Conveying the contemporary relevance of Passover to a western audience, all of whom have grown up in thriving liberal democracies, is fraught with difficulty. Thank G-d, the most severe form of oppression that we who have been raised in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />England and the United States experience is perhaps paying taxes and getting speeding tickets. When Jews speak of incarceration, imprisonment, torture or terror, our minds immediately flash back to our ancestors in the Spanish Inquisition and the Chemielnicki massacres. Similarly, we conjure up images of Maidanek, Grossrosen, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. But we who live in the aftermath of the holocaust, are free. What, message does Passover have for our generation? I remember how when I first arrived in Oxford, the students organised vast Passover meals ? throughout the year ? to support imprisoned refuseniks of the Soviet Union. But now, even with their thankful release, how can Passover be anything but a simple tale of an event that transpired long ago? <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />

To be sure, we can indeed look at Passover as nothing more than the retelling of an ancient saga of bondage and liberation. The Jews were enslaved to their Egyptian taskmasters, and the Almighty, through spectacular acts of intervention ? the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea ? redeemed them from servitude. Yet, the ancient Rabbis stated that ?in every generation, a Jew is obligated to see him or herself as having been personally liberated from Egypt.? Similarly, the Passover Seder night, highlight of the Jewish calendar, is not merely about retelling, but reliving the exodus from Egypt. The Jew is enjoined to taste of saltwater and bitter herbs, and thus to reexperience his forebears tears and suffering in Egypt; to eat matzo, the poor man?s bread, thereby reexperiencing a taste of servitude; and finally to drink four cups of wine, with which to experience the elation of redemption. What possible relevance does this message of bondage and servitude have for this, the freest, most prosperous Jewish generation of all time?

Surely, it is this: while we think we are free, we are still servants. We who grow up in the West amidst phenomenal pressures to conform, to own a bigger house, to work all hours of the day and night so that we have no time for family, community, or religion, are perhaps the most enslaved generation of all. Think of all the millions enslaved to a superficial definition of success, which will laud a man who becomes Chairman of his company, even though he has no reputation for integrity, is on his third marriage, and is estranged from his children. Think of all those are enslaved to the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of obligation and duty. Growing up in Miami Beach, America?s largest retirement city, I watched tens of thousands of elderly people relegated to old-age homes by children who felt that the burden of caring for an elderly parent would interfere with the pleasures which they owed themselves.

Young Jews who feel intimidated and out of place in the overarching Gentile society are imprisoned by its culture and its mores. I have witnessed all too many Jewish students in Oxford whose very first action upon arriving at the University is to remove their kippot so that they may better blend into their new surroundings. Giving rationalisations for their actions, they lack even the courage to admit that they too are bondsman of the prevailing culture into which they are submerged. One orthodox student even told me that he would be far more effective denying his Judaism since he had never been afforded an opportunity to serve G-d amidst temptation. ?Besides, when I wear my kippa, the students in my year think I?m a Mossad agent.?

And what of the many women who diet themselves into oblivion as they receive yet another copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. Are they not slaves to an image of ‘the perfect woman’ which makes them feel inadequate? Young women today are enslaved to a culture which teaches them to experience far greater regret for some extra calories gained rather than close friendships lost. And what of the millions who are enslaved to the shallow images of television, who literally cannot summon the willpower to turn the TV off and pull out a book which will bring them knowledge and enlightenment?

We humans tend to think of imprisonment only in external terms. If an outside party superimposes their will upon us, we then feel restrained and oppressed. If Jews cannot emigrate from an Arab country like Syria, a clarion call goes out through the Jewish world: let my people go. What we forget, however, is that the most ruthless form of duress is the restrictions imposed upon us by our own intrinsic natures. We are all prisoners to human nature. And the central message of Judaism, as embodied in the Passover festival, is that man is not an animal. Man can transcend instinct and impulse to lead a glorious life suffused with altruism and concern for others. Man has an innate yearning to leave Egypt and be free.

There are essentially two forms of slavery which need not coincide. The first is juridical slavery, a political state of enslavement, in which man becomes the prisoner of another man. This state reduces humans to a chattel, an object to be bought and sold, a thing serving as the private property of an owner. The slave?s productivity ? even his very being ? belongs to his master. He is exploited and humiliated by a political system that so degrades his status. But there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. He can still one day be freed and be restored to his full dignity as a free and responsible human being.

But the second type of slavery, while far less overtly discomfiting, is actually far more severe. For this slavery is typological, a mental state of servility rather a physically imposed enslavement. There are people whose will has been broken and whose ego has been effaced, to the extent that they think, feel, and act in a distinctively docile manner which suggests that their initiative has been broken. Their internal freedom ? their ability to think and react as liberated men ? has been constricted and manipulated. Dreams and ambitions which they once cherished have dissipated and their hopes for the future have been crushed. They are disinclined to take responsibility for their actions and they submerge their individuality beneath that of another, be it a person, a company, or the state. This slave mentality can be found even among politically liberated peoples. Witness the fact that after Moses had redeemed the Jewish people from Egypt and sent a group of slaves to spy out the land and determine the most efficient way to conquer it, they returned with a dispiriting report: ?The Land is filled with giants? and we were in their sight as grasshoppers, and so we appeared to ourselves as well.? Such feelings of inferiority would not have allowed for the conquering of the land, and thus the Almighty decided to wait forty more years ? until that entire generation had died out ? before allowing Jews to enter the land and attempt to acquire it. The terrible and unjustified low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence, which so infects modern man, is the ultimate form of enslavement. We are subtly trained to look across at our neighbour and his success ? to constantly compare ourselves and our spouses to others, rather than being satisfied with our lot, which the Talmud teaches is the ultimate form of riches.

Typological slavery is far worse than juridical because it is much easier to take the man out of prison than it is to take the prison out of man. While the former is enslavement of the body, the latter is the enslavement of the mind.

One of the saddest things that can ever happen to a human being is to reach an age ? say forty of fifty ? to look into a mirror, and discover that you have become something you never planned; that your life resembles a thermometer rather than a thermostat. Rather than create and control your environment, you are moulded and shaped by capricious, external events. Being a child of divorce, I remember promising myself on countless occasions that I would not make the same mistakes my parents? made to undermine their marriage. Now, every time I find myself becoming upset over trifles in marriage, and being unable for a short time to overcome it, I acknowledge just how imprisoned I am.

I spoke last week with two brothers who were once inseparable but have since fallen out over a financial dispute. I beseeched the older of the two to apologise to his sibling so as to reawaken their dormant love. ?I simply cannot. He was wrong and he should apologise.? ?But that?s not the point,? I told him. ?What is more important? To be right, or to have a brother? Here you have the opportunity to have your brother back.

All it takes is a phone call. But you seem more interested in justice than you are in basking in the pleasure of sibling love, truly one of life?s richest blessings.? But he just could not bring himself to lift the telephone receiver. He was imprisoned by his own stubbornness. I related to him how Passover will soon be upon us and that his goal this year in celebrating the festival must be to liberate himself of his incarcerating nature and become a better person.

My duties as director of the L?Chaim Society necessitate that I fundraise, and I have seen firsthand how difficult it is for individuals to contribute ten percent of their earnings to charity. One of the most unnatural activities known to man is to simply give away one?s hard-earned remuneration. The message of Passover is that we can be liberated from our nature and lead unique and glorious lives suffused with holiness and compassion for others.

One of the unfortunate by-products of the otherwise constructive nature-wave which swept through the Western world over the past two decades - replete with its lust for exercise and all things healthy and its simultaneous rejection of all things artificial as unhearty and unrobust - was the concomitant belief that it is a sin to do anything which violates nature, both human and otherwise. From this was born the preposterous notion that whenever man attempts to transcend or act in contradiction to his nature, he scars himself internally. Freud was the High Priest of this school of thought, and made us all believe that more than anything else it is the suppression of our intrinsic natures which leads to neurosis and psychosis. So if you’re angry, don?t bottle it in. It?s unhealthy to repress natural emotion. And if you feel stifled in marriage, get out and be liberated. Man must accommodate, or at the very least find an outlet for, his every urge. The festival of Passover, however, demands that we go out of Mitzrayim, which means Egypt, but also translates as natural limitations. Man is not a prisoner to his nature. Rather, far more powerful than human nature is innate human will. Each of us is endowed with the capacity to be and do whatever we wish, modern-day genetic research notwithstanding. Scientists now claim to have identified a promiscuous gene, but Judaism says that amidst this predisposition, the man or woman who is unfaithful in marriage is no more than a weak fool.

Whether man becomes an angel or an animal is completely dependent upon his choice and free will. We are all accountable for our actions. Nobody has the excuse that they cannot overcome their natural inclinations and predispositions. This is why Judaism is most distinguished from other faiths by its doctrine of personal accountability. Man is held responsible for his actions both for exaltation and damnation. Because notwithstanding the power of his passions, they do not ultimately hold sway over him, and every human is the sole arbiter over their own destiny, that is, so long as we are prepared to exit Mitzrayim, our instinctive constraints.

It was Hitler who proclaimed in Mein Kampf that ?Going against nature brings ruin to man… and is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. It is only Jewish impudence which demands that we go against nature.? But Jews, and all others who subscribe to a holy way of life, cannot partake of such an easy escape. The very definition of holiness is something which transcends normative human experience, and man becomes holy when he acts in a fashion that his loftier than where his nature would have led him. This ultimately is the definition of altruism.

With this we might understand the very enigmatic statement of the great Talmudic sage, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, recorded in Avos (Ethics of Our Fathers) 6: ?There is no free man except one who occupies himself with the study of the Torah.? How misguided and inaccurate the statement appears! Judaism is perhaps the most demanding of all religions. It tells us what to do upon awakening, and what our last utterances must be before retiring to bed. It dictates what we may eat and when we may engage in marital relations. It tells us when to be feel elated, and when we must mourn. Is there any greater prison than this? How could a wise Rabbi proclaim that it is specifically a life preoccupied with the study and observance of the Torah which sets man free?

The answer surely is this: possessed within man is an innermost will which above all else desires to be decent and holy. Deep down, every single one of us would like to be a compassionate, kind, and caring human being. We would like to have lofty and spiritual values in place of indulging in materialism and devoting our lives to the pursuit of money, power, and celebrity. We crave to be the kind of individuals who, upon leaving a gathering of friends, can feel confident that our peers have only kind things to speak of us.

What we really want to be is charitable, offering compliments freely and showing appreciation to family, friends, rather than being envious of their success. We wish to be totally devoted to our spouse and the finest parents that the world has ever seen. We seek to be diplomatic and gracious in all social interactions, never losing our temper or offering an unkind word or opinion. Is there anyone reading this essay whose life?s aspirations do not include all the above? One day when you have passed from this earth, do you wish to remembered as successful, or charitable? Does anyone care to be eulogised by a Rabbi as having owned ten apartment blocks, or having had time for everyone in need? And if we want this so badly, why doesn?t it just happen? Because we are slaves to our nature. It is not natural for man to put others before himself. Neither is it natural for someone to hear that a colleague has won the lottery and not experience a burning pang of jealousy. We cannot become what we truly desire because to a great extent we are still fettered by the Pharaoh inside of us which constitutes our very nature and selves.

But when a man or a woman is bound by the tenets of Jewish law which bids them to always show sensitivity and love to the orphan and the poor; when one is forced to give a significant percentage of one?s salary away to the needy; when one is enjoined into observing the Sabbath and thus putting family and friends before going to the cinema, when one is commanded to offer a blessing before and after every meal, thereby teaching them gratitude and appreciation for what they possess ?  then they acclimatise with the desire of their irreducible essence, namely, to be good and holy individuals who enjoy an unblemished relationship with their G-d and fellow man. Thus, Judaism does not imprison us so much as allow us to manifest our most innate yearning and calling: to be angles of mercy on earth and harbingers of redemption to humankind. A life in accordance with G-d’s law as recorded in our Torah is a life which allows us to become a blessing both to ourselves and to others.

May this be the last Passover we spend in bondage to our natures, and the last which the Jewish nation spends in exile.