Our sages teach us that centuries before Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, our ancestor Avraham ate matzot on Pesaḥ. But to appreciate the value of eating matza – something ostensibly meant to remind us of the Exodus – before the historic event took place, it’s necessary to appreciate the deeper meaning of the significant dates on our calendar.
Olam – the Hebrew word for “world” – is related to Ha’Elem, which translates into English as “concealment.”
Our world is essentially structured in such a way that conceals the sublime light that imparts life with its true value and meaning. But there are various points on our calendar that draw back this veil and allow unique aspects of this hidden Divine light to shine into our world and enter our lives.
Each appointed date, whether a festival or day of morning, is like a window through which its own special light streams into our world. If we know how to properly access this illumination, through the laws, customs and tefillot associated with any given date, we become empowered and elevated by its spiritual sustenance.
On the 15th of Nisan, the festival of Pesaḥ, the Divine light of freedom shines into our world each year. That’s why it was appropriate for Israel to leave Egypt on that date.
The 15th of Nisan also marks other historic events associated with Israel’s deep internal freedom, including the birth of Yitzḥak, the Sicarii’s final heroic act of defiance at Masada, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and others. All of these events received their spiritual power from the light of freedom – which Avraham was able to access through the eating of matzot.
Avraham engaging in a ritual associated with a unique date on our calendar before the historic event that transforms that date into a revealed festival should actually be familiar to us. We do it each year on Sukkot – when the light of spontaneous joy shines into our world – despite the fact that the historic event associated with the festival (Israel’s victory over Gog) hasn’t yet taken place.
Just as we access the light of joy on Sukkot through living in huts, shaking the four species, etc., Avraham was able to access the light of freedom on Pesaḥ by eating matzot (and likely engaging in other Pesaḥ-related rituals).
The importance of freedom can’t be overstated.
For Israel to fulfill our historic mission, we must be materially and spiritually free. The unique light of Pesaḥ provides us with the freedom to satisfy the inner demands of our collective soul – Knesset Yisrael – to strive for higher purpose and become who we truly are.
One of the reasons presented in the Talmud (Megilla 14a) for not reciting Hallel on Purim is that Hallel begins by calling Israel “servants of HaShem” yet we can’t be servants of HaShem while still being servants to Aḥashverosh.
The fact that Mordekhai allowed Aḥashverosh to remain alive (despite the fact that he had halted construction of the Temple, prevented Jews from returning home and was complicit in Haman’s plotted genocide against Israel) and settled for merely replacing Haman as the emperor’s prime minister expressed a lack of true freedom that obstructed fully serving HaShem.
We do, however, recite Hallel on each day of Rosh Ḥodesh because these days express Israel operating within our own calendar – a deep expression of freedom.
Establishing the Hebrew calendar was the first commandment we received as a nation because it served to establish Israel as an independent identity (rather than as one of many minority groups in Egypt). A national calendar is a crucial feature of any civilization.
We can see this clearly from the fact that when the Seleucid-Greek Emperor Antiochus IV later sought to destroy our identity, one of the features of Judean culture that he outlawed, alongside circumcision, Shabbat and learning Torah, was our calendar. This alone should demonstrate how important a calendar is to a national identity. Its festivals and days of mourning tell a people its own story and reinforce its basic common values and ideological worldview (even before understanding how each significant date shines its own unique light into our world).
Israel received our calendar two weeks before actually leaving Egypt because part of our liberation required us to stop using the Egyptian calendar and to start using a uniquely Hebrew calendar that would become central to our identity. The shift from using the Egyptian calendar to using our own accelerated Israel’s transformation to a free people that saw itself as distinct and independent from Egypt.
The Rambam teaches in Hilkhot Melakhim 12:2 that the only difference between his generation and the Messianic age is that Israel will be free of subjugation to other nations. But this freedom has levels. We attained political independence when the British were driven from our country and David Ben-Gurion declared a state. But one can easily argue that Israel still hasn’t attained psychological freedom.
Much of Israeli society and the Jewish Diaspora still desire for Israel to be part of Western civilization – a civilization our sages identify with Edom, the fourth of the four empires that seek to prevent Israel from fulfilling our mission and to usurp our rightful place on the international stage.
In addition to reinforcing the core anti-Israel accusations of our detractors (that Israel is a foreign colonial entity in West Asia), this desire for Israel to exist as an outpost of the West is in and of itself an expression of psychological subjugation that obstructs Israel’s redemption process from advancing.
The problem is not merely that Jerusalem can’t seem to make any significant geopolitical moves without approval from the United States. It’s also, on a deeper level, that the Jewish people see the Western value system as something we need to measure up to in order to feel worthy. We simply can’t yet envision what a Hebrew civilization independent from the West looks like in the modern age. Or what alternatives it could offer humanity on a host of social and political issues.
The Westcentric attitudes that dominate the public discourse in Israel reveal the extent to which the Jewish people – even the majority of those living as a “free people in our land” – are psychologically trapped within the ideological paradigm of another civilization and have yet to apply our national imagination to how we can develop our own civilization and, through it, offer humanity alternatives to the degenerating West. And this lack of inner freedom transcends and permeates our political spectrum today, both at home and abroad.
50 years ago, it was often argued that liberal Israelis and Diaspora Jews had a dangerous tendency to confuse liberal positions and interests with Jewish positions and interests. Today the same argument could be made against the Jewish right confusing Western conservative positions and interests with those of the people of Israel.
Fighting for Israel’s freedom today requires us to challenge the encroachment of MAGA Republican and ultra-nationalist European values into Israel’s national camp. Even when we recognize overlap (as we can sometimes also recognize with liberal, leftist and Islamic values), we must know that for Israel these values stem from a completely different source and are aimed at a radically different objective – not the preservation or conservation of the American-led West but rather the full revival of Hebrew civilization and the realization of Israel’s ancient universal vision for humanity in place of the models put forward by Edom.
This Pesaḥ, we should merit to fully access the Divine light of freedom – and use it to liberate Israel from psychological subjugation to the civilization obstructing our path to full redemption.
