In celebration of the upcoming Festival of Passover (Pesach,) we present a collection of teachings from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks about the essential message of freedom in this holiday.
Passover Has Lessons For Those Fighting for Freedom
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Moses spoke not about freedom but about education. He fixed his vision not on the immediate but on the distant future, and not on adults but children. In so doing he was making a fundamental point. It may be hard to escape from tyranny but it is harder still to build and sustain a free society.
“In the long run there is only one way of doing so. To defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilisation you need education. That is why Moses, according to Rousseau the world’s greatest architect of a free society, spoke about the duty of parents in every generation to educate their children about why freedom matters and how it was achieved.
“Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression. The faces change, but not the script. True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.
‘Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools. Nowhere is this more evident than on Passover, when the entire ritual of handing on our story to the next generation is set in motion by the questions asked by a child. In every generation we need to cultivate afresh the habits of the heart that Tocqueville called “the apprenticeship of liberty.”
“The message of Passover remains as powerful as ever. Freedom is won not on the battlefield but in the classroom and the home.
‘Teach your children the history of freedom if you want them never to lose it.”
https://rabbisacks.org/archive/passover-has-lessons-for-those-fighting-freedom/
Pesach and the Jewish Task
Extract from the Koren Sacks Pesach Machzor
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Pesach is the oldest and most transformative story of hope ever told. It tells of how an otherwise undistinguished group of slaves found their way to freedom from the greatest and longest-lived empire of their time, indeed of any time. It tells the revolutionary story of how the supreme Power intervened in history to liberate the supremely powerless. It is a story of the defeat of probability by the force of possibility. It defines what it is to be a Jew: a living symbol of hope.
“Pesach tells us that the strength of a nation does not lie in horses and chariots, armies and arms, or in colossal statues and monumental buildings, overt demonstrations of power and wealth. It depends on simpler things: humility in the presence of the God of creation, trust in the God of redemption and history, and a sense of the non-negotiable sanctity of human life, created by God in His image: even the life of a slave or a child too young to ask questions.
“Pesach is the eternal critique of power used by humans to coerce and diminish their fellow humans…’
https://rabbisacks.org/archive/pesach-and-the-jewish-task/
The Haggada’s Politics: From 2,000 Years Ago to Today
A Conversation with Senator Joseph Lieberman
“Now, just briefly as to go back to it, how did all this become universalised? Well, because it’s about freedom. I think there’s an inherent desire in people to be free. In the Passover story as related in the Hebrew Bible, and I use that term because now I’m talking about the broader world, particularly Christians, it’s God is on the side of freedom. That’s why Franklin could talk about rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. The story, to put it bluntly, ends happily. The Jewish people are freed.
“As a result, this compelling story has been a standard, not only for personal conduct of a lot of us over the centuries, but for freedom movements and individuals who were fighting for freedom throughout the world. It’s fundamental to the abolitionist movement in this country, to the civil rights movement. Even, although you have to search a bit, for politics in the Haggadah because Moshe, who’s the political leader in one sense, is not there. Hashem is there, God is there.
“Obviously, we begin by asking people, inviting people who are hungry to come in. A lot of it… If you wanted to stretch a bit, I don’t think it takes too much of a stretch. This may begin to run counter to some of your political views. One might say, Rabbi, that certainly there is an argument for treating your workers fairly. I’m not here to explicitly endorse the Labour movement, but those political values are there. Anyway, it’s had an amazing connection. The final point being, this belief, I think expressed more and carried out more recently among Christians, that the Last Supper of Jesus was a Passover Seder, now a desire, actually, to re-enact the Seder, to understand what Jesus observed. I’ll just end by telling you that several years ago the chaplain of the Senate, it probably during the 90’s, came to me and said that he taught a group of my fellow senators who were Christian Bible every week.
“He said, when they were studying the Last Supper, that this was a Passover Seder. “Have any of you been to a Passover Seder?” They all apparently said no. He said, “Would you like to go to one?” and they said yes. And then one of them said, “Why don’t you ask Senator Lieberman? He seems to know about this kind of stuff.”
“So we held what you’d call a model Seder. We did it three times over a period of probably seven or eight years. It was quite remarkable, quite unifying, very interesting to see them get into the rituals of the Seder. Ultimately, the compelling part of it is freedom and the quest for freedom.”
https://rabbisacks.org/videos/the-haggadas-politics-a-conversation-with-senator-joseph-lieberman/