[Mb-civic] Rabbi Michael Lerner: The Universal Message of Passover as Liberation

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

The Universal Message of Passover as 
Liberation Blessings for Building a New World 
April 21, 2005 
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Warm greetings for a world of peace and justice!
Passover (which begins Saturday evening) is a 
celebration of liberation.
It is not only the liberation of the ancient Israelites. 
When people begin to struggle in one dimension of the 
society, and show that the way things are is NOT the 
only way things can be, an explosion of hope circles the 
globe, pushing the psycho-spiritual energy of the world 
toward greater and greater levels of freedom. So, 
according to the Torah, "a mixed multitude" of ethnic 
and religious people left Egypt with the Israelites-it was 
not confined to a particular group. Similarly, if we look 
at the explosion of hope in the 1960s and early 1970s 
we see a similar surge of hopeful energy. It is these 
surges that Passover at once celebrates and 
encourages. 
Passover teaches important and universal lessons: 
1. Liberation is both political and spiritual-the two are 
inseparable. Counter the tendency of some today to 
talk about first developing one's spiritual capacities and 
then later worrying about social change the Torah 
recounts God as telling Moses to tell Pharoah, "Let my 
people go so that they may serve Me." The service of 
God comes after the political liberation. But just as the 
political liberation is about to happen, God asks the 
Israelites to engage in a ritual of liberation, and 
thereafter to once a year celebrate that original 
liberation through a similar ritual (the Passover seder). 
Of course, we are not talking about electoral politics, 
but about liberatory politics. And yet at the same time 
we are told clearly that the point of the liberation is a 
spiritual growth, that it aims to clear the ground for a 
higher evolution in the consciousness of the people. 
That is why Jewish mystics have always insisted on the 
importance of the name of the land of Jewish 
oppression, which was called Mitzrayim, the narrow 
place. The mystics taught that we were being birthed 
from the narrow consciousness to a much broader 
understanding of ourselves in the universe, and that 
new consciousness was the way that we would be 
serving God. 
2. The new consciousness birthed in Egypt was partly 
this: that the world is not fixed, that everything can be 
healed and transformed, that oppression is not 
ontological but historical, and the reason for this is that 
the fundamental reality of the universe, the YHVH (in 
English mistranslated as God but really it means the 
"that which transforms from the present to the future, 
the Force of Healing and Transformation"), is a Force 
that makes transformation possible. 
3. There is another dimension to the liberation: that it is 
intrinsically connected to the physical world. The earth 
cannot survive in a world of oppression. That is what 
the plagues are telling the Egyptians: the natural order 
is also a moral order, and that it cannot survive in the 
midst of huge moral distortion. In our Seder, we focus 
on the blessings of the earth and recommit ourselves to 
the fundamental task for humanity in the 21st century: 
repairing the damage done to our planet by 150 years 
of environmentally irresponsible forms of 
industrialization. 
4. The mystical tradition in Judaism to which I adhere 
teaches that there is another dimension of narrow 
consciousness: dualistic thinking. The task of the next 
stage in human evolution is to recognize the Unity of All 
Being and the interconnectedness of every human 
being. In concrete terms that means recognizing that 
our individual well-being is inseparable from the well-
being of every other human being on the planet. On a 
conceptual level, it also means recognizing that we are 
made of the same psycho-spiritual-material integration 
that has been developing and manifesting in every 
other part of being for the past 13.5 billion years, and 
that we are at once a manifestation of the totality of all 
that was and is, and simultaneously involved in the 
increasingly self-conscious process by which all that is is 
transforming itself to higher levels of freedom and 
consciousness. 
I hope that we can contribute to this growth in 
consciousness and movement toward liberation by 
creating a Network of Progressive Spiritual Activists for 
all people of faith, and for spiritually sensitive secular 
people as well. We desperately need coordination and 
ways to act together, as has become very clear with the 
current assault by the Right on an independent 
judiciary. I strongly urge you to join the Network of 
Progressive Spiritual Activists and by coming to our 
founding conferences (one July 20-23 at the University 
of California, Berkeley, the second Feb 10-13, 2006 at 
American University in DC). More information: 
www.tikkun.org. 



This Passover has a certain sadness for many Jews. For 
many there is a feeling that some of their co-religionists 
are a bit hypocritical to be celebrating Passover while 
simultaneously ruling over another people. Yet this is 
mixed with a sadness, and compassion for those who 
are violating the highest principles of justice and love 
commanded by our Torah,, because we allow ourselves 
to recognize that the distorted policies of the State of 
Israel are themselves the product of the distortions in 
our people generated by centuries of oppression and 
the resulting fears and paranoias that make it difficult 
for many of them to recognize that they are today not 
the oppressed but the oppressors. Still, that history of 
oppression provides only a basis for compassion, not an 
excuse or justification for policies that must be 
changed. And while many of us welcome the moves 
being made for Israel to leave Gaza, we also do not 
believe that they provide much of a foundation for 
hope, because even though they may temporarily 
lessen the daily suffering of some Palestinians (though 
not totally, given that Israel will continue to control the 
borders and enter with force into Gaza whenever Israel 
chooses to see a security threat there), we know from 
the words of Ariel Sharon and his supporters in the 
Likud that the disengagement from Gaza is only to 
strengthen Israel's ability to retain control over the 
West Bank, prevent a contiguous Palestinian state 
(though they may be offered a sham version, with 
Jerusalem's 250,000 Palestinians cut off from the rest 
and told that they are part of Israel), with 300,000 
Israeli settlers in their midst having roads that only 
Jews can ride crisscrossing this land and dividing it into 
powerless cantons. We know all this, and we dip wine 
from our cup of joy in commemoration of the 
oppression of the Palestinian people and in mourning for 
the distortions that are being presented to the world as 
Judaism when in fact what is happening is the exact 
opposite of what the Jewish tradition has to teach. 

Ånd it is with heavy heart that we watch the continued 
genocide in Darfur and the failure of all the 
governments of the world to intervene and stop it. And 
it is with heavy hearts that we watch the growing 
assault on gays and lesbians by the Religious Right, and 
the growing assault on secular people who are now 
being blamed by the Religious Right for the growth of 
moral relativism and a decline in values. While strongly 
committed to my own religious tradition, I want to 
stand in solidarity with secular people, with gays and 
liberations, and anyone else who becomes the target of 
these assaults. But I also want to affirm my love and 
compassion for many people on the Right with whose 
politics I sharply disagree. 

Yet, we've also learned another lesson that has 
universal significance: that even partial victories 
deserve to be celebrated even when so much more 
needs to be done. So for that reason, it's important not 
to demean what has been accomplished in the name of 
bemoaning what has not been yet won. And for that 
reason, I want to wholeheartedly wish those of my 
fellow Jews who are celebrating it a joyous Passover, 
and invite our many non-Jewish friends to take into 
their lives any parts of this message that may seem 
helpful. 

Love and blessings for a universal liberation of all 
peoples. 

Rabbi Michael Lerner 





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