Pesach is the festival of liberation, it celebrates a historical event: The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. But one of the tasks that the event lays upon us is that “in every generation, and every day, a Jew must see himself as if he had that day been liberated from Egypt.” The implication is that freedom was not won once and for all. It needs constant guarding. And that every day and every environment carries its own equivalent of “Egypt”—a power to undermine the freedom of the Jew. Perhaps the most potent threat comes from within the individual himself. It is the conviction that certain achievements are beyond him: The strong and comfortable belief that he was not born to reach the heights of the religious life. To believe this is to set bars around oneself, to imprison oneself in an illusion. Pesach is thus an ongoing process of self-liberation. And the festival and its practices are symbols of a struggle that is constantly renewed within the Jew, to create the freedom in which to live out his eternal vocation.
The following extracts are adapted from Pesach letters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
1. The Meaning of Liberation
2. The Festival of Spring
3. The Fifth Son
LOGIN
ASK THE RABBI
1 Comment
