Freedom Is Not Free

 

Week after week, Jews from around the world read the current parsha and try to find meaningful insights, ask interesting questions, or simply use it as a springboard for some other discussion at their Shabbat table.

 

I often feel, however, that we are missing the bigger picture. People are so caught up on the individual parsha with its laws or stories that we can fail to step back and view the Torah as a single piece of literature. With the new cycle of Torah upon us, I wanted to take a few minutes and discuss how I plan to study the Torah this upcoming year.

 

Once we strip ourselves of the immature notion that the Torah is there to give us a history or science lesson, we can begin to appreciate it for what it truly is. While there are many different ways to read the Torah, I want to propose that we can read it as the narrative of a group of people who, upon being freed from slavery, came to the cold, hard realization that freedom is actually a very difficult state to handle. Now given that I read the entire Torah through a metaphorical or archetypal lens, I want to try and understand what this journey means on a deeper level.

 

The Israelites clearly had strong anxiety about being freed from Egypt. We can discuss this apprehension in light of Stockholm syndrome, slave mentality, or even a deep-rooted lachrymosity or pessimism about being able to survive without the Egyptians. No matter what God gave them, whether it was food from heaven, angelic protection, or guardian walls of fire, the Israelites were unable to be pacified throughout the entire Torah.

 

Now every Israelite understood the end goal. They all knew that they were being led into the Promised Land in order to establish themselves as a functioning society. They knew that God would lead them into Israel, help them win wars, provide them their food, and take care of every other material need until they were set.

 

However, they were still nervous, still scared, and continuously sabotaged the various attempts to reach this goal - all the while begging Moshe to be taken back to Egypt. The problem was so bad that God had to wait until nearly everyone who had experienced Egyptian slavery had died before actually leading them into Israel.

 

We can interpret these details in a couple of different ways, but they all point to a very simple solution. The Israelites wanted to return to Egypt because they felt that being enslaved was easier than being free. In Egypt they had structure, they had rules and they were provided food and housing. Furthermore, we do not need to understand this slavery as the physical slavery of shackles and denomination. Real slavery could be a mental one. In Egypt, the Israelites woke up knowing exactly what the day had in store for them, and they did not need to worry about planning for the future. While life was undoubtedly hard for the enslaved Israelites, it was also simple, austere and extremely structured.

 

Once the Israelites threw off the yoke of slavery, they headed directly into the desert wilderness. A desert, especially as described in the Biblical story, is a place of extreme emptiness. In a desert there is no foundation and no order - it is the ultimate place of pure freedom.

The Israelites quickly realize that living in a place of no structure is difficult and frightening. Frequent quarrels broke out in the camp. Power struggles began and the Israelites seemed to come up with a complaint for every aspect of their new lives.

 

The rest of the Torah is the story of how this newly-freed nation attempted to cope with their new status as free people. Soon after their freedom, they made a covenant at Sinai - a foundational moment where the nascent Israelites established a constitution or mission statement in attempt to build some sort of structure for themselves.

 

However, time after time, allegiance to this abstract and intangible constitution (or God), did not seem to be enough. Most of the Israelites craved a physical master, someone or something which they could blindly serve - making their world and lives much simpler. It is in this light that I view the ubiquity of idol worship throughout the entire Biblical narrative. It was an attempt by the Israelites to re-enslave themselves to a tangible and overly simplified worldview.

 

The idea that structureless freedom carries with it an immense array of baggage is a powerful one. Many intellectuals in the West who consistently decry religion as a form of emotional and intellectual slavery, and look forward to a post-religious world that will ipso-facto be perfect, would do well to heed this warning. It is all too evident that societies that “free” themselves from religion, end up enslaving themselves in other - and much more detrimental ways. Communism, nationalism, and fascism were all too quick to captivate the masses after the enlightenment disenchanted religious teachings.

 

Even on an individual level, it is all too often that we find well-educated people turning to dogmatic and fundamentalist views of the world, both within a religious and political context. People seem to flock to worldviews filled with easy answers and structure, which alleviates them of the intellectual and emotional burden that comes along with true freedom.

 

Nevertheless, the fact that freedom has its pathologies does not mean that it is not worth pursuing. No matter how frustrated Moshe gets, he does not give up on his people. And, although he does not get to accompany his nation into the Promised Land, he knows that he has spent his life preparing his society allowing them to make this crucial next step.