In 1684, a group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition (see "Today in Jewish History" for Tevet 22) held a Rosh Hashanah service in New Amsterdam, thereby founding congregation Shearith Israel ("Remnant of Israel"). On this 17th of Tevet in 1728, the congregation purchased a lot in Lower Manhattan to erect the first synagogue in New York.
Rabbi Aaron Zelig ben Joel Feivush of Ostrog, Russia, author of Toldot Aaron, passed away on Tevet 17 of the year in 5515 from creation (1754).
Tevet 17 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Wolf Krantz (1740-1804), the Maggid (preacher) of Dubna, particularly known for the parables (meshalim) he employed in his sermons and writings.
“The water was a wall for them, to their right and to their left.”—Exodus 14:29
Freedom is not to the right. Freedom is not to the left. Neither is it at the center.
Any direction you take is just another form of bondage. Only by walking opposite roads at once can you be free.
So if you catch yourself fitting into a definition, contradict it. Never say, “I am this.” Always be leaving the slavery of Egypt.
Yes, it demands the supernatural. You are a divine spark. You are supernatural.
Always be walking through the miraculous splitting of the sea.