How is This Night Different?
- Ayala Shalev
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
We ask this question every year at this time, but this year, the answer is that chaos has breached the Order (the Seder). This night is no different from any of the nights of the past month, the past year, or the past two and a half years: we are all frightened, despondent, aching with the memory of those no longer seated at the table, and straining to hear the sirens and the booms that will inevitably rattle the wine glasses we hold.
The holiday is nearly upon us – "the season of our sovereignty" – and this year, those words feel more foreign than ever, almost cruel in their irony. Most of us, one can assume with some certainty, are preoccupied with the rituals of the holiday – from the cleaning and the purging of the leaven (Chametz) to the Seder night itself, the family gatherings, and the togetherness. Meanwhile, outside, the current cycle of violence continues to drag us down into a seemingly bottomless abyss. Simultaneously, the Knesset continues to plunder the public treasury, passing laws that sanctify death, lying to the public constantly, and systematically sowing chaos in all directions.
Why Cherut (Sovereignty) and not Chofesh (Freedom)? I believe it is no coincidence that this holiday is called the "Holiday of Cherut" and not the "Festival of Chofesh." Cherut is not a word we use often; it is more solemn, more elevated. Yet, it is the word we invoke for this holiday. I dwell on this because there is a fundamental distinction between these two concepts, and I believe it is worth pausing to reflect on it.
Freedom (Chofesh) is an external, physical concept – the absence of chains, the ability to move without restriction, framework, or hindrance. Sovereignty (Cherut), conversely, is an internal, moral, and even spiritual concept. It refers to the individual’s autonomy over their own values, the capacity to choose life and morality even in the face of fear or discomfort, and the readiness to recognize the human being in every "other". A person can be devoid of freedom – in prison, for example – and yet maintain their Cherut. When we encounter such figures in history, we tend to revere them as heroes.
Perhaps the fact that this holiday is named the Holiday of Cherut and not the Holiday of Chofesh is meant to teach us that the Exodus from Egypt was not merely an escape from physical bondage (Freedom), but an entry into a realm of destiny and moral responsibility (Cherut), as subsequently depicted in the biblical narrative through the receiving of the Ten Commandments.
The current national leadership, which champions death and war, attempts to sell us a counterfeit "Freedom." The freedom to avenge, the freedom to bomb indiscriminately, the freedom to legislate discriminatory laws that distinguish between blood and blood (such as the new death penalty law, crafted with legal intricacies intended to marginalize based on nationality) – all these and their like are merely the "freedom" we demand for ourselves: the freedom to act as we please without being accountable to any person or deity, and without granting that same "freedom" to those around us. They present this power as the pinnacle of national freedom. In reality, however, when discriminatory laws are enacted and behaviors occur that infringe upon the freedom of one group to empower another, they dismantle our moral Cherut. A society that enslaves its legal system to a cult of death and sends its finest sons and daughters to kill innocents is a society that has lost its internal Sovereignty. It has become enslaved to its darkest impulses – to fear, to hatred, to the worship of raw power – and it acts out of them.
What Binds Us Together?
Imagine for a moment a policeman who arrests a man and handcuffs that man to himself to ensure he does not escape. For a fleeting second, the policeman appears to be the powerful one – after all, he holds the key; he holds the power. But if you focus on their hands, you will see the bitter truth: both are handcuffed. Before your eyes are two human beings who have lost their freedom. The policeman, too, cannot act as he wishes in this state; he cannot relax his vigilant gaze, his apprehension, or his dread. He is no longer master of himself. He is bound and enslaved in every limb to the weight of the other – so that in effect, he is a captive by choice. He loses his freedom of movement and his Cherut of thought, as his entire essence is reduced to that of "The Jailer."
And this is how we appear right now to an impartial outside observer. We are bombing throughout the region, occupying, expelling, and locking gates. We are convinced that our might and our "intensity" will guarantee our security; we are certain that "absolute victory" is the key to our Sovereignty. We act as if the destruction we wreak on the other side exacts no price from us, as if the trauma, the collapse of moral infrastructure, and the physical and psychological loss at home are disconnected from those very handcuffs we have locked upon ourselves.
The truth, however, is that we are handcuffed to the tragedy we create. When we demolish infrastructure on the other side, our moral foundations collapse inward. When we sow trauma, it leaches back into our own children’s bedrooms. We act as though we are the strong ones in this story, when in fact we are a weary, wounded, and sweat-drenched policeman, shackled by steel to his enemy. Both are drowning in the mire of incessant violence, and we refuse to realize that as long as the other is handcuffed to us, we, too, are not free; we possess neither Chofesh nor Cherut.
Order or Chaos?This year, the word "Seder" (Order) takes on an almost cruel significance. We prepare for the "Seder Night" – a ceremony defined by a rigid structure and a pre-ordained text while our lives are in total chaos. Since October 2023, the familiar "order" of our reality has disintegrated, and in the past month, amidst the bombings and the sense that every day brings fresh ruin, this chaos has become the very pulse of life.
Yet we insist on calling it "Seder Night," clinging to an ancient ritual of prescribed steps – Kadesh, Urchatz, Karpas – as if we could engineer solace into the total chaos in which we have been drowning for two and a half years. In this past month, as the skies vibrate with explosions and the earth soaks up more blood and devastation, the attempt to manufacture "Order" feels like a moral arrhythmia, a desperate attempt to maintain a familiar ritual structure while everything around us shatters and the heart skips a beat with every news report. The government promises us security through death laws and military prowess, ignoring – and leading many to ignore – the fact that we are a trauma-stricken policeman shackling himself tighter and tighter to his prisoner, merely to avoid admitting that the keys were lost long ago in the fray. There is no order where death is a work plan, and there is no Sovereignty at a table where the wine is tainted by blood and by the knowledge that every blow we strike abroad crushes something of the home within.
This year, the Exodus from Egypt cannot remain merely a story of the distant past. It must be an acknowledgment of our present-day slavery. We are enslaved to fear, enslaved to a leadership that views war as a destination rather than a failure, and enslaved to the illusion that force can substitute for compassion or the recognition of humanity; that security will be achieved through eternal war rather than through consensus and accords.
Cherut, we must constantly remember, is not something we will attain because we have a strong army. Cherut is something we build when we possess an awake conscience. True Sovereignty will begin only when we realize that these handcuffs do not protect us; they simply prevent us from returning home, to our safe place. Our moral home awaits us – it waits for us to release our grip, to choose life, and to understand that just as the decline of one people is inextricably linked to the decline of another, so too is the Sovereignty of one people bound, inseparably, to the Sovereignty of the other.
Ayala Shalev is the editor of That's About Us.
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