Learning to understand our Exodus legacy

The Five Towns Jewish community is pleased to welcome Rabbi Jonathan Sacks this coming Shabbat Hachodesh. He will deliver a drasha following the 9 am minyan at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst. At a Melave Malka that evening at 9:15 pm, Rabbi Sacks will be joined by the distinguished community leader, Benjamin Brafman, at Congregation Beth Shalom for a conversation on vital issues of our day. (Admission to the Melave Malka is $54.)

In “Schools of Freedom,” an excellent essay from his anthology and commentary on the Book of Exodus, “Covenant and Conversation” (OU Press/Maggid Books, 2010), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks deals with the role that children play in their own education on the events of the Exodus and the Pesach story. He begins with this signature Biblical quote: “And you shall explain to your child on that day. It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt’.” (Exodus 13:8)

Rabbi Sacks states what for many may not be the obvious:

“About to gain their freedom, the Israelites were told that they had to become a nation of educators. That is what made Moses not just a great leader, but a unique one. What the Torah is teaching is that freedom is won, not on the battlefield, nor in the political arena, nor in the courts, national or international, but in the human imagination and will. To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a free society you need schools. You need families and an educational system in which ideals are passed on from one generation to the next, and never lost, or despaired of, or obscured. 

“Freedom needs three institutions: Parenthood, education, and memory. You must tell your children about slavery and the long journey to liberation.

“They must annually taste the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slave labor. They must know what oppression feels like if they are to fight against it in every age. So Jews became the people whose passion was education, whose citadels were schools and whose heroes were teachers.”