Volume 31 Issue 10 08 Apr 2022 7 Nisan 5782

From the Acting Head of Jewish Life

Daphna Levin-Kahn – Head of Jewish Studies High School

Pesach
Freedom & Responsibility – Part 2

Next Friday night is likely to be somewhat different from your usual Friday Nights…and perhaps we can make this year’s Pesach just that little bit different from the usual Seder Night.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism, based in London (and my brother’s rabbi!) often writes very moving pieces that reflect the Emanuel School ethos. After a very busy two weeks of Pesach preparations at Emanuel, these words are particularly meaningful.

Pesach reflections on #Freedom from Rabbi Wittenberg

In the Torah

Pesach is widely referred to as the Festival of Freedom. It’s not the Torah but the rabbis who gave it this name, calling it זמן חרותינו zeman cherutenu, ‘the season of our freedom’.

The Torah speaks not of freedom but of service and purpose. God repeatedly instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh not simply to ‘Let my people go’, but to let them go ‘to serve Me’. Freedom is not an ultimate goal, but a necessary precondition for being able to do what is just and right: affirm the dignity of all humanity, create a fair society and live in respectful equilibrium with nature.

Hence, when Moses receives the Ten Commandments at Sinai, with its writing חָרות charut, ‘engraved’, on the two tablets of stone, the rabbis play on the word: ‘Don’t read it as  חָרות charut, ‘engraved’; read it as  חֵירותcherut, ‘freedom’. It is only through service to a higher vision that we become truly free. Yehudah Halevi encapsulated this in a famous couplet:

עבדי זמן עבדי עבדים הם

Avdei zeman avdei avadim heim:
Servants of fortune are servants of servants;
The servant of God alone is free.

Without explicitly using the word ‘freedom’, the laws of the Torah and their rabbinic interpretations enshrine the key principles of ‘freedoms from’. Tzedakah, the command to further social justice, is intended to free people from destitution: hunger, nakedness, homelessness and unemployment. Tzedek and mishpat, justice and law, protect society as a whole and especially the most vulnerable, the parentless and stateless, from exploitation and rejection. Chesed, faithful kindness, calls us to make compassion our underlying value in all our conduct. The requirement to speak and listen to truth, ‘Keep far from falsehood’ is intended to liberate us from the mesh of fake news and false ‘facts’ by which power has entrenched itself since time immemorial.

None of these freedoms can be taken for granted in today’s world.

Today

Freedom from Hunger, Homelessness and Modern Slavery

From the first rabbinical codes onwards, Jewish law insists that we may not sit down to our own Seder and mark the festival of national liberation while leaving others behind because they can’t afford to keep the festival. The celebration of freedom must be beyond no one’s means.

We may prefer to respond to something else, but we are not at liberty to do nothing.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg 2019

At Emanuel School

Emanuel School students reflected these ideals this week and last, researching modern forms of enslavement and considering how these could be raised at the Pesach Seder (Year 10), raising awareness and funds for The Freedom Hub during Freedom Week (Vicky Miller and Rebecca Pillemer), visiting the Hub and hearing from its founder and CEO Sally Irwin about modern slavery (Year 9 and 11) – especially in Australia; learning about homelessness and hearing from Andrew, a former homeless adult through the Rough Edges tour of King’s Cross; cooking tuna lasagne and brownies with Mrs Ephron and writing cards at school to bring to the Rough Edges Café (Year 9); meeting the founders of the Good Box and packing special boxes for the homeless (Year 9 Be The Change); and celebrating a variety of different Seder experiences, in the Primary and High Schools to better understand the ethical messages of Pesach that demand our promotion of the freedoms of others.

Next term, the School will be offering a special workshop by the Freedom Hub for our school community, for business owners to learn about the Anti-Slavery Legislation and their businesses. Watch this space for more details next term!

Let us hope and pray that as we bring the Pesach Haggadah Narrative and Messages that are so clearly represented at our Seder Night into our contemporary conversations and actions and vice versa, then the difficult circumstances that so many millions are facing today may be uplifted, brought to the forefront of our own desire for a fairer, safer, freer, and more peaceful world.

Shabbat Shalom, Chag Pessach Sameach and wishing you all a good break.