by Rabbi Yisroel Rubin
based on the teachings of The Lubavitcher Rebbe, ZT"L

The Jewish nation’s identity resides in its commitment to serve the Divine purpose.

Birth. More than progress, more than transition, the word implies a break from the past. Birth indicates entry into a new world, a radical transformation into something entirely removed from the prenatal state.

All births, whether literal or figurative, involve three phases: self-negation, self-assertion, and self-transcendence. First, there is a complete departure from the prior state. Second, there is an assertion of the newborn’s own faculties and energy. Third, there is an assumption of an entirely new mode of being — the fetus becomes a life; a limb of the mother becomes an individual human being.

To gain a clearer understanding of the three aspects of birth, let us examine a birth of another sort — the birth of an idea in the mind of a student. Not every acquisition of knowledge constitutes a “birth”: often the new idea is but the development or derivative of an old one, or a kindred addition to a family of ideas that form an established philosophy.

But then there are ideas that mark a radical departure from the student’s prior thinking and the onset of a completely new vision and perspective. Such a rebirth of mind requires a virtual self-abnegation on the part of the student. In order to be receptive to an idea of such magnitude, the student must set aside all previous conceptions — obliterating, in effect, his very intellectual identity — so that nothing in his “old” way of thinking should interfere with his assimilation of the new idea. In the words of our Sages, “An empty vessel can receive, a full vessel cannot” (Berachos 40a). Thus, for example, the Talmud relates that the sage Rav Zeira fasted 100 fasts in order to forget all he had learned in the Torah academies of Babylonia, so that he could acquire the methodology of the academies of the Holy Land.

The student must then engage his intellectual faculties to absorb and digest the new idea. Hence his self-abnegation actually leads to an assertion of his intellectual self, as he labors to grasp the potent new thought with his mental prowess. Ultimately the effect of the new idea is to create a new mind. In the process of grasping and internalizing the new idea, the student’s mind is supplanted by an intellect greater than its prior self.

By severing its moorings from the womb of previous thinking and amassing its ability to break out into a new intellectual world, the mind achieves a “birth” — a new identity, as distant from its predecessor as a newborn life that has emerged from the fetal state. And so it is with every birth, be it the birth of a new individual, a new idea, a new era, or a new people. The newborn entity begins by relinquishing all that defined and comprised its former self, a move that, paradoxically, propels it to the zenith of its potential. Out of these contrasting agitations toward naught and being, a new self is born, transcending and supplanting the old.

Freedom

“Has such a great thing ever been, or has the likes of it ever been known? . . . Has G-d ever endeavored to come and take for Himself a nation from the midst of a nation . . . as the L-rd your G-d has done for you in Egypt before your eyes?” (Deuteronomy 4:32-34). In the Exodus we have the birth of the Jewish nation.

On the 15th of Nissan in the year 2448 (1312 B.C.E.), a new entity, the Jew, was born. This event marked more than the development of an enslaved clan into a sovereign people, more than the entry of another member into the family of nations. It marked the creation of a new phenomenon, something that had never before been: a nation consecrated to G-d, a people whose very identity lies in its commitment to serve the Divine purpose in creation. Standing before Pharaoh to deliver G-d’s demand that Egypt free the people of Israel, Moses does not simply say, “Let My people go”; he says, “Let My people go, so that they may serve Me” (Exodus 7:26). For this was the essence of the Exodus. As G-d told Moses at Mount Sinai, where He first appeared to him in the burning bush, “When you take the nation out of Egypt, you will serve G-d on this mountain” (Ibid., 3:12).

Seven weeks after leaving Egypt, the Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah — the charter of their nationhood and their guide to making life’s every endeavor an exercise in the service of G-d. How is this reconciled with our conception of Passover as the festival of freedom? Certainly servitude to G-d is preferable to servitude to Egypt, and every pious man will agree that servitude to G-d is preferable to a hedonistic “freedom” in a lawless world. But servitude and freedom are, by definition, polar opposites. If anything, Passover should be called the “festival of servitude,” not the “festival of freedom.” In truth, however, the journey from Egypt to Sinai was the ultimate march to freedom. Freedom is the liberty to be oneself, to realize the self’s deepest aspirations. At Sinai, the essence of the Jewish soul came to light. It is a soul whose most basic desire is to cleave to G-d, its source.

This is the true self of the Jew. Anything that obscures or hinders its realization — be it a whip-wielding taskmaster or man’s own internal drives — is a chain on his soul. The Torah, illuminating the Jew’s path to G-d and empowering him to overcome all that constrains the exercise of his quintessential will, is the key to his freedom and self-realization. This was the entity born on Passover: a people whose “self” is defined not by society or nature and not by the physical, emotional, or intellectual garments of the soul.

Rather, the self of the Jewish people is defined by the Divine spark that is the essence of man. To the Jewish people, freedom means not the gratification of the body or the satiation of the spirit, but the realization of the soul’s quest to unite with its Creator and source.

Three Names

The Torah calls Pesach the “Festival of Matzot.” When the Members of the Great Assembly later formulated our prayer text, they added the name “Season of Our Freedom.” Ultimately the festival came to be called “Passover.”

The three names of Passover reflect the three aspects of birth described above. Matzoh, unleavened bread, is a symbol of humility and self-abnegation. The first thing that the Jews in Egypt had to do was to abnegate their prior existence and self-definition. They had to commit themselves to first obey and only later comprehend (based on Exodus 24:7), to relinquish their understanding and their will in blind obedience to G-d.

Having done so, they next achieved the “Season of Our Freedom,” the ultimate in self-assertion and freedom. Having cut the cord that bound them to the womb of Egypt, they found that this new status spelled not the annihilation of self, but the realization of the self’s highest potential. They found that a self freed of the dictates of mind and heart is a self enabled to maximize its faculties in its quest toward a higher state of being and self-realization. Finally, the “Festival of Matzot” and the “Season of Our Freedom” yielded “Passover”: a leap beyond the parameters of their former reality, as a nation emerged from the throes of birth into a new world.

Copyright by Rabbi Yisroel Rubin, Director, Chabad Outreach Centers, Albany, NY.