We Won, but True Freedom Requires More Work
Before the Book of Geneses begins to tell the story of how Joseph’s brothers kidnapped and sold him, it states: “Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan.”
The word I translate here as settled has in Hebrew the double-sense it has in English: (1) he lived in a place; and (2) experienced peacefulness and tranquility — a settled life. An old tradition sees in this word a back story, the picture of an aspiration and a mindset that is only hinted at in the Bible’s sparse way of storytelling:
Jacob wished to live in tranquility but the troubles with Joseph suddenly came upon him. When the righteous wish to live in tranquility, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: “Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them in the World to Come, that they also wish to live in tranquility in this world?!” (Genesis Rabba 84:3)
The aspiration of good people, of whom Jacob is a paradigm, is peace and wholeness. Like Jacob, they wish to avoid the jagged conflicts of the world. Like Jacob, they find that they must confront evil. Like Jacob, they devoutly wish that after they defeat evil in that confrontation, no further confrontation will be needed. And all too often, like Jacob, they find that the next confrontation will be even more trying than what came before.
But God tells us that to be fully free we must not only receive it as a gift, but participate in forging our own freedom.
But like Jacob, in this reading, we can understand that tranquility and peace is assured us in the end, and thus we will have an internal tranquility even as we engage in further difficulties. Like the Zen archer, we can envision the arrow already hitting the bullseye even as we draw the bow.
Jacob was a free man who could stand even before Pharaoh with commanding dignity and purpose. In that way, he is a model for all free people, for all who stand for human dignity and liberty, and refused to be cowed by human tyrants pretending to divinity.
Jacob’s dignity was not gotten on the cheap. His relationship to God grew beyond the childish expectation for all things to be taken care of for him. He discovered that God Himself called on him to be a giver as well, to struggle, to wrestle, even in his spiritual life. Of course, life’s a miracle, a great gift given from Above. But he was being asked by God to rise higher to a gift that could only be his if he joined in its making.
This is our freedom as well. We may properly understand our Constitution and the freedoms it protects as wondrous gifts bequeathed us by those who came before.
But that is not enough for true liberty. We can see by our own experience that liberty must be won again and again, not merely accepted as a gift.
Recent Encroachment on Our Freedom
We have experienced in the last decade things we never thought to experience in our America:
- The FBI and national intelligence used to win presidential elections;
- The free press suppressed by a fascist-like collusion between gigantic corporations and an entrenched governing class that holds itself unaccountable to the people;
- The subversion of citizenship by the illegal opening of the borders to all comers, who are then provided with services and advantages financed by the very citizens whose laws the government deliberately refuses to enforce;
- The transformation of our great institutions of education and of culture into centers of indoctrination intolerant of dissent or debate;
- The use of our laws to make partisan opponents into political prisoners; the toleration of violent and murderous antisemitism on the campuses, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress;
- Moral obfuscation, tolerated and promoted by the government, in which those who aspire to commit genocide are treated as the victims when their intended prey refused to submit to death and expulsion.
In short, all those great ideals and principles for which Americans sacrificed blood and treasure in the fights against Nazism and Communism abroad and for a color-blind system of law here at home — all those ideals which we thought were finally established and set and the victory won — all those ideals had to be fought for once again.
The decisive victory of the last election was a signal victory against the great assaults on constitutional liberty. But, like Jacob, we must not expect an immediate end to our labors. Changing the culture, even when we seek only to return to once-established norms, is a long-term project. Easy gains result in easy losses. Freedom is indeed a gift from God. But God tells us that to be fully free, we must not only receive it as a gift, but participate in forging our own freedom as well.
In the struggle against Nazism, Churchill would always be up front with the public about the sacrifice required. He offered it first of himself, “blood, tears, toil, and sweat,” and so led by example. He suffered for his steadfast opposition to Nazism back when those in power coasted along and peddled the false hope of an easy peace established by betraying others. He toiled unceasingly once given the power and saw the job through.
We might say of this November’s election what Churchill said of the battle of El Alamein that “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
It is a turning point in the fight for constitutional liberty which we ought to celebrate. But long work remains.
And so the message of God to Jacob: Know that for the good there is peace and wholeness in the end. Knowing that enables our every action to be infused with the calm strength and persuasive presence of the goal of peace. Then, in the midst of the ongoing struggle, not only will we be able to act clearly and effectively, but others will feel our resolution and incline towards our cause.
See already the seemingly unlikely group of people drawn together in our cause. Imagine then the vision so clear and strong through our work that it can unify at last our entire country, and so the world. It is our religious vision, not as a heavenly dream alone, but as a vision of the earth as God meant it, in which we are free because we are in the image of our Maker. As He offers a world to us, and fashioning us in His generous image, we become truly free as we choose that image, and so govern ourselves that we may offer freedom to others.
Celebrate this turning point and then see the work through.
READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:
Bonhoeffer Exposes the Left’s Blindness
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