Passover’s 7 Steps to Personal Freedom

Passover commemorates the dramatic exodus of the Jews from Egypt after a sojourn of 210 years. The centrality of this experience in Jewish life cannot be overstated. There is a commandment to recount and remember the Exodus every day of the year, morning and evening. In Friday night kiddush, we declare “zecher l’yetzeat mitzraim” – in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. The annual Passover Seder is the most beloved and celebrated Jewish ritual. For over 3000 years, it has been a primary vehicle for the transmission of our history, our values, and our heritage to our children. As a multimedia pedagogical experience, it has yet to be surpassed.

Certainly, even Jews of minimal commitment and knowledge are conversant with the basic contours of the Exodus story. Yet there is an aspect of remembering the Exodus that is often overlooked. Slavery takes many forms. There is indeed the obvious – slavery of physical persecution and oppression, but there are more subtle forms as well. One can be externally free and nevertheless enslaved to an evil within oneself — power, envy, intolerance, hatred, cruelty, selfishness, despair, and apathy are all chains that can shackle, cripple, or disable the human spirit. Especially where Jews have political freedom, it is often the internal forms of subjugation that pose the greatest threat.

A great Chassidic teacher once explained that the time-honored rituals of the Seder serve not only to commemorate our freedom from the Biblical Egypt, Mitzraim in Hebrew, which comes from the word constriction, but as a means to achieve redemption from the personal Mitzraim/constriction within each and every one of us.

Here, briefly, are seven selected aspects of the Passover Seder and their connection to attaining personal freedom:

1. Ask Questions: The Talmud makes clear that the narrative of the Haggadah must be preceded by questions. (This is of course the Ma Nishtana.) Even if one is celebrating Passover alone, these questions must be articulated. Thus, step one is achieving spiritual freedom: Be willing to ask honest questions. Don’t close the door. Be a seeker of wisdom.

2. Grow from Adversity: The Haggadah narrative must begin with the account of slavery and adversity, not with the redemption. This reminds us that even in adversity, failure, or disappointment, there lie the seeds of hope and regeneration; that often our greatest growth arises not from our successes, but from our failures and mistakes if we are courageous and perceptive enough to learn from them.

3. Bitter Herbs: Eating bitter herbs highlights the need to honestly recognize and confront these destructive aspects of behavior that are bitter and enslaving. You cannot be free of your inner slavery until you acknowledge that it exists.

4. Four cups of wine/reclining: This calls upon us to recognize that notwithstanding the bitter herbs — enslavers, we have the innate capacity and spiritual greatness, with God’s help, to become liberated. Awareness of our faults must be coupled with an equal awareness of our potential for self-improvement, goodness, and nobility of character.

5. Matzah: All flour mixed with water will become chametz if left unattended for 18 minutes. If baked before that time, however, what would have become chametz is matzah instead. This teaches us the need for decisive action. Far too often, we are momentarily inspired to make positive changes in our lives, but by failing to concretize that resolution into action, we allow the inspiration to dissipate.

6. Paschal Lamb: Of all the many sacrifices, this was the only one that could be brought only in collaboration with other people. A single individual standing alone could not bring the Passover Offering. In all our attempts to reach Godliness, we must link ourselves to the Jewish People in love and concern.

7. Intergenerational Communication: Ultimately, Judaism survives not through schools or synagogues, but through families — parent to child, child to parent — the established, indispensable formula for growth as passed down from generation to generation.

Be an honest searcher, recognize the redemptive potential even in adversity, honestly and courageously confront your faults, believe in your potential for spiritual greatness, be willing to take decisive action, inculcate within yourself a sense of love and compassion for the Jewish People, foster the bonds of intergenerational communication with your parents, your children, or both.

These seven steps may not change the world, but they will certainly enable each of us to achieve genuine personal freedom which is at the core of the Exodus experience.