Unconditional Freedom

“Slavery was not immediately abolished; it existed in most parts of the world until the nineteenth century. Even today there are lesser forms of servitude—insecurity, workaholism, the hundred stresses and anxieties of everyday life. And as Marx never tired of telling us, slaves get used to their chains. So, within time itself, everyone had to experience unconditional freedom so as never to lose the love of liberty, even though as yet it lasts only one day in seven. Jews never lost those two memories: the taste of affliction on Pesach, the taste of freedom on Shabbat.”

Radical Then, Radical Now, pp. 131-132