The sanctity of Pesaḥ – the Divine light of freedom – reawakens anew each and every year, and it is this renewal that enables us to become truly free by reconnecting with who we are in our essential selves. Our souls impel us to strive for a higher purpose. Pesaḥ gives us the freedom to respond to that inner demand and become who we truly are.
The Exodus
The Exodus created a new paradigm for nature and for humanity. No longer was the world to be bound by past-based causality and inexorable natural law. On the contrary, as our daily tefillot reiterate: “He renews in His goodness each day continuously the act of creation.”
The Creator of the universe, the Kadosh Barukh Hu, renews His creation – mankind included – at each and every moment.
The reality and possibility of belief in perpetual renewal came into being when Israel left Egypt. Every year on Pesaḥ we celebrate that departure and re-experience its transformative sanctification.
The metaphysical renewal of the world is also the precondition for receiving the Torah. Just as the Kadosh Barukh Hu recreates the world, so too He gives us radically new legislation. Freedom and Torah are mutually dependent. Just as He gave us our souls and infused us with life, so too He gave us the mitzvot as vehicles through which we can express and manifest the sanctity of our innermost selves.
The True Freedom of Pesaḥ
Freedom is the ability to be who we truly are deep down. It means being able to comply with what our essential selves demand of us. The Exodus from Egypt and the lowering of the Torah into our world at Sinai introduced into the world the very possibility of radical, transformative novelty. Without that vision, humanity would have remained shackled by the past, bound by unchanging natural law or crippled by previous transgressions.
This perspective, unique to the Torah, brought about a redemptive breakthrough that will ultimately elevate all of mankind to the presence of the Creator.
