that you are enslaved.

That’s the true message of Passover, of our coming Pesach holiday: that each of us has the capacity to seek true freedom, in order to live a life of dedication not to habits or addictions or limitations, but to goodness and truth and love.  May this be God’s will; and ours.

Kein Yehi Ratson.