Always End With Hope

Opening remarks

Rabbi Sacks: Pleasure and a privilege, to you Dovid and to all at NCSY throughout the country and you know, just thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu for sending us Zoom, Skype, FaceTime and all the rest of it.

Every new technology of communication comes with a little message from HaKadosh Baruch Hu, saying ‘Use me leHagdil Torah ul’ha’adira,’ to spread Torah throughout the world. So even though we are physically isolated, I hope we are spiritually connected by this wonderful technology and by the words of Torah. 

Let me share with you just a couple of thoughts about Pesach this year.

You know, in time of pandemic, in time of the coronavirus that has brought all of humanity to its knees, and is there a Pesach connection? 

Let me begin with what I have been doing these last few weeks. As it happens, I just brought out, just a few days ago, a new book called “Morality,” subtitled “Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.” And the reason I wrote it is because I felt that Britain, America, the liberal democracies of the West, were going wrong somehow. That specifically - oh the book by the way will be out in the States in September, and if travel restrictions have been lifted then, I will be coming out to the States and hopefully meet you in person when the book comes out there in September.

It's one of those books that I write from time to time not for a Jewish audience but for a general one, and the argument of the book is simple. We have had in our societies - in the free societies of the West - in recent years, too much “I,” too little “We.” Too much “Me,” too little “Us.” Too much self-interest, too little common good. 

They're both important. Hillel emphasised both. “Im ein ani li mi li?”If I'm not for myself who will be… that's the “I,” but “kesheAni l’atzmi,” if I'm only for myself, what am I? That's the “We.” And the task is to keep those things in balance and I think the West until now had been losing that balance. And it's been fascinating to see how this message has resonated with everyone feeling themselves a part of this big human “We,” because of the pandemic. 

Now what does this have to do with Pesach? On the face of it, nothing at all, but actually it has something very deep indeed to do with Pesach.

Pesach is the festival of freedom -  so I don't know guys where you all are in NCSY, if you can shout very loudly - but what is the biblical word for freedom? I will tell you what audiences tell me throughout the world: “Cherut.” Zman Cheiruteinu. It's the festival of our freedom. The biblical word for freedom is wrong.

Cherut, charat. That root - chet-reish-tav - appears nowhere in the whole of Tanach, not just the whole of Torah. It appears only once in the whole of Tanach, and when it appears, it does not mean freedom. The only place in the whole of Tanach that word appears is when Moshe Rabbeinu receives the Tablets from God. “Michtav Elokim charut al haLuchot.” Engraved on the Tablets. That's the only time that verb, that root appears in all of Tanach. 

What is the biblical word for freedom? Chofesh. A slave when he goes free, hu “yaitzei l’chofshi chinam.” Now what is the difference between chofesh and cherut? 

The difference is chofesh is individual freedom. It's the freedom of “Me.” Cherut is collective freedom. It's the freedom of “Us.” And there are two very different things.

Quite early on, as the coronavirus spread throughout the world, there was an extraordinary report of a Russian lady called Alla Ilyana who escaped from quarantine. She was infected with coronavirus. She escaped from quarantine and she put her story on Instagram as a kind of heroine, saying, “I am entitled to my freedom.”

But of course that was chofesh. It wasn't cherut. That was her personal freedom, not collective freedom.

And her freedom was opposed to the collective freedom because she was concerned about herself and completely unconcerned about the freedom - indeed the health and the safety - of others. You cannot have a society built on individual freedom. The Tanach tells us about such a society, and this is the last verse in Sefer Shoftim: “BaYamim hahem, ein melech b’Yisrael. Ish hayashar b’eynav ya’aseh.” In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what they thought fit. 

In other words, they were all pursuing their individual freedom and the result is anarchy and chaos.

Pesach, as Zman Cherutenu, is telling us that freedom has to be collective. It has to be about us. It has to be about the common good. Otherwise it isn't freedom at all. 

If all you have is individual freedom then the result is that the rich succeed at the cost of the poor, the powerful at the cost of the powerless. And the end result is a society of iniquity, inequity, injustice, and that is not a free society.

So, to have a free society we need collective freedom - cherut, law-governed liberty and that is what the coronavirus has reminded us of. 

You can't buy your own personal freedom if you are putting other people at risk.

That is the first connection and it’s written into the very name of the festival as Zman Cherutenu. 

I want to say a second thing which is much more important. 

I don't know about you and Teaneck - they are always a bit more cheerful than the rest of the world, have a lot more faith than the rest of the world - but here people are very depressed.

We have a job of work to be done as Jews. And this is the story of how I discovered it. It happened 25 years ago.

In 1995, BBC television asked me to do a television programme from Auschwitz, on the 50th anniversary of its liberation. I will be honest with you, I did not want to go to Auschwitz. I thought that is a black hole in Jewish history. This is before the “March of the Living,” and so on and I just didn't want it. I thought ‘That's the past, I'm going to live for the future,’ but the BBC were very insistent - “You've got to do it. We need to be educated about it.” 

So I said, “Okay, I will do the film if you allow me to tell the story the Jewish way.”

They said to me, “What is the Jewish way of telling a story?”

And I said, “You begin with the bad news, but you end with the good.”

And that is the basic structure of a Jewish story, always a story of hope. Because although you see all the tragedy at the beginning, at the end there's something positive, something really uplifting.

Where do we get this idea from? 

You will know it comes from the last perek of mishnayot Pesachim. And it tells us in four words how we are to tell the story on the Seder night. “Matchil b’gnut, uMesayem b’shevach.” You begin with the bad news, you end with the good news.

That is the definition of what it is to tell a story the Jewish way. There's a difference between Rav and Shmuel… but they agree that a Jewish story has to be a story of hope. 

I think that is quite extraordinary, because not all cultures have held it that way.

I once pointed out that ancient Greece and ancient Israel were extraordinary cultures, literate cultures, that gave the world imperishable masterpieces. Greece gave us Aeschylus and Sophocles. Judaism never had Aeschylus and Sophocles, because they wrote tragedies.

Judaism doesn't even have a word for tragedy, despite the fact that we've suffered so much. When Ivrit was renewed in the 19th century, do you know what word they chose for tragedy? Tragedia. They had to borrow the word, we didn't have one.

Now how come we didn't have a word for tragedy? The answer is that the Greeks believed in what they called Moira or Ananke, blind fate. However good you are, something bad is going to happen at the end. That is the definition of tragedy.

Judaism never believed in blind fate. We always believe that there is Hashem pulling the strings, guiding the paths of history. And therefore we know there's good news at the end. 

After every wilderness, there's a Promised Land.

After every suffering, there is a consolation. 

After every destruction, there's a rebuilding. 

And that is the Jewish way of telling a story. “Mesayem b’shevach.” We always end with good news. 

Now that is what we have to tell people in the midst of one of the most painful episodes, certainly in my lifetime. I think this is, short of war, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the world. It's been devastating. 

And we have to be able to say to people, you know what? We don't deny it at all. We know how devastating it is - “Matchil b’gnut.” We're honest about it. We tell the bad news. But we will get through this. And there will be a Jordan that we will cross. And there will be a Promised Land that we will reach. “Gam ki eilech b’gai tzalmavet lo ira ra ki Ata imadi” - Even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me.

And we then become, in our whole bearing and what we have to say about the current situation, agents of hope to the world. 

And the greatest story of hope there ever was is the story of Pesach itself. Out of the crucible of slavery and suffering came a free people that taught the world the meaning of freedom.

That out of “Ha lach m’anya,” the bread of affliction, and the bitter herbs of slavery and the tears of grief come, in the end, the cups of wine of freedom. And then we even give the most beautiful sentiment of the lot. The last words to a children's song.

“V’Ata HaKadosh Baruch Hu v’shachat l’Malach HaMavet.” 

Despite all the suffering, and today the Malach HaMavet, the Angel of Death is stalking the world. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu will come along and “uBila haMavet laNetzach,” and swallow up death in life eternal. And there will be good news at the end. And we will all say “L’Chaim!” on the fourth - or maybe the fifth - cup of wine.

And we will continue to tell the story of hope, which will light up not only our lives, but the world. 

Closing remarks