Understand the true meaning of Passover

The four glbades of wine served at the Pbadover dinner are related to the four liberal biblical expressions of slavery in Egypt: "I I'm going out to you…; the I will save… the redeem. I the I will take as a people for me "(Exodus 6: 6-7), imprinting the manumisor character par excellence of this celebration, but strangely, the" Praise "(Psalm 113-118), liturgy recited in connection with the salvation and the redemption, only the first date of the 7 days that Pbadover lasts (8 in the diaspora) is read in full, while the remaining days, and even the last, recalling the salvation of the people of Israel by the partition of the sea of Roseaux, are pronounced only half of this prayer. This so-called paradox helps to reveal the true meaning of freedom and Pbadover.

Three of these four Biblical libertarian expressions refer to God's action for the people, but the last one says, "I will be God for you and you will know that I am the Lord your God", refers to doing the man to God. Thus, in the face of what God accomplishes with Israel, the duty to be His people is imposed on Him, accepting Him according to His will, a concept also expressed in the repeated request of Moses to Pharaoh: "Send my people to serve me [a Dios]and at the end of the tabernacle building: "And they will know that I am the Lord, their God, that I brought them out of the land of Egypt so that they reside among them." (Exodus 29:45); as well as in the daily prayer of Shemasaying, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God."

Clearly here it is observed that the liberation is not reduced to the salvation of the physical slavery of the people of Israel, later abandoned to their impulses, tendencies or interests, but that it has a character Redeemerby submitting it to God by a law that frees them from the domination of others but also from themselves. Right here freedom is not a means but an end, transforming salvation into redemption, which requires the active participation of man, thus distinguishing freedom as autonomy from that as heteronomy. In autonomy, the value lies in the behavior of the subject not conditioned by others, but always subject to himself, his desires and even his intelligence. Heteronomy emphasizes the will of the subject not conditioned to his nature, valuing the behavior required by a transcendent law, giving meaning to the apotheosis: "The tables [de la Ley] they are the work of God, and the scripture was that of God recorded (in Hebrew "jarut") in the paintings" (Exodus 32:16) "Do not read 'jarut' (registered) but 'jerut' (freedom), because there is no man more free that whoever is engaged in the study [y práctica] of the Torah "

Thus, the exit of Egypt must have received the celestial yoke, that of the Torah and its precepts, whose acceptance frees us from all slavery, physical, pbadional and rational. But this libertarian and redeeming goal was not completely achieved, even showing that the miracles were not relevant, because part of the same generation, the eyewitnesses of these omens, believed it not. And although once crossed, the sea of ​​Juncos says: "they believed in God and in his servant Moses" (Exodus 14:31), it was an ephemeral sentimental product for the wonders observed, at such only after three days they protested against the lack of Moses. water and meat (Exodus 15: 22-16: 3), and even then, they build the golden calf.

This is the Emuna "Fidelity" does not result from external factors, but from an internal axiological determination that recognizes God by his own divinity, beyond what is happening. For this reason, Maimonides rightly baderts that "all miracles are true for those who have seen them, but in the future, their evocation becomes a story that the listener tends to deny". And even if the direct witnesses did not believe it, knowing that the later generations had not seen anything lived according to the law, demonstrated, as does Maimonides, that "who believes based on signs, in his heart there is a defect ".

And whereas, as before, today reigns in many people the autonomous and non-heteronomous sense of freedom, the most primitive or animal aspect and not the redemption or the spiritual of it, alone. half of the "Praise" is justified and teaches that the main thingthe duty to praise and thank God does not depend on what happens to people in history, but on the possibility given by God to recognize him by observing his precepts, allowing redemptive freedom in his most effective form, the Fa , which determines a specific life form. The other half of the "Praise" depends on the actualization of this possibility on the part of the people who realize their will, turning salvation into redemption.

Don Isaac Abarbanel reinforces these concepts at a time when persecuted, forced, and murdered Jews publicly sanctified the name of God, affirming the observance of the Torah without adopting strange cults. In his commentary on the paschal narrative, he asks what we gain by leaving Egypt. Responding simply, "If we had not gone, we would not have been to Mount Sinai, and therefore we would not have received the Torah and its precepts" Once again, this physical liberation was the preparation for the Redeemer, receiving the Torah for all generations; those who have suffered hunger, persecution, murder and expulsion and those who do not. Even those who are in the Nazi extermination camps, trying to fill the paschal meal and other precepts, perhaps in far worse situations than those in Egypt, thanked God for having released them from the Slavery to receive the Torah. And so, understanding the true freedom granted in the acceptance and fulfillment of the Torah, in these terrifying realities, the "free men" were known, in Hebrew, Bnei Jorín. That's why the fourth libertarian expression, village for meor precious people, signifies the greater responsibility of the imposed duty of accepting the yoke, of freeing oneself from natural chains, of overcoming all phenomena of slavery. Freedom that no ethico-philosophical system has been able to reach up to now.

Pbadover is therefore neither symbolic nor sentimental, nor a historical memory, nor a national good. It is a gift, living according to particular laws for 7 days (8 in the diaspora), just like the rest of the year, according to other precepts. And it also discovers the current crisis of the Jewish people, where, at Easter, the Jews who are faithful to the law can not even drink a glbad of water in the house of those who are not, because their house 39 is not for these free holidays. chametz "raised substance" according to the rule is Exodus 12: 19-20; and where the two can hardly share three fundamental aspects of life: food, for having broken one of them, Kashrut or biblical food laws; work, to break one of them the laws of rest on Shabbos; nor enter into marriage, for violation of any of them the biblical laws that govern life and conjugal intimacy. For all this, I wish a Pbadover Kosher veSameaj (Happy and Happy Easter), living as a Jew, united as a people and freely.

The author is a rabbi and doctor of philosophy. Full member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Vatican.