What is Freedom?

Pesach is the holiday of freedom, and it lasts a whole week. So during this week, my mind has kept returning to this topic. I think now, perhaps, it's time to try to organize some of these thoughts and try to write a coherent essay on the matter.

Let's start by considering the word "freedom"; its Latin-derived synonym, "liberty"; and their related words: "free", "liberate", "liberated", "liberation", "liberal", and "libertarian". Notice the variety of connotations, feelings, and ideologies that these represent. This brings us to the first point that I'd like us to note: "freedom" and "liberty" have many complex layers of meaning and many different contexts of application.

The first, most intimate level of freedom is the personal one. Roughly, this means that an individual person is free to do what he or she likes and is not controlled by anyone or anything else.

If we think for a moment about this and its implications, it immediately bring us to what I believe is the most important thing we must consider. Freedom is NEVER absolute. Even if you were the only person in the universe, you would not be completely free. You can't travel to the moon just because you fancy doing so. If you jump off the cliff, gravity will take its course, and the collision at the bottom is likely to end all of your freedoms forever! Furthermore, you are NOT the only person, and the very existence of others means that your freedom is limited by their presence and by your need and, perhaps, desire to interact with them. Every person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others in the environment.

Now let's start at the other end: slavery. At first thought, we think we know what this means -- one person "owns" another. This kind of slavery is quite easy to define, and it can be outlawed, as it has been essentially throughout the world (of course, outlawed things do not completely disappear just because they are illegal!). But there are other, more subtle kinds of slavery, as well. A desperately poor man may not be owned by his rich neighbor, but he may still have to do many things that he would not choose for himself, just to survive. A woman from a disadvantaged background may spend her whole life serving others in a way that is hard to distinguish from actual slavery.

Economic wealth and other kinds of social and political power certainly bring MUCH more freedom to some people than others have. A rich woman can quit a job she doesn't like a lot more readily than a poorer one. A wealthy man has many more options regarding where he lives, what he does, where and when he travels, and, in general, what his life can be like. The Hebrew word for slavery is עבדות avdut, which comes from the root that means "work". The emphasis, then, was NOT on ownership but on who had to do the work. In this sense, perhaps we could say that MOST of us are slaves in the modern world! Very few of us can actually live without having to work at all. And it's absolutely certain that the world simple could not function if NO ONE had to work!

Let's consider another type of freedom that is very important, especially in the modern Western world: political freedom. For Americans especially this usually means the freedoms and rights that are delineated in the U.S. constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of peaceable assembly, and so on. We tend to think of these as absolutes, but, in reality, NONE of them actually are.

Let's start with freedom of speech and its close relative, freedom of the press. The first limitation here is the proverbial one: you are NOT free to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater! More seriously, though, you are not free to bully and intimidate others, and you are not free to incite others to murderous actions. You are also not free to say or publish deliberate falsehoods for the purpose of ruining others' reputations. If you do, you may be sued for libel, and rightly so.

Freedom of religion can be particularly difficult in actual implementation. Let's start with an extreme example -- you are NOT free to kill your neighbor no matter how much your religion may say that you must! But there are also many more realistic and subtle limits. To what extent are you allowed to proselytize (i.e. to try to convince others to join your religion)? What are the limits on the public practice of your religion? Can you blast calls to prayer out on loudspeakers at whatever hour your religion requires? What about ringing church bells? Most of these questions have been dealt with in different ways by different countries at various times. Almost all of the answers reflect more the political and social situations than any kind of absolute notion of freedom of religion.

Even freedom of assembly can be problematic. If large numbers of people plan to gather in a given area, the issues of crowd control can become a matter of life and death. For this reason, prior coordination with some kind of authority is surely important and, of necessity, puts some limits on this basic freedom.

Finally, I'd like to talk about another kind of freedom, one that's not as familiar to Americans perhaps: group or ethnic or national freedom. The Israeli national anthem, התקווה HaTikvah ("The Hope"), speaks of our desire להיות עם חופשי בארצנו lihyot am khofshi b'artzenu ("to be a free people in our Land"). What does this mean? It's surely about more than individual and political freedoms, things which we can have, at least subject to the general limitations discussed above, in many countries in the modern world. It's something more communal, more cultural. It includes our desire to determine our own collective destiny, to avoid having to depend on others for the continuation, development, and free expression of our national identity.

Of course, this type of freedom also has its limits. Even the United States, certainly the most militarily powerful country in the world today, feels the need to cultivate allies and get some kind of international consensus, however limited, for most of its operations. How much more so is this true of tiny Israel, even though we have of necessity managed to develop a formidable military.

And so my conclusions are that freedom is never absolute but is always a continuum. It has many aspects and operates and many different levels. Perhaps this is why we have a holiday every year that focuses on this topic. May we ALL be freer next year than we are now!