In liberating the Jewish people from slavery, God had to teach us what freedom – true freedom – looks like. Without a paradigm or model to go on, God had to teach us from the ground up.
There is a difference between being “free” and having a “free-for-all”. Having left Egypt, the Jews were slaves no longer and by definition, were “free”. But what does freedom look like?
The Egyptian Pharaoh was considered to be a “god.” He could enslave a nation, decree genocide, act outside of all reason, and he answered to no one. In being “free” to act with utter impunity, Pharaoh nevertheless brought widespread death and utter destruction to his country. So, is that what “freedom” looks like? If so, then really, what’s the point? Surely, it must mean something else.
In liberating the Jewish people from slavery, God had to teach us what freedom – true freedom – looks like. Without a paradigm or model to go on, God had to teach us from the ground up. The kind of freedom God wanted us to embrace was a certain kind of freedom, the freedom of being “congruent”.
Being congruent means that the actions of your external self are consistent with the values of your internal being. Essentially, it means being authentic and true to yourself.
The question is, however, as we can see from the example of Pharaoh, who was evil inside and out, is which self are we, and what kind of person do we want to authentically express?
Having been slaves in Egypt for over two hundred years, how could the newly- liberated Jew know what his or her real self was? How could a newly-freed slave understand his or her potential much less how to actualize it?
The Hebrew word for Egypt is “Mitzrayim”, which means “narrowness” or “constraint”. Leaving Egypt for the desert was going from a place of constricted boundaries to a place of no boundaries.
In order to avoid the external chaos of a “free-for- all”, as well as the internal panic of being in a state of “free-fall”, God had to teach us what being a truly free human being looks like, and how to create our own internal controls. So the Jews had to learn both “how” to be as well as “what” to be.
One of the main themes of this week’s Torah portion, “Acharei Mos”, deals with the laws of prohibited relationships. Last week, it was the laws of proper speech – what comes out of your mouth. Before that, it was the laws of kosher animals – what goes into your mouth.
Laws, laws and more laws. It seems that there is no part of our lives, our relationships, our behaviors, even our bodies, which is not governed by Torah law. That is because Judaism is an inside/outside religion.
So is this just a new form of slavery? After all, when we were slaves in Egypt, Pharaoh certainly controlled us. In so doing, however, Pharaoh wanted to crush us, to break us down utterly. In total contrast, God wants to build us up, to cultivate our character so that we understand who we truly are – a holy people.
In order for us to be holy, however, we must be “whole”. We must be congruent. We must be holy both inside and out. In governing all of the myriad aspects of our lives, God is teaching us that Judaism is not compartmentalized, but is a seamless integrated holistic way of being.
Therefore, we can’t say – “This is for God, but that is not.” We can’t say, “Before, I was on God’s time, but now I am on my time.” We can’t say, “What I do or say over here matters, but over there it does not.” And we certainly can’t say, “Well, this is just business…”
And so whether it’s governing what we eat, how we speak, how we conduct business, how we treat others, how we conduct our intimate relationships, etc. etc. etc.… it ALL matters. In an integrated seamless holistic life, everything HAS to matter.
And therefore, we can look at each law that God gives us as another nuance and refinement, another pathway and connection, to help us close the gap between the external being and the internal selves that represent our true godly essence.
When we were delivered from Egypt, we were given the gift of freedom. To stay, free, however, is another story. Staying free means embracing freedom as a responsibility to be earned, integrated and owned – in other words, being congruent.
When we can do that, no one and no thing can ever enslave us again. And that is what freedom – true freedom – really looks like.