Letter 89 - Part I - Slavery (part c)
RAV KOOKS LETTERS
By
Rav Tamir Granot
Shiur #15c: Letter 89 Part I Slavery (part c)
3.
From Slavery to Freedom
The
mishna (Pesachim 10:4) states that the narrative of the
Haggada begins with disgrace and concludes with praise. In the
gemara (197a), Shmuel explains that the disgrace referred to here is
the passage, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt
Most of the commentaries
understand the rationale of commencing with this disgrace as aimed at
intensifying the praise at the end; the great change and the miracle that God
wrought is highlighted with great clarity against the backdrop of the original
gloom and degradation. In contrast, Rav Kook, in his wonderful article on the
Haggada (Olat Raaya 2), understands the disgrace i.e., the
slavery not only as a negative background and contrast, but also as positive
in its own right. In order to emerge into freedom, Am Yisrael must
experience slavery and elevate the sparks within it meaning, they must
internalize the positive values that it offers. In this way, even after the
Exodus, the quality of slavery will be able to serve as a sharp spice to
temper the huge power of freedom and the dangers which it entails. This was
Gods wisdom in decreeing for Avrahams children, They shall enslave them and
oppress them (Bereishit 15:13); only through slavery can one achieve
true freedom:
It
must be recognized how the slavery of Egypt and the Exodus from Egypt are the
subjects of two modes of life: life of preparation (i.e., the slavery) and life
of purpose (i.e., the freedom of the Exodus). However, one must recognize that
all the disadvantages of the life of preparation lead us to acquire such assets
as will bring about our perfection when the time comes for the life of purpose.
And were it not for the powers which appear to us to be lowly and disconnected
from a consciousness of goodness and happiness, which we acquired during the
time of preparation, specifically through what we perceived then as small
things, it would not be possible for us to arrive at a truly elevated level when
the time of purpose came. At that point, life should be full of every type of
goodness, every piece of knowledge and every manifestation worthy of filling
life with light as it merges with the great whole, which grows ever more
illuminated and gathers everything into its lofty and elevated
purpose.
It
is for this reason that [the mishna] says we begin with disgrace and
conclude with praise to indicate that the disgrace itself requires praise. We
start with the disgrace of We were slaves
While slavery did certainly cause
some bad, some corrupt qualities, and needless to say trouble and suffering
for those undergoing it at the time, it also engendered the quality of
submission and subservience to He Who is worthy of subservience, to be true
servants of God, to be able to nullify ones own will and ones own inclinations
in order to accept the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, for which Am
Yisrael are noted. Through this, they brought about and are destined to
bring about great goodness for themselves and for the world. This license,
too, was acquired through the experience of slavery and the habit of
subjugation. Once its impurities are purified and the quality of degradation
that lowers mans worth is removed through the spiritual elevation of Gods
great Name and the glorious majesty of life full of all types of goodness with
which God will bless His people at the end of days, how fitting and
complementary to the general quality of the nation will be that impression of
slavery, the purified essence which will remain after the refinement. Only this
can then perfect the absolute freedom, such that a person will be so free that
he may, in his absolute freedom, also subjugate himself at the proper place, and
to be a slave in a place where slavery is true freedom: Do not fear, My
servant, Yaakov.
The
acceptance of the yoke of subservience to another human being is a habit that
instills the spiritual quality that facilitates the acceptance of the yoke of
Heaven. The difference between subservience to God (They are My slaves) and
subservience to another person (to be sold as a slave) lies not only in the
importance or the beneficence of the respective master. True acceptance of the
yoke of heaven even on its lower level, as the acceptance of a yoke is a
spiritual act that releases a person from materialism, from following the
dictates of his whims, and from dependence on social or psychological
laws.
However,
there is more to this. In order to achieve the sort of freedom that reveals our
essence, we need the negation of aspects of the ego and our lower, individual
wants. Revealing essence is connected to humility, openness, and listening. A
persons essence is also illuminated and nourished by its connection to and
drawing on the society, the nation, and reality in its wholeness. This point of
nullification also often runs through a movement of self-nullification whether
vis-א-vis the nation, by accepting its yoke, or in relation to individual
authorities a rav or tzaddik. This is not slavery in the lowly
sense degradation of the self. Here we are speaking of a spiritual movement
that has its source in a great personality, a broad and open spirit seeking to
emerge from its self-centered limitations. For this reason, we need the quality
of subservience, acceptance of a yoke, readiness to listen with humility rather
than argumentativeness and highlighting of the I, and devotion to the general
cause, even against the private wishes of the I.
It
is undeniably true that all of these spiritual movements are meant to facilitate
the development and full revelation of essence, but they pass through the
corridor of subservience, which we encountered already long ago in Egypt. The
main principle that runs through Rav Kooks entire teaching - that there is no
quality or trait that does not have its time and place applies here too. Of
course, slavery is not an end in itself. Taken alone, it is a negative quality,
representing a lowly state of the soul. However, it is an essential stage; the
emergence from slavery to freedom requires that there first be a state of
slavery.
To
return to our discussion from the previous lecture concerning children:
Education may be compared to the descent to Egypt, with parents playing the role
of Divine Providence for their children. The subjugation dare not be too long.
It must be directed towards its aim freedom! However, the positive quality
the positive spark of acceptance of authority, submission is an important
spice mediating the freedom of the adolescent, lest it become a nihilistic or
egoistic journey.
Slavery
and Freedom in History
We
can now return to the letter, which in my opinion should be understood
within the same categories. Slavery as an ideal is certainly negative, but it
does have a function in the social and historical sense, in the moral, cultural
and psychological molding of those who have not yet achieved cultural
maturity.
In
this respect, there is a great difference between Israel and the other nations,
and also among the other nations themselves. The transition through the corridor
of slavery was decreed not only upon the Canaanites; Bnei Yisrael passed
through it as well. However, the proper time for its end was set down according
to Gods perfect wisdom. We emerged from Egypt at the time when we were ready
at least somewhat ready to accept our liberty. And thus there appeared in the
world the idea of true freedom freedom that facilitates the revelation of
essence.
However,
for a lowly and materialistic culture with a deficient morality, full of vulgar
lust, freedom would simply nurture rotten fruit and, paradoxically, would
prevent any progress. Such was the culture of the Canaanites, which the Torah
describes with unparalleled disgust. Precisely in the middle of the Torah
(Vayikra 18), the upholding of Gods covenant with us and our inheritance
of the land is made conditional upon distancing ourselves from Canaanite
culture, to which the Torah attributes the worst abominations. Avraham made the
potential match for his son conditioned upon the prospective bride being from
his own (Semite) family, and not from Canaan (the cursed Hamite nation). Esav
seems to have been rejected mainly because he married unworthy Canaanite wives,
thereby connecting himself to a culture that the Torah specifically and
vigorously commands that we distance ourselves from completely. This matter can
be verified on the basis of historical information, but this is of little
importance: the license in the Torah to implement slavery in relation to the
Canaanites unquestionably arises from their spiritual and moral baseness. For
them, as Chazal explain (One who is cursed does not join with one who is
blessed) and Rav Kook expounds, slavery is a blessing, because it prepares them
for their freedom. This is not a racist statement, which would be absolute and
unchanging; rather, it is an anthropological and historical
statement.
The
encounter between Avraham and his servant and between Am Yisrael in
general and their servants is an encounter between the first culture to burst
forth into the world of freedom and one which is immersed in the depths of the
degradation of slavery. (Here, slavery is meant in the sense of subjugation to
human nature and lusts and the inability to rise to moral and religious
freedom.)
The
Existential Significance of Redemption from Slavery
The
most basic meaning of the Exodus from Egypt is the acquisition of freedom in
both the political sense and in the spiritual, cultural sense. As many of the
Chassidic masters taught, the Exodus from Egypt (Mitzrayim) is the exodus
from a strait (metzar) that is, emergence from limitation. As the
paired form of the word metzar, a literal understanding of the name
Mitzrayim would be, Place of limitation.
In
his article entitled Redemption, Prayer and Torah Study (at the end of his
book Divrei Hagut ve-Haarakha), R. Soloveitchik teaches that slavery
pushes a person to such depths of existential descent that he does not even
recognize the perversion of his situation; he feels that his life is the way it
should be. In this situation, R. Soloveitchik teaches, he does not even suffer
the slavery; suffering is an existential state in which a person is aware of the
absurdity of his situation. The Hebrew slave, setting off to gather straw with
which to fashion bricks and unaware that this situation is not normal, does not
suffer. He is simply in pain a state that animals can also experience. For
this reason, nothing is said of Bnei Yisraels outcry in chapter 1 of
Sefer Shemot, in which we find the extensive and painful description of
the slavery in Egypt. It is only with the appearance of Moshe Rabbeinu, suddenly
illuminating the absurdity and distortion of the Israelite situation, that we
read, Their cry rose up to God from the labor (Shemot 2:23). It is only
the consciousness of Moshe (who is termed Voice in the Zohar) which turns the
scream of pain into a cry of suffering that rises
heavenward.
The
repeated complaint of Bnei Yisrael in the wilderness that they prefer
the luxury of slavery in Egypt to the hardships of freedom in the desert is an
expression of how deep the depression of their consciousness was during their
slavery in Egypt.
It
is also for this reason that the redemption from Egypt is an act of God, who is
the source of their freedom indeed, the source of all freedom and the only
reality which is truly free. Every other mode of existence is dependent on its
source, its circumstances, natural factors, culture, etc. Only God is above all
conditions and all limitations; He is complete freedom, and hence achieving true
closeness to Him means acquiring free, non-dependent existence. This is the
secret of the profound connection between the Festival of Freedom (Pesach) and
the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot). Freedom is a pre-condition for the accepting
Torah and the Kingdom of Heaven, on one hand; on the other hand, acknowledging
Gods Kingship and cleaving to Him complement and promote freedom
itself.
It
is true that Bnei Yisrael were not always able to live as a free people.
The Torah warns repeatedly that preservation of our freedom is dependent on
remaining separate from the other nations a condition which, in historical
terms, was not always maintained. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the
secret of our survival through history lies in our ability to live our unique,
essential national life without disappearing into the other nations either
politically or, more importantly, spiritually and morally.
Rav
Kook expresses the development of this idea as follows:
Choice
and Freedom in Israel: The power of free-will in its fullest sense is given to
Israel. From the beginning of creation, from the lowest rungs of existence to
the highest, each creation is increasingly distinguished by its essential
freedom, its freedom of will. It is one of the wonders of the One of Perfect
Thought that every creation is redeemed from the bounds of slavery that is,
from the chains of force and lack of free will. Among humans, this quality of
freedom expands in accordance with the value of the inner balance. There is as
yet no true freedom in the world; the world is not yet redeemed from the chains
of its slavery. But there are stages upon stages through which individuals may
acquire freedom through their inclination towards good, their deeds and
aspiration, and their divine choice and freedom
The
nations in the general sense are bound more by the binds of force than
individuals; the combination of the element of slavery within each individual
when taken as a whole becomes like an iron yoke.
Israel
was raised to freedom through the Exodus. This was divine freedom, liberation of
the will, freedom of the personality. This is precisely the divine element that
should enlighten the entire world with the light of divine freedom. That light
must be acquired step by step, until the divine element derives from every
aspiration to freedom, which is expressed in the divine service of Hashem, the
God of Israel. They are my slaves, whom I took out of Egypt. They shall not be
sold the sale of a slave
(Orot Ha-kodesh 3, p. 35) [1]
The
purpose of culture is to free oneself completely from the state of enslavement.
However, culture must travel a long road before it achieves this end. As in
other areas, trying to force the attainment of the ultimate aim before it is
actually reached can cause great harm to culture and to the aspiration for
freedom itself.
4.
The Ideal of Freedom at the End of Days
The
previous paragraph leads us to the last of the questions which we posed at the
outset: How are we to know the proper measure? How can we know how to
calibrate our attitude towards historical and normative reality (or natural
slavery and legal slavery), which we view as a means, as an educational process,
rather than as a moral ideal? And how can we know when the proper time has come?
Owing to the length of the discussion on this question, which pertains to
slavery but also to our attitude towards other issues raised in this letter, we
shall devote another lecture to it after we study the second part of the
letter.
In
conclusion I wish to quote Rav Kooks beautiful commentary in his siddur,
Olat Raaya, on the blessings Who has not made me a gentile and Who
has not made me a servant, providing further illumination of our theoretical
discussion and a summary of it:
Blessed
are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who did not make me a servant.
Just as there is great praise for Your not having placed me outside of the holy
circle of the light of Israel and the glory of the splendor of its sanctity
within the depths of my soul,[2]
so there is great praise for Your having granted me a soul of essence, a soul of
purpose, with its own free will, with its own aim in life and in reality the
soul of freedom and liberty which moves within me in its holiness. And that I
was not lowered to be a creation with the quality of slavery, lacking
independent life and an original will, having been created only to serve as a
vessel, through which the holy, elevated, essential will within the soul that is
free and pure can be achieved. Therefore, I offer great praise to God for this
kindness to me: for not having made me a slave![3]
Translated
by Kaeren Fish
[1] This is similarly articulated in
the following passage: We follow this inner light of freedom: Engraved
(charut) upon the tablets do not read engraved (charut), but
rather freedom (cherut). We continue to travel and emphasize more and
more our freedom and inner peace that we acquired through the revelation of the
divine presence, that same freedom that we acquired through the great and unique
wonder at which we became a nation when Hashem redeemed us and redeemed our
forefathers from Egypt to eternal freedom (Olot Raaya 2, p.
245).
[2] The reference here is to the previous
blessing Who did not make me a gentile.
[3] A similar explanation is offered by Rav
Kook in Olat Raaya, commenting on the significance of mentioning the
Exodus as a basis for the yoke of the
commandments.
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