Empowered to See and Seek Freedom (Pesach 5775)

Rev. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Joachim Prinz
(next to each other above)
meeting with President Kennedy

The festival of Pesach annually rehearses an ancient national journey from bondage to freedom. It also inspires us on the personal journey aspects of life that enslave us toward aspects that liberate us.

This came to mind last Shabbat when Rabbi Gershon Albert of Beth Jacob Congregation taught the community about the essential duality of Pesach symbols and rituals. More on that below.

Duality in life is persistent and especially manifest at this season during which we experience both darkness and light, decline and renewal, and suffering and hope.  Ironically, we often need the lack of something to truly appreciate its value. What would light mean to us without the experience of darkness? What would innocence mean to us without the experience of wisdom? What would liberation or freedom mean to us without bondage or slavery?

Which brings us to the dualities of Pesach. Rabbi Albert shared several examples of this duality in Pesach including matza, charoset, and the four cups of wine. For example, matza on one hand is the "poor bread" or the "bread of affliction" because those who are impoverished economically and socially also have hard choices for nutrition. On the other hand, Torah uses matza as a symbol of liberation since brings evidence that we left in haste a people freed from slavery.

Charoset resembles the bricks and mortar building materials that our ancestral fathers were forced to use at labor. But it also is true that charoset is made with apples that symbolize the orchards in which our ancient ancestral mothers gave birth and protected young babies. (Song of Songs 8:5)

Or the four cups, which on one hand symbolize the four promises of divine redemption in Torah and our liberty now to drink freely. On the other hand, these four cups also represent the four times that Torah refers to Pharaoh's cup, it being a symbol of his power and sovereignty. (Yerushalmi Pesachim 10:1, 37b)

These Pesach dualities, it seems to me, teach that when we encounter the inevitable dualities of life, each of us is empowered to choose between seeing light instead of darkness and seeking freedom instead of slavery. In seeing and seeking we make these choices through our attitude and our actions.

This is illustrated powerfully by the life of Rabbi Joachim Prinz who was liberated from Nazi Germany in late 1930s. In his new homeland of the United States he developed a reputation for speaking out and standing up for civil rights. Rabbi Prinz was so involved in the civil rights struggle that in 1963 he was chosen to speak immediately before Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington for economic freedom.

We can all recall hearing or learning parts of King's "I have a dream" speech. Few of us remember Rabbi Prinz. Pesach is a good time to remember how Prinz demonstrated the choice between darkness in response to Jewish suffering on the one hand and seeking liberation for others on the other.

Here is some of what Prinz said in 1963 just before King spoke:

"Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.

"[The Germans, a] great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.

"America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act, from the President down to the humblest of us, and not for the sake of the Negro, not for the sake of the black community but for the sake of the image, the idea and the aspiration of America itself."

May we be strengthened this Pesach, like Rabbi Prinz, to discover a path to personal renewal and hope through the power of choosing to see and seek freedom instead of enslavement, light instead of darkness.