Freedom and liberty

With God’s help

2011

Engravings on the boards

Michael Abraham

Between Passover and Shavuot, we move from the freedom we received on Passover to the letter of God, which is freedom on the tablets given to us at Sinai. From freedom to the hard and the freedom in stone. From freedom to slavery. And here, Chazal demand, "Do not call it freedom, but freedom." They see freedom precisely in what is freedom on the tablets. What is the connection between these two?

It is common in our world to think that freedom is a supreme value. On the other hand, there is an intuition that in the religious world, freedom is not a value but at most a means. Those who are free can do more things (including worshiping God), but freedom in itself is not a value. However, we celebrate Passover, the holiday of freedom, and to a certain extent it occupies a more central place in our tradition than the holiday of Shavuot – the giving of the Torah.

The definition of freedom is the absence of limitations. However, as such, it is difficult to see it as a value. It is a given situation, either I have limitations or I don't. Why see it as a value? It seems that the reason for this mistake is the fact that denying freedom from someone is an immoral act. From this, the conclusion seems to follow that freedom is a value. However, this is a mistake. Also, denying money from someone who owns it is an immoral act. This does not mean that owning money is a value. Money is an asset, and as such, denying it from its owner is immoral. Freedom is also an asset, not a value, and therefore denying it is immoral. And, precisely, an asset and not a value.

Freedom is contrasted with liberty. Liberty means autonomous action within given limitations. When a person acts according to what he believes, he is free. But such action has value only if limitations are imposed on it. In the absence of limitations, there is no freedom, and freedom has no meaning.

Therefore, liberty is the opposite of freedom. Freedom is a state without limitations. Those who are subject to fewer limitations are freer, and vice versa. On the other hand, the more limitations a person has, the more open the path to becoming a free person is. It is not for nothing that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi teaches us, "The servants of time are servants of slaves, the servant of God alone is free." When a person accepts the "limitation" of being committed to the Torah and commandments, this opens up to him the possibility of being free. He who lives outside of limitations can never be free. A person who decides for himself what is good and what is bad may be free, but he is certainly not free. There is no autonomous action here, since the standard by which he evaluates his actions is defined by himself. Such an evaluation has no meaning (he will always come out just, successful, and moral).

There is another aspect that shows us that liberty is the opposite of freedom. As we have seen, depriving someone of freedom is forbidden, but depriving them of freedom is impossible. At most, we can impose restrictions on them, but we can never take away their freedom. Therefore, liberty is a value, and freedom is at most an asset.

As we have seen, freedom is an autonomous action within limitations. Is freedom also valuable in the religious world, or even in the world of halakhah? Isn't autonomy a foreign idea that has no place in the world of halakhah? Ostensibly, we are committed to divine truth and the rulings of canonical sources (Mishnah, Talmud, poskim). What place does autonomy have in the religious world?

Regarding this, the Sages demanded, "Do not read engravings on the tablets, but freedom on the tablets." Freedom is precisely on the tablets. In the absence of tablets, how do we see the form of engraving of the letters? A person cannot create his own form except within the framework of a given context. When there are tablets, we can engrave our letters on them, but in the air there is no meaning to the differences between the forms of engraving, or the different messages. We will now look at halachic expressions on this matter.

First, we find in Tractate Eruvin 13b the following verse:

Rabbi Acha bar Hanina said: It is clear and known to the one who said and the world was created that in the generation of Rabbi Meir there is no one like him, and why did they not establish a law like him – that his companions could not stand by his final opinion. He says about an impure person, pure, and shows him respect, about a pure person, impure, and shows him respect.

If indeed Ram was such a great scholar, then anyone who disagrees with him is probably mistaken. If so, why didn't they establish a halakhah like him? Does the fact that he was so wise lead to the conclusion that there is no halakhah like him? It turns out that there is an obligation to decide halakhah according to what we see and understand, even if it comes at the expense of the supreme halakhic truth. Halakhah obliges us to autonomy no less than to truth.

And so the Maharal writes in Netiv HaTorah Soph. 5:

Because it is more appropriate and more correct for a judge to be based on the Talmud, and although it is felt that he will not follow the path of truth and will not rule the case for its truth, so that the teaching is according to the truth, in any case, a wise man should not only do what his intellect gives and understands from the Talmud. And when his understanding and wisdom mislead him, with all this he is loved by God, blessed be He, when he teaches according to what his intellect requires, and a judge should not only do what his eyes see. And he is better than someone who rules from a single work and does not know the meaning of the matter at all, who walks like a blind man on the road.

In the eyes of God, it is better for a person to decide with his own mind even if he is wrong, than to rule only from the sources even if he is right. Autonomy is no less important than truth. Does this stem from the fact that there is no truth? Of course not. Precisely because there is truth, autonomous ruling is important. If there were no supreme halachic truth, the autonomy of ruling would have no meaning. In the absence of tablets, freedom has no meaning. In the absence of obligations and limitations that do not depend on us (like the supreme truth), there is no meaning to me doing what I think. Where I am the standard, what is the meaning of the fact that I act as I understand?

So, on Passover we come out of slavery to Pharaoh to become slaves of God. They are my slaves and not slaves to slaves. Freedom is nothing but an illusion. There is freedom here and not freedom, freedom on the tablets. Thus we arrive from Passover directly to the status of Mount Sinai.