Emancipation, Multiculturalism and the Perpetual Passover

In the opening chapter of his classic work, the Kuzari,1 Rabbi Judah Halevi (1075–1141) presents the fundamentals of Judaism as follows: “We believe in the G‑d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who took the Jewish people out of Egypt with signs, wonders and journeys, who sustained them in the desert… and sent Moses with his Torah…” He proceeds to argue that it is specifically this narrative – the particular experience of the Jewish people – rather than a more a priori and universalistic argument for a divine creator and designer of the world, that most compellingly demonstrates the authenticity of Jewish faith.

According to Rabbi Judah, a priori rational inquiry provides insufficient ground for surety on matters of religion, for “if you will ask the philosophers about this, you will not find them agreeing on one [course of] action or opinion…” Indeed, in the nearly one thousand years since these words were written much ink has been spilled on the validity of the various arguments for and against the manifold aspects of religious belief. As if unaware of these fiery debates, Jews of all persuasions have nevertheless continued to celebrate the Passover seder, eating matza, drinking wine and retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt. For thirty three centuries, and across the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, Jews observed rituals and a code of daily living whose core elements remained unchanged.

In a gradual process spanning the last two centuries, the emancipatory principles of western society began to emerge. Together with civil liberties and economic prosperity, these changes also introduced a subversive element, harboring the threat of political and religious anarchy and insubordination. While society has developed systems of government that successfully balance governmental authority with civil liberty, it is far more difficult to strike a balance between freedom of religion and freedom from the moral authority that religion provides. In the last few decades particularly, a post-modernist trend of multicultural universalism has crept up: The current spirit of contemporary enlightenment dictates that subjective particularisms are to be embraced by one and all as meaningful experiences, but are never to be mistaken for objective truths. In the present context, many Jews run the risk of sacrificing their unique identity and role in society on an altar of sameness – mistaken for equality and masquerading as morality. It has almost become a tacit assumption that the particular experience of the Jewish people can no longer serve as the “great foundation of our Torah and our faith.”2

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In prewar Europe, America was seen simultaneously as the goldene medine (golden country) of material comfort and security, and the treifene medine (unkosher country) of secularism and assimilation. The sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, visited North America in the early 1930’s and later found refuge in the United States when forced to flee Nazi occupied Poland. Although he had many complimentary things to say about the country and its Jews,3 he often lamented the spiritual shortcomings fostered by the ideals of the American dream.4 Indeed, he campaigned vigorously to counter those inadequacies and inspire religious activity, education and continuity. His declaration that “America is no different,” was a response to a challenge, and contains an implicit acknowledgment that the new climate was indeed different.5

Chabad historiographical tradition espouses a similar attitude towards libertarian France. Accordingly, autocratic oppression under the Russian Tsars was deemed preferable to the comforts to be gained under the government of a more liberal regime. This sentiment is succinctly expressed in a statement attributed to Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Chabad school: “If Bonaparte will be victorious, Jewish wealth will increase, and the prestige of the Jewish people will be raised; but their hearts will become separated and distanced from their Father in Heaven. But if Alexander will be victorious, although Israel’s poverty will increase and their prestige will be lowered, their hearts will be joined, bound and unified with their Father in Heaven.”6

The seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, made it clear that the attitude displayed towards Bonaparte reflected a far broader issue: “The French Revolution of 1789 (as a result of which, several years later, Napoleon became ruler of France) was also an ideological revolution… which brought about fundamental change in the entire world. This revolution was one of the main events upon which the foundations of “the modern world” and “society” were founded… The revolution was founded on the principle that human beings are free to act as they wish… Although the advantage in this is that greater physical freedom, rectitude and justice etc. are achieved… this brought with it (and especially through Napoleon) an opening for spiritual freedom, [i.e.] freedom from matters of religion, unaccountability and anarchy etc.”7

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In a talk delivered in the summer of 1989 the Rebbe reframed the issue in more mystical terms. Axiomatic to the Rebbe’s weltanschauung is the understanding that the purpose of existence is for essential divinity be made manifest “in the lower realms” specifically, and that this purpose is best achieved via the dissemination of Chasidic teachings – the “wellsprings” – to the “outside.” Drawing on these themes, the Rebbe explained that “it is clearly apparent that throughout all the generations… the revelation and dissemination of [Chabad] Chasidic teachings was in Russia specifically... The refinement of France had not yet been achieved, it was and remained in the category of lower in regard to conduct in accord with fear of heaven and the ways of chasidism etc.”8

In an explicit departure from the traditional stance the Rebbe proceeded to turn this negative image of emancipation in general, and France in particular, on its head. Proclaiming that with the passing of time “an innovation has been achieved,” the Rebbe highlighted the revitalization of Jewish life in the very country whose conditions had been deemed most unfavorable for religious continuity: “In recent years we clearly see the great activity in disseminating the wellsprings to the outside in France. Many Jews [there] have become close to Torah and Judaism… to the degree that they have [themselves] become “candles to give forth light” via their involvement in the dissemination of Torah and Judaism, and the dissemination of the wellsprings…” The Rebbe went so far as to endow this revival with messianic portent, explaining that “through this the preparation for the true and complete redemption is fulfilled, for then there will be an actual and manifest dwelling for divinity in the lower realms.”

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In a chasidic discourse originally delivered in 1981, but edited, published and distributed by the Rebbe himself in 1992, the Rebbe described two situations under which the essence of the Jewish soul might be expressed.9 The first is one of persecution, in which the hostile environment (an external factor) forces the individual to make a resolution of absolute potency; drawing on the suprarational faith rooted in the essential transcendence of the divine soul, the Jew may risk life and limb to resist any negative forces and thereby perpetuate the study of Torah and the performance of mitzvot. However, precisely because of the difficulty of the situation, such self-sacrifice cannot be seen as illustrative of the degree to which the individuals themselves have assimilated the suprarational perspective of the essentiality of the soul. Here we must differentiate between the natural or “manifest” capacities (kochot ha-galu’im) of the individuals themselves, and the suprarational capacity of the soul that drives their actions, overriding and subduing their natural inclinations.

Implicitly comparing the situation in contemporary America to the situation that had previously existed in communist Russia, the Rebbe provided an illustration: “As we see in actuality in [the case of] many individuals, that when they were in a place where there were decrees against Torah and mitzvot, they engaged in actual self-sacrifice for many many years, and when they came afterwards to countries where it is possible to involve oneself in Torah and mitzvot in an emancipated environment (mitoch harchavah), the self-sacrifice is not recognizable (to the same degree) as it was before. The fact that they endured self-sacrifice for many many years is because the revelation of the essence of the soul, which is beyond their manifest capacities, shone within them, but no change was achieved thereby in the manifest capacities themselves.”10

The second situation described by the Rebbe is one of “emancipation (harchava), physical emancipation and also spiritual emancipation.” In such a hospitable environment there is apparently no reason for a Jew not to feel satisfied with the ability to live as a Jew without the fear of persecution or serious economic impoverishment. However, “The true will of each individual Jew is that divinity should be manifest, and to the degree that this [need] touches the essence of his being. Therefore, the fact that in the period of exile revealed divinity is not manifest… from this alone he is completely shaken, crushed.”11 The fact that the Jewish people continue to yearn for the advent of the messiah and the ultimate manifestation of essential divinity; the fact that they feel “shattered and suppressed from the fact that they are in exile, is [evidence] that also their manifest capacities are as one with the essence... This is a revelation of the essence of the soul as it is rooted in the essence of divinity.”12

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In the Rebbe’s eyes, the political, civil and religious liberties of the modern age create an unprecedented opportunity for the individual to more fully actualize his or her most essential spiritual capacities. Previously, the path of life was not one’s own for the choosing, but was in many ways either determined by, or a reaction to, the rigidities of existing religious, social, and political customs. The present subversion of those hierarchal norms has provided the individual with an unprecedented opportunity to make a truly objective choice.13 The present climate of multicultural universalism does not threaten to extinguish the unique flame of the Jewish soul. On the contrary, the ultimate emancipation of the essential soul is realized specifically via the annihilation of particularist prejudice. Today, when a Jew chooses to live as a Jew, serving G‑d through the study of Torah and the performance of Mitzvot, it is for no other reason than that he or she is indeed a Jew.

In the two decades that have passed since this discourse was published, the extraordinary advancement of technology and the internet in particular has done even more to break down boundaries. In today’s global village, space and time themselves have been emancipated from their elemental limitations, and all the knowledge of the world is instantly available to anyone who can spell google. Today, as never before, the honestly inquisitive mind can break through the bonds of subjectivity, and objectively inquire into the truth of reality. Some might argue that the flood of knowledge has created an intellectual vacuum; today the individual need not make a serious intellectual commitment. After all, if you can google it, why bother thinking? However, it is this vacuum that creates such potent opportunity: The path is there for the choosing, and there is no one to choose it for you other than you yourself.

Paradoxically, it is specifically the climate of emancipated universalism that creates the optimum conditions for the ultimate expression of particularist self-expression. True choices are at once the easiest and the most difficult to make; the individual is required to step beyond any prejudice into a vacuum of complete objectivity, into a space where there is no one and nothing to lean on. In that vacuum the individual is forced to confront their most essential self, it is there that the individual can discover the path that is essentially their own. To take that step is to take a leap into the void of faith, to reach beyond the hierarchal progression of rational thought into the suprarational instinct of the subconscious, to acknowledge what one knows, not rationally, but with the very essence of one’s own being. According to the Rebbe, the present climate both requires and facilitates the ultimate perpetuation of Jewish identity as embodied in the ineffable essence of the Jewish soul, which – as “a literal part of God above” – carries all the infinite potency of ineffable divinity.14

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In the Rebbe’s view Jewish identity entails a coincidence of opposites, described in mystic terms as the manifestation of the infinite divinity of the Jewish soul within the finite frame of the terrestrial realm.15 In the present age, this coincidence of opposites is sharpened within a conceptual space where ultimate objectivity and ultimate subjectivity meet.

In Chabad thought every coincidence of opposites is considered the miraculous occurrence of an impossibility; even as it occurs it cannot occur, and the fact that it occurs in one instance does not warrant its occurrence a moment later.16 The maintenance of such an impossibility requires the continued reenactment of a miracle.17 Passover marks the emancipation of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage and the birth of the Jewish people. The Biblical word for Egypt is “Mitzrayim,” meaning constraints, and on Passover we celebrate “Yetziat Mitzrayim,” the perpetual exodus of the Jewish soul from all constraints. It is this eternal exodus that has been the core of Jewish faith throughout the ages. Jewish identity may be thirty three centuries old, but its ineffable potency remains as enigmatic, miraculous and sensational as ever.

Time and time again the Rebbe argued that Passover is a once-a-year highlight that celebrates the perpetual miracle of Jewish identity; the constant emancipation of the Jewish soul from “Mitzrayim” – the ever present “constraints” of nature, which by-right should never have allowed something so supernatural and so suprarational as the Jewish soul to survive.18 In this context he would often cite the Talmudic dictum, “In each generation, and every single day, an individual is obligated to see himself as though he departed from Egypt today.”19 Several passages from the Haggadah liturgy, recited on the eve of Passover, echo a similar sense of immediacy and eternal relevance: “If G‑d had not taken our forefathers out of Egypt, we, our children and our grandchildren would [yet] be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…” “Blessed are you… who redeemed us and redeemed our forefathers from Egypt…”

Ultimately, asserts the Rebbe, the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt – the archetypal emancipation from bondage – remains the bedrock of Jewish identity. Injecting new vibrancy into the age old formulations of the Kuzari and the Sefer Ha-chinuch, he upholds their original arguments: It is indeed the exodus narrative, repeated and reenacted generation after generation, which doubly serves as the “great foundation and strong pillar of our Torah and our faith.” The historical narrative – the empirical experience of the supernatural by our own ancestors – serves as the rational foundation of our belief. It is our own suprarational urge – empirically experienced – to somehow preserve our Jewishness even in this multicultural age, which affirms the eternal exodus of the Jewish soul.

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In a final twist, the Rebbe turns the formula set forth by the Sefer Ha-chinuch on its head: Certainly the exodus narrative serves as the “great foundation and strong pillar of our Torah and our faith.” But the opposite too is true; the Torah and its commandments serve as the foundation and pillar via which the the perpetual emancipation of the Jewish soul is maintained. As with any other miraculous act of G‑d, the eternal preservation of Jewish identity can only be attained in accord with the terms that G‑d prescribed, i.e. the divine mandate embodied in the Torah and its commandments. It is specifically by studying the Torah and fulfilling the mitzvot that we can constantly communicate and perpetually actualize the divine potency that lies at the core of Jewish identity.

With this transformative reversal of the paradigm, Passover – the festival that celebrates emancipation – is itself emancipated. Passover is no longer a single evening of remembrance, nor the week long celebration of a glorious history. Instead, the linear paradigm of the exodus narrative is reversed: A tale from the past becomes an epic journey into the future. Emancipation from Egyptian bondage – “Mitzrayim” – is to be experienced and actualized in the here and now, to be lived every moment afresh. By following the path of Torah and mitzvot, the Jewish people constantly achieve exodus, emancipating infinite divinity and making it manifest within the finite frame of the terrestrial realm. Embodying the ultimate coincidence of opposites and the perpetual maintenance of an impossibility, the festival of Passover is endowed with an eternal potency, which deserves to be celebrated each and every day.