Slavery in Freedom
“Today, while I am still alive, I try mayhap to give my weary eyes a rest from the scene of ignorance, of degradation, of unutterable poverty that confronts me here in Russia, and find comfort by looking yonder across the border, where there are Jewish professors, Jewish members of Academies, Jewish officers in the army, Jewish civil servants; and when I see there, behind the glory and the grandeur of it all, a twofold spiritual slavery, moral slavery and intellectual slavery and ask myself: Do I envy these fellow Jews of mine their emancipation? I answer, in all truth and sincerity: No! a thousand times No! The privileges are not worth the price!”
These words were written by Ahad Ha’am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg 1856-1927) in his essay Slavery in Freedom which was written in 1891.
In this essay Ahad Ha'am, who lived under the Russian Empire, criticized his fellow Jews to his west, specifically here the Jews of France, who as a part of their newly given emancipation chose to shed their Jewish nationality and strip it down to a mere religious belief in order to be able to integrate more fully into French society.
Ahad Ha’am called that decision slavery. Moral, spiritual and intellectual slavery. Slavery in freedom.
Freedom, as many contemporary thinkers point out, always comes with a price. In his attempt to understand the willingness of millions to give up basic freedoms for the sake of the nation under Nazism, Erich Fromm wrote “Escape from Freedom” where he claimed that the newly-found freedom of the modern era caused great anxiety and the need to conform.
In his book “The Open Society and its Enemies” Karl Popper alerted to the fragile state of liberal democracies due to the burden upon the citizen to carry the responsibility for political outcomes, or what he called “The Strain of Civilization.”
The Torah itself tells us time and time again that it was almost impossible for the Israelites to adapt to their new state as free people - a responsibility which they were not ready for.
What Ahad Ha’am tells us is that in some cases freedom should be limited. Not so limited as to cause what Fromm called Negative Freedom or “the freedom from” meaning, not to cause bondage, physical strains or the valuation of human rights, but the limit of freedom in a positive way, or as Fromm called it “freedom to” limit by choice those freedoms which might hurt or strain our identities, our personalities, which might throw us into new “cages.”
In stripping down their Judaism to a religious belief alone, the newly emancipated French Jews wanted to resemble those around them. Their loyalty was first and foremost to France and to the core values of the French Revolution - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
Israeli Shalom Hartman research fellow Regev Ben-David alerts us to the tensions we know to exist between these core values, for example Liberty and Equality. They don’t always go together, as we have seen throughout history; sometimes in order to achieve equality some freedoms have to be willingly given away… there is also a tension between Liberty and Fraternity, Regev suggests that, and that tension is exactly what Ahad Ha’am refers to: the freedoms which one must give away for the frictionless existence among others.
The times in which Ahad Ha’am writes this essay, that of Darwinism, religion is fleeting and is scrutinized. What would those Jews, who chose to keep their Judaism as religion alone do, when that becomes irrelevant? Stop being Jews altogether?
For Ahad Ha’am one’s Judaism cannot be questioned just as much as one’s own parents cannot be questioned whether one likes it or not.
Today when about half of the world’s Jews live in the United States, Ahad Ha’am’s point still resonates. How many of us renounce our “parents” for the sake of Fraternity? How many of us, as Ahad Ha’am put it, succumb to Slavery in Freedom?
Sometime freedom can be found inside a boundary that is put around us by choice. For me, it is the boundary of my Jewish identity, my nationality.
Regev uses a beautiful metaphor to Illustrate it. When we ascend high enough, let's say to the top of a building, a fence must be put around it so that we don’t fall down.
Ahad Ha’am ended his essay with the following words:
“I at least know "why I remain a Jew" or, rather, I can find no meaning in such a question, any more than if I were asked why I remain my father's son. I at least can speak my mind concerning the beliefs and the opinions which I have inherited from my ancestors, without fearing to snap the bond that unites me to my people. I can even adopt that "scientific heresy which bears the name of Darwin," without any danger to my Judaism. In a word, I am my own, and my opinions and feelings are my own. I have no reason for concealing or denying them, for deceiving others or myself. And this spiritual freedom scoff who will! I would not exchange or barter for all the emancipation in the world.”
May we all gather around the Seder table this year open to the idea of liberation through pride in who we are. We will all be reminded that families are usually far from perfect, but they will always be ours.
May we not find slavery in freedom but rather freedom inside the wonderful boundary which is our people.
עַבְדֵי זְמָן / ר' יהודה הלוי
עַבְדֵי זְמָן עַבְדֵי עֲבָדִים הֵם – / עֶבֶד אֲדֹנָי הוּא לְבַד חָפְשִׁי:
עַל כֵּן בְּבַקֵּשׁ כָּל-אֱנוֹשׁ חֶלְקוֹ / "חֶלְקִי אֲדֹנָי!" אָמְרָה נַפְשִׁי.
Servants of Time
By Rabbi Judah Halevi
“Servants of time-bound gods are servants of slaves,
Only God’s servant, alone, is free.
When each human sought their share,
My share is Adonai, my soul said to me.
