Rabbi Josh Zweiback

April 6, 2007

Free to be Jewish

          Shabbat Shalom and Mo’adim L’simcha! I hope you are all having a wonderful Pesach.

          Jacqueline and the girls and I just returned from Colorado where we gathered with almost twenty members of our family for a Seder in the mountains. I was born in Colorado Springs when my dad was in the Air Force and even though we moved away when I was still a baby, I still think of Colorado as home. I spent some of the best summers of my life at Shwayder Camp, high in the Rockies . The smell of the mountains always brings me back to those summers. To the feeling of community. To the sense of belonging that I felt there in ways I didn’t feel almost anywhere else.

          Camp was a place where I was free to express my Judaism fully--without inhibition or fear.

          Back home in Omaha , in grade school and Jr. High especially, I didn’t feel this same sense of freedom. I was much more inhibited.

          It’s not that I tried to hide my Jewish identity. But I certainly didn’t try to accentuate the differences either. On Passover I brought matzah for lunch but I didn’t wear a yarmulke or stand up and sing my own private Hatikvah each morning after the rest of the class did the Pledge of Allegiance.

          Obviously I’ve overcome my Jewish inhibitions. I’m outwardly Jewish and feel free expressing my Jewish identity publicly.

          Riding up a chairlift at Vail Mountain this week, I had a moment with my kids that reminded me of how different things are for them.

          At the top of their lungs, with joy and pride in their hearts, they sang “Mah Nishtanah” and their other favorite Passover songs for the whole mountain to hear. They broke out their matzah and their macaroons in public and ate them only after singing Hamotzi with gusto.

          Now, they are little kids still and maybe someday they won’t feel so free. God forbid it will be because of a surge in antisemitism in America . Or maybe it will be because of adolescent insecurities or as a rebellion against being daughters of a rabbi.

          But this “Mah Nishtanah” moment on the chairlift made me think about another Pesach song in a new way.

          Every year at the seder we sing: “Avadim Hayinu, hayinu. Ata b’nei chorin, b’nei chorin.” We were avadim—we were slaves. Now, now we are b’nei chorin--free people.

          We sing this every year and as we do with other parts of the Haggadah, we imagine that we in fact were slaves even though I suspect and hope that none of us here were actually enslaved.

          It’s part of the mitzvah of: b’chol dor vador chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatzah m’Mitzrayim: “In every generation a person must see himself or herself as if he or she personally went forth out of Egypt.”

          Tonight I want to suggest another way of thinking about what it is to be an eved, a slave, and what it is to be a ben or bat chorin—a free person. Another way to sing that song.

          Understood more expansively, an eved is simply someone who is not yet, ben chorin, not yet fully free.

          And in that sense, I bet that all of us can think back to times in our childhoods or even more recently—or even right now—when, in terms of our own Jewish identities, we have been avadim, not fully free.

          Maybe it’s a reluctance to talk about being Jewish with non-Jewish coworkers or friends. Maybe it’s even a feeling of embarrassment about being different. Maybe it’s avoiding certain topics like Israel that we feel uncomfortable discussing with non-Jews. Or maybe it’s an inhibition about trying on certain Jewish customs and practices because we think they are “too Jewish.”

          Feelings of being constrained or constricted Jewishly can come from both sides. We might feel uncomfortable about how different and how “Jewish” we are vis-à-vis non-Jewish America and at the same time, we might feel uncomfortable about how unobservant we are vis-à-vis the “real” Jews who are so publicly Jewish.

          Kashrut, we might tell ourselves, is for the frummy Jews, the Jewy Jews, not for me. Going to the mikveh, the ritual bath, is only for the Orthodox. Building a sukkah. Laying t’fillin. A daily minyan. Reform Jews don’t do these things.

          Now I’m not suggesting that those Jews who choose not to keep kosher are slaves while those who do are free. What I am suggesting however, is that a mindset that prevents a Jew from freely choosing to identify as a Jew and live as full a Jewish life as he or she wants is a kind of slavery.

          What would it mean to embrace our Jewish identity as b’nei chorin? What would it mean to be completely uninhibited as Jews? To free ourselves to try on different Jewish practices, to “own” every part of our tradition.

          To walk down the streets of Los Altos or Palo Alto singing “Mah Nishtanah” at the top of our lungs.

          It’s a free country you know. You can be as Jewish as you want here. Just this past week the Attorney General of the state of Florida did his part to protect our freedom to be ourselves.

          You might have heard about this. A few months ago, Laurie Richter moved into a rental unit in a condominium complex in South Florida . Soon thereafter she put up a mezuzah on her front doorpost. She was ordered by the condo association to take it down because of an association rule prohibiting owners from attaching, hanging, affixing or displaying anything on the exterior walls, doors, balconies and windows, which are considered common property controlled by the association. Richter didn’t think the rule applied to religious symbols because she had noticed Christmas wreaths on some of the doors of her neighbors.

          The good news is that Florida Attorney General, Bill McCollum, agreed with Richter and this week ordered the condo association to change its rules so all Jewish residents can hang mezuzot on their doorposts if they so wish.

          It’s a blessing to live in a country that protects the religious freedom of its minorities. It’s a blessing we shouldn’t take for granted. It’s a freedom for which we should give thanks.

          And it’s a freedom of which we should take advantage.

          May this Passover season give us the opportunity to reflect upon what it means to be b’nei chorin—free people. Free to live full Jewish lives. Free to embrace our tradition with pride and with joy. Free to live uninhibited Jewish lives.