To be a Jew is to be free, but truly so

W

ith the approach of Pesach, when questions and answers take center stage, here are four queries about the Yom Tov and an approach to resolving them.

The issur of chometz applies to even a mashehu, the most minute amount of leaven, and the severity of the issur (in the amount of a k’zayis) is such that its violation incurs kareis; as a result, the idea of prohibition and restriction looms larger in our lives on Pesach than at any other time. That the concept of chumra d’Pesach — the stringency of Pesach — is a recurrent theme in the halachos of this particular period is surely not happenstance. But why is it so?

The idea of shiurim, or halachically mandated measurements, also assumes a more prominent role on Leil HaSeder than at any other time. We devote much effort to ensuring that we consume the proper amounts of matzah, maror, and wine during the prescribed time period in order to fulfill the mitzvos of the night. Again, what is the deeper connection of this exactitude to Pesach?

On Pesach night, we express the concept of liberation in word and deed, discussing it in the greatest detail and depth. But even more, we bring it alive, not merely acting it out but living it. We strive to fill our entire selves with a genuine feeling of having been freed, and the vehicle for all of this is the Seder — which means order. Yet that’s not a word most of us would naturally associate with freedom; we’d sooner connect becoming free with breaking loose from a stifling, imposed order, not submitting to it. Yet, here we are, employing a Seder as the prime expression of cheirus. What gives?

Finally, an interesting aspect of the mitzvah of matzah is that it can fulfilled only with that which is capable of becoming chometz. This means that every matzah represents a choice on the part of its baker to reject the use of its raw ingredients to produce leavened bread and, instead, bring forth a matzah. But why does that need to be the case?

The fact that Pesach, the festival of liberation, is intertwined with restrictions that subjugate our will to that of Hashem can be understood to express the reality that He took us out from the slavery of Mitzrayim to enable us to serve Him, not to become the independent masters of our own destiny. “Avodai heim, v’lo avadim l’avadim” is how Chazal expressed it.

But there’s more to it than that. In an essay in the latest issue of Commentary, musician Peter Himmelman addresses the commonalities between the art form he practices and the Jewish way of life he came to embrace as an adult. He writes that music is among the most transcendent of all art forms, both for the performer and listener. Since it has no form or substance, it can easily serve as a model for the boundlessness of spirituality. But as anyone who has mastered a musical instrument knows, musical ideas are expressed almost exclusively by means of structure and restriction, words very few of us would correlate with freedom. At first glance, this seems like a paradox. How could something as liberating and intangible as music be based on restriction?

If we translate “structure” as “seder” and “restriction” as “issur,” Himmelman has posed some of the same questions presented above, albeit in a musical context. And he has answered them, too, with his observation that, paradox notwithstanding, the nature of freedom is that in order to exist, it requires structure and restriction.

Freedom can mean different things, and perhaps in the sense of liberation from an external oppressor, it can occur even amid disorder. The previously enslaved person has, after all, gained his personal freedom of action and expression, even if his life then descends into chaos.

But the freedom Himmelman speaks of is of a different sort. It is what people mean when they say a particular experience or realization was “liberating” or “freeing” for them. It is the kind of freedom that liberates a person’s latent but stifled potential and unleashes internal capabilities that have yet to be actualized. To free yourself from your self-imposed limitations and free up what’s been pent-up within requires defined parameters.

Structure frees one from being immobilized by the indecision and aimlessness of having an endless number of possible life paths to pursue and choices to make. Restriction is what tells a person his choices matter.

A hobo is the most unrestricted person there is (although he is, of course, limited by his poverty) but he’s also the most irrelevant one, because nothing he does matters anyway. A corporate CEO is just the opposite. The more responsible a position one holds and the wider his web of societal connections becomes, the tighter the social, moral, and legal restrictions become on what he can say and do, because his words and actions carry great implications for him and the many others affected by him.

Rather than cheirus being contradictory to the notion of seder, it cannot exist without the organizing framework the Seder represents. The chag hageulah is in fact the ideal time for a regime of restriction.

Instead of Pesach being a time when anything goes, we measure and weigh every morsel we ingest. And as the Vilna Gaon writes, we observe dozens of mitzvos on Leil HaSeder, more than at any other time. On this night of ultimate freedom, our every action is a fulfillment of a Divine directive.

Himmelman argues that not only is restriction essential for making music, but that aside from the existence of raw sound — elemental white noise, if you will — the only other thing that allows music to take place, the only thing that differentiates it from this pure noise, is what sounds the musician chooses to leave behind. In this sense, music comes about not by choosing notes but by the elimination of notes. Take a look at the idea in this somewhat inverse manner: Only by rejecting all other sonic choices are we left with the ones we truly desire. To make music, we don’t add, we subtract….

The time signatures of compositions, along with their tempos, which require that a particular note last only so long and that it be played at a particular speed, also function with this same principle — creation by negation. Avoiding the time signature, or playing at any speed without regard for the overall tempo, is another good way to produce only noise. It is only through adherence to the limiting factors of time and tempo that music can take shape.

Matzah is only worthy of the name to the extent that its ingredients could just as well have been put toward baking a leavened bread, because only then does matzah embody a rejection of chometz. It is as if the baker had set out his ingredients on the counter before him: water, flour, yeast, flavorings, and then removed the latter two elements, choosing only the flour and water. As with music, to make matzah, “we don’t add, we subtract.”

Mr. Himmelman writes that as he became “more and more immersed in the wisdom of Jewish thought and practice, the idea of freedom-in-structure became clearer and ever more personally relevant. If it was true for music, I wondered, how much more true must it be for all of life itself? …I knew I had to place a set of restrictions on myself in order to make music out of my life, as opposed to just raw sound.”

Succos is when we become joyous Jews, because as we sit with Hashem in the succah, what could we possibly lack? Shavuos is when we become sensitive, thinking Jews, because we have a Torah that understands us far better than we understand ourselves. But Pesach is when we first became a nation and when each spring we again become Jews, period.

Many people refer to nonreligious Jews as “frei,” but I never do. What exactly is free about being slavishly in thrall to every passing fad and fleeting philosophy, perpetually seized by fear and embarrassment from non-Jewish society, forever quaking from fears large and small instead of resting securely in the arms of the Almighty?

To be a Jew is to be free, but truly so. Free to be all he can be, all he is meant to be, liberated from mental servitude to others and his own self-imposed constraints.

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 704. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com