Freedom

FREEDOM

,םָלוֹעָה ךֶלֶמ וּניֵהֹלֱא הוהי הָתּאַ ךוּרָבּ .דֶבָע יִנֲשָׂע אֹלֶּשׁ Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Majesty of the world, who has not made me a slave.

LEARNING

Israeli singer and songwriter Aharon Razel includes the following line about this prayer in the lyrics to his song “We Make Ourselves”: “I now understand why we say, ‘who has not made me a slave’ and we don’t say, ‘who has made me a free person.’ Because God makes us not be a slave, but it’s Torah (and our inner work) that makes us be a free person!”14

INSPIRATION

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “Nothing is as hard to suppress as the will to be a slave to one’s own pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem– how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.”15

REFLECTION

What petty resentments or mindsets limit your inner liberty, and what is one doable step you can take toward liberty?

PERSONAL PRAYER

God, please grant me the insight to see all that I cannot see inside myself that keeps me enslaved: Enslaved by unhelpful beliefs, thoughts, and feelings; Held captive by emotional wounds and blaming; Yoked to my past, my shame. I pray You give me strength to forgive, to let go, and to take responsibility for all that I can be.

— Belinda Gold,

Sydney, Australia

14 He bases this on a teaching by Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach, which he learned from Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Galinsky. 15 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 89–90.