{"id":67075,"date":"2022-04-15T15:03:51","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T20:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=67075"},"modified":"2022-04-15T15:03:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T20:03:51","slug":"off-the-pulpit-passover-and-real-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/off-the-pulpit-passover-and-real-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Pulpit: Passover and Real Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

By RABBI DAVID WOLPE<\/p>\n

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The famous Passover phrase, \u201clet my people go,\u201d is abbreviated. The full sentence is, \u201cLet my people go that they may serve me.\u201d The historian of Ideas, Isaiah Berlin, made a famous distinction between being \u201cliberated from\u201d and being \u201cliberated to.\u201d To be liberated from oppression is the beginning of freedom, not its end or aim. True freedom is abundance of opportunity, not absence of obligation. A man in a desert alone is not free. Standing in a developed society with a thousand obligations but also a million possibilities, that is freedom. In other words, freedom is about the ability to fulfill one\u2019s potential, just about the absence of coercion. I am not free to play the saxophone, because I don\u2019t know how. I am however, free to learn how to play it.<\/p>\n

Passover encourages us to understand that our lives are not about evading responsibilities. Service to God, to one another and to what is best in ourselves \u2014 that is the freedom taught by this beautiful, lasting festival.<\/p>\n

Rabbi David Wolpe is the senior rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.<\/em><\/p>\n

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