It is going to be a little while until I post again bc of the holidays.

I want to check in and wish everyone here the best.

I also want to briefly talk about the significance of terror attacks on the eve of Pesach. There was, as I am sure everyone here knows, a double suicide bombing in Russia that killed or wounded hundreds of innocent people.
I am sure that everyone is aware of the militia cell in Michigan, who for notions of Christian apocalypse, were planning on murdering police officers and then attacking their funerals - in order to kill more police - and start a war on the US itself.

Pesach is about freedom. It is about freedom in every simple and every deep sense of the word.

Freedom does not mean “do whatever you want.” Freedom is the freedom to choose to do what is right and to know that there does exist a moral compass that we all must obey. Freedom means being able to resist the depredations of those who would lie to you or coerce you away from doing what is right.

The four sons, a parable discussed at seder, are very much a parable for four stages of moral development.

The lowest level of morality is to reject it morality outright and claim that freedom only means to do whatever one wants, with no regard for others.

This is the evil son. He asks, “What does this mean to you?” In other words, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the consequences of one’s actions are denied by him. We tell him what it means to us. We sharply tell him that is evil and would not be worthy of redemption.

This is the level of the terrorist. To completely reject the point of having freedom in the first place. All others are not people at all to be cared for, but objects to be defined as less than human if they do not blindly follow the immorality of the terrorist code. This is not unique to Islamists. Neo-Nazis and Christofascists are the same way.

Part of freedom is knowing that you must always cherish it and fight to preserve it. The struggle to do so is internal as well as external. It is all too easy to get comfortable with giving up a little freedom, with claiming that the way things are is just the way things are, and that one has no responsibility to act. This was the slave mentality of Mitzriam (Egypt). The word Mitzraim needs one more comment. It literally means the narrow place. It is a spiritual, intellectual and moral state of denial and seeking ignorance so as to avoid facing the world and oneself.

The wise son asks that the rules and the meanings of the seder are better explained so that he may better serve, and fulfill his duty. We tell him the rules of dessert. The message is that one must use one’s freedom to make the most of all opportunities to do what is right - right now. The seder, like life, has an end. Your chance to act is in the here and now.

There are thousands of groups out there who would take your freedom. There are millions of people who falsely think that freedom is only something abstracted on the level of the wicked son, that it comes with no price tag and no responsibility. There are millions more, who see the price of freedom and would rather have a little slavery. Then there are the Islamists and the Militias. They remind us what the cost of slavery is.