By the Grace of God
11 Nisan, 5713
Brooklyn, NY.
To my brothers and sisters everywhere
God bless them
Shalom and Brajá:
The days of Our Freedom Festival are approaching, when we must remember once again the great event in the birth of our history, when our people were freed from slavery in Egypt to receive the Torah as free men.
Memory and imagination are abilities that allow us to connect with a past event, and in doing so, relive or experience the feelings and mental states we felt at the time. It is only physically that human beings are bound and chained to time and place; mentally, there are no spatial or temporal barriers, and the greater the supremacy of spiritual force over physical force, the more closely one can connect with a past event and better experience its message and inspiration.
Regarding the efficacy of remembering, our Sages, commenting on the verse "And these days should be remembered and done" (Esther 9:28), said that only after those days are remembered is their cause fulfilled in Heaven. In other words, the same Divine influences and blessings that brought about such miraculous events in ancient times are revived through the process of remembering.
This is one of the reasons we have been commanded to remember the liberation from Egypt in every generation, every day; it is also incumbent upon the Jew to see himself as if he personally had been delivered from Egypt that day, rescued and completely freed. For every day the Jew must practice Yetziat Mitzraim ("Mitzraim" in the sense of "Metzarim" (limits)) by escaping material and physical distractions, obstacles, and limitations imposed on his spirituality by the "physical body and animalistic tendencies.".
The counterpart to the Liberation from Egypt is then the detachment of the Divine Soul from its material confinement, and it has to be experienced every day, constantly, in order to enjoy true freedom - freedom from slavery, freedom from pain - both in a material and spiritual sense.
When a Jew attains such inner freedom—an achievement possible only with the help of God, Who delivered our people from Egypt, and through a life guided by Torah and mitzvot—he is, in this sense, freed from spiritual anguish—the immense inner conflict referred to as bondage and suffering of a material nature. Then, and only then, can he enjoy true freedom, a feeling of complete harmony and peace of mind, which is the prelude to freedom and peace on a broader scale.
With the blessing of a kosher and happy Passover, and may we soon enjoy the true freedom that will come to us with our Complete and True Redemption, through our Righteous Messiah.
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