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RISKS to being freed by your ABUSER (עבדים היינו)
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How do you know if your freedom is real?
If it's stable? How do you know it's not
just circumstantial? That it's just
because of uh because of the situation
you happen to be free or feel free in
this moment, but maybe it can leave you
the next moment. Maybe you can become
reabducted the next moment. How do you
know if your freedom is true?
And the answer
is ask yourselves does this freedom have
contingencies or are there no
contingencies? If it's dependent on
someone or something, someone or
something human or man-made, then that
is a contingent
freedom and it might not last. So, if
you're trying to feel free in your
relationship and you're thinking, I'll
just feel a little bit more free if my
partner would do X, Y, and Z, you're
trying to create contingencies on
somebody else instead of taking
initiative, which would be real freedom.
If, god forbid, somebody's being
abused, and their abuser abuses them a
little bit less, you're not more free
because that's contingent. you have to
break
away in on on a more geopolitical level
uh Israel and the hostages. If Hamas
frees them, that's freedom that is
contingent on an abuser, on a
terrorist and that is not total freedom.
You can't trust that freedom. It's not
stable. In order for there to be re real
freedom, you have to go to the source.
So you have to go to the ultimate source
of freedom which is God. Because God is
the epitome of independence. Pretty much
everything that exists is dependent. And
God who is the creator of everything
that exists is the ultimate and epitome
of independence. And if we could connect
to the ultimate epitome of independence,
we can be truly free. And this is why in
the Hagada we say we were slaves to
Egypt. God had freed us with a strong
and mighty outstretched hand. And were
God not to have freed us, we would have
still been slaves to Pharaoh. And
commentaries say, "How could we have
still been slaves to Pharaoh today?"
Pharaoh would have been dead already.
Politics change, things change, the
whole biblical decree that we were
supposed to be slaves in Egypt was only
for a definitive amount of time anyway.
How could we have still been slaves to
to Pharaoh? And the reason is because if
it were Pharaoh who had allow us to go
free but not God who had freed us
himself, we would have attributed our
freedom to Pharaoh. And our freedom
internally would have been contingent.
And if it was contingent, we could have
still been abducted by other people, by
other forces, by other circumstances.
But what God gave us at the Exodus of
Egypt was internal freedom. Like Rabbi
Yseph used to say that only the body of
a Jew can become captive, can become
imprisoned, can become exiled, but the
soul remains free. And when we connect
to true freedom by removing all
contingencies and seeing that the only
thing we really have to rely on is God,
we have true freedom. That's my story
and I'm sticking to it.