Parashat Tzav, Eve of Passover (5761)

With God's help. On the eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Tzav, the eve of Passover 5761

Who is a 'free person'?

One of the names of the festival of Passover is the 'Festival of Liberty'. The concept of liberty has become very popular in recent

generations, and in the eyes of many it constitutes a supreme value, and sometimes the only one. Let us try to clarify

its meaning.

The Sages describe the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt as a transition from bondage to liberty. At first glance, this is

a move from bondage to Pharaoh to liberty, meaning self-rule. And the familiar and hackneyed question is already well known:

why is the exodus from Egypt considered a passage from bondage to liberty, when apparently this is nothing but a move

from bondage to Pharaoh to another bondage, to God. The Sages justify the prohibition imposed on a person against enslaving

himself to another person with the dictum: “For they are My servants” (Leviticus 25:55) — and not servants to servants (Kiddushin 22b). That is, the prohibition on a person

giving himself over to slavery derives from his duty to be a servant of God. The accepted answer to this question

is often given in terms of the Sages’ dictum: ‘There is no free person except one who engages

in Torah’ (Avot 6:2). This is indeed an impressive slogan, yet it is still not clear why the servant of God (the one who engages

in Torah) is precisely the truly free person.

Many explain that a person who feels free to do as he wishes is not truly free. A person who eats

what he wants and does what he wants is seemingly free, but the matter depends on the question who

is the 'he' that wants. Are his cravings, impulses, and natural inclinations his own will? Is a person

who feels free to eat whatever he wants, but in fact cannot control himself, even in cases where he

himself thinks that this is not desirable for him, really free? A person can be a slave to his desires, even

if he feels that it is 'he himself' who wants them. This is an illusion, which we discussed in connection

with the punishment of Adam, and I will not elaborate on it here.

In my remarks here I would like to illuminate this issue from a somewhat different angle. A person without constraints is indeed

a free person, a person without external subjugation, and sometimes perhaps also without internal subjugation. Even a person

such as this, upon whom there truly rests no subjugation at all, neither internal nor external, is still not a free person. A person

who is truly free is one who chooses for himself everything that he does. A person may be devoid of all

constraints, and still not act autonomously. Liberty means action driven on the basis

of the choice of the agent himself, and not of external factors.

Up to this point we have seen that liberty is not freedom. Liberty and freedom are two concepts distinct from one another.

Freedom is a state without external limitations imposed on a person, whereas liberty means a state in which a person

acts autonomously, and is not dragged along by external factors. It is important to emphasize that the freedom of

a person often does not depend on him, but on the external circumstances within which he lives. The liberty of

a person depends solely on himself. A free person is one who acts autonomously within

the external constraints into which he has been cast (sometimes against his will). Therefore it is precisely liberty that expresses

a condition of normative significance, and not freedom. A condition of freedom, that is, the absence of constraints, is a condition

that is more comfortable for a person, but it has no value in itself, since the shaping of freedom is not in his hands.

Action expressive of liberty within circumstances of a lack of freedom is what has human value.

The last sentences lead us to the second stage of the argument. Up to this point we have seen that the existence of

constraints does not contradict a state of liberty, but perhaps only stands in opposition to freedom. In what follows

I wish to argue that the existence of constraints even constitutes a necessary condition for a state of liberty. A person

who acts in the absence of constraints, that is, in a state of complete freedom, cannot be a free person according to

the previous definition. A free person is one who acts autonomously within given constraints,

that is, within a situation that is not entirely free.

By way of analogy for this claim I will mention a subject that I have already referred to in earlier remarks. The freedom of artistic creation cannot

be meaningful unless the creation is made within a system of rules. There are genres

of works of art that constitute a binding system of rules for those who work in the various fields. The artist

who is creative sometimes allows himself to break these rules to a certain extent. In a world in which there are no

rules for creation, there is no possibility of breaking such rules, nor even of understanding and assigning meaning

to the creation at all. The viewer of the work of art will not be able to understand that there is creativity here if he

is not equipped with a system of rules (sometimes informal), through which he interprets the work that

he is viewing, and according to which he can also understand when the creator decided to break the rules, and whether

he did so while preserving some continuity with the meanings of a work of this kind.

One cannot write a comedy according to the rules of tragedy, for in such a situation there is no possibility of understanding

what the creator is trying to convey or say in his work. An original creator may break some of the rules of

comedy and perhaps even use some of the rules of tragedy, thereby drawing the attention of

the viewer, or the reader, to the meaning that he is trying to convey to him. Breaking all the rules uproots the

very possibility of interpretation. If so, the existence of systems of rules constitutes a necessary condition for creative

freedom, and likewise the existence of systems of rules (the absence of a certain freedom) constitutes a necessary condition

for liberty.

Similarly, a 'free' person, one who does not recognize at all his obligation to the yoke of Torah and the commandments, cannot

be a free person. Only a person who recognizes his commitment to Torah, and nevertheless expresses something

original of his own within this framework, is truly free.

‘There is no free person except one who engages in Torah’ (Avot 6:2).

A peaceful Sabbath and a kosher and joyous Passover (only submission to the yoke of the dietary laws can lead to the liberty of

joy)

This may be placed in the repository for sacred writings in any synagogue or academy of Torah study. Comments and responses will be welcome.

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