Who knows one?

Chag Sameach everyone! I hope that the first few days of the best holiday ever were meaningful and tasty for all. Though I missed my family seders dearly and often wondered how they were going (though the time difference made this a little tricky), I definitely would use those two words to describe my Pesach experience thus far. I spent a fantastic Shabbat and first days of yom tov at a friend’s family’s house in the Cape Town suburb of Constantia. The area was much more calming and quiet than most of the places I have seen within the city limits which was very conducive to immersing myself in food, song, great company and conversation, plenty of data to add to my sociological study of the Cape Town Jewish community and an internal struggle with the concept of freedom.

Because the crux of Pesach is the telling and remembering of the story of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, I constantly found myself connecting how this history fits into my individual as well as collective identity as a Jew to the countless layers of oppression, liberation and continued inequality in South Africa (while I know that the two are not quantitatively comparable, I am not trying to equate a Jewish memory with the contemporary suffering that occurred and still remains in South Africa, but I do think that linking these two experiences sheds a great deal of light upon what freedom is and how essential it is to the well being of both the individual and the community). Touching on my last post I believe that the ideals preached in Black Theology are completely relevant in grasping the significance of national liberation and how that contributes to this indescribably important process of value and identity formation. Yetziat Mitzrayim was the starting point of the development of the Jewish nation. It was not until we were freed from the shackles of Egyptian slavery that we were fully able to begin the process of discovering what it meant to be Jewish, to determine our own selves and understand how that connected us to those who classified themselves in the same category. When one is enslaved, they are unable to direct the course of their own life, they are unable to make decisions of what they value and in turn how to transform that value into action, into a positive contribution to the world and people around them. Being slaves in Egypt denied the Jewish people this process, for they were slaves to a system that forced them to remain at the bottom of society and refused them the capacity to rise above their circumstances.

Freedom is often seen as lack of constraints, lack of rules and restrictions – chofesh (reference to last post). But it seems as though, when analyzing systems of oppression, that freedom offers something more than destroying restriction, it offers the opportunity to discover a true self that was suppressed for so long because one’s routine and simple needs were defined by the oppressor. When one is hungry and tired from hours, weeks, years of demanding, manual labor and dehumanization, it is difficult to consider intangible concepts of faith and loyalty; one focuses on what they need to physically get them through the day. This oppression creates a constant tie to the physical and a constant obstruction to the consideration of what exists beyond the physical. Freedom is thus the channel that provides the oppressed with the ability to begin the process of entering that new realm.

The freedom discussed in the story of the exodus from Egypt (referred to in the Hagaddah as cherut) provided the Jewish people with the ability to realize their potential as humans and to start developing a significant, national identity; one of uniqueness, one loyalty to a new leader who actually had the best interests of the Jewish people in mind, one of pride and one of trying to rise above the experienced evils of the world. This was not a freedom from rules, instead it was a commitment to a completely new set of rules, to a new life of uncertainly and instability that did not provide this budding people with an identifiable homeland for four decades. Freedom was not easy, rather it was a trying struggle of pain, of mistakes, of new constraints, but it provided the Jewish people with the circumstances and capacity to develop into a nation expected to be better than others, expected to understand the human plight and the negative ramifications of an oppressive hierarchy.

The conversations and conglomeration of comments made that surrounded this topic confirmed for me the colossal significance of liberation in defining a people as well as the relationship between that people and the god, the force that produced it. I started to think that each facet of my relationship with God was some sort of freedom, a collection of mini-liberations that do not make life easier, but rather push me to reach my potential and be the best version of myself. The Jewish people are the people of God because of this process and that is why Pesach is celebrated and commemorated, that is why this story is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle that makes up the Jewish nation.

Interestingly as I thought about how this liberation impacted my own vicarious liberation experience I started to think about how perhaps, in reality, Black Theology could be used to describe the Pesach story more accurately than it could be in its actual context, the liberation struggle of South Africa. While Black Theology was such an important ideology in empowering members of the Black Consciousness Movement to sincerely take pride in their black identity and in the righteousness of their struggle, I think that liberation was a man-made struggle and success that included a human strength missing from the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt. Apartheid oppression belittled the humanity of those without white skin, yet the presence of this spiritual ideology, along with many other strong positive forces of influence within the liberation movement, provided the oppressed with a sense of hope, a sense of identity and a sense of power, three things that the Nationalist government tried so hard to take away. The oppressed South Africans created their own freedom through developing solidarity and meaning, while the shackles of the Jewish people are said to have been loosened by a distant force separate from them. While one could title Moshe a freedom fighter (again, I am not equating the two stories simply linking their narratives of freedom), it seems as though his status as such was only a product of God pushing him to take on the role.

When learning about the character of Moshe, I have often been told that his humility, his reluctance to accept such a significant leadership role was one of his greatest attributes. After drawing comparisons to the liberation struggle of South Africa, it seems to me that true freedom is very much dependent upon a person’s self confidence in their abilities and their actions that in my opinion does reflect a level of unmatched selflessness and commitment to a community in need. All of the freedom fighters I have learned about exuded this quality and I feel as though it is a necessity lacking from the exodus from Egypt. I suppose God’s role in the latter is much more obvious and active, but it almost makes it seem as though human beings cannot empower themselves to bring about their own freedom.

If freedom, cherut, is being provided with the capacity to realize your potential it would seem conducive to that process if individuals had an active role in their liberation and started to build up that strength, that identity through the process of destroying the oppressor. While I continue to acknowledge the apples-and-oranges character of this comparison, I find myself disappointed in the lack of human action in the story of yetziat mitzrayim. We constantly talk about being the lowest of the low and not understanding our own power in relationship to slavery, but the conditions of Apartheid South Africa seem to provide a very similar reality, yet remarkable leaders emerged to spawn their own liberation.

I still strongly believe in the great significance of liberation and how that process defines who we are as Jews, but I feel as though if there was an emphasis placed on human action that perhaps it could have led to a more stable national existence. Yes, God is the nucleus, and many believe that our success and identity is inherently intertwined with our faith in God, but it seems to me that the power of the individual, of the community is sacrificed in order to glorify all that God has done for us, all without which we would be lost and unidentifiable. But I think that this action and strength of self can also be woven into our relationship with God. Going back to the idea that we are all made in God’s image, it seems to me that we can pinpoint the strength of the South African freedom fighters, and all those who have bravely fought for their own community’s liberation, and link that strength to all of the wonderful characteristics instilled within us to the idea of emulating God.

I have started to see so many different situations within the context of freedom since…umm…yesterday I guess. In all of my classes this morning I kept thinking about how poverty as a simultaneous inherent attribute and byproduct of a capitalistic social structure, the patriarchal belittlement (I did not know this was a word until I just typed it, that’s so exciting!) of women in the varnasramadharma framework of traditional Hinduism, the heated archaeological debates surrounding the development or lack their of of hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert, the amazing stories of freedom fighter resistance on Robben Island all directly relate to freedom and the restrictions placed on one’s identity when they are deprived of it. Freedom and lack of freedom are what define our circumstances. When we are free to determine our own experiences and faiths, when we are free from worrying about providing the bare necessities for our families, we possess the capacity to understand who we are and what we want to be. We even have the capacity to get from the former to the latter. We must be aware of the countless manifestations of freedom and more importantly the circumstances that beg for it. As a Jew, I feel more compelled to make up for the human action lacking in the story we continue to relive for the next few days and take it upon myself to truly understand what it means to treat others well, for we were once “others” in Egypt, for we were once unable to define our freedom and ourselves in general. To me, that idea seems so relevant to so many other aspects of our being. If we translate this history into our situations and relationships we are acknowledging the countless troubles of the world and at the same time continuing to understand our own identities in a way that will allow us to confront them more constructively and sensitively.

Wow that unnecessary pretentious preaching seems to be creeping in again….

South African Ulpan:

Robot – noun – traffic light

When the robot turned red Prunella stopped the car.

Enjoy your wonderful pesadic treats while I eat matza and tuna for the rest of the chag! Cheers!