THE NEW AGE--Article--April 1990--artguth.apr

                       Challenge and Promise

       RABBI SIDNEY S. GUTHMAN, D.D., 32, K...C...C...H...
        5036 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California  90815


     Passover is an ancient festival, perhaps 3,500 years old; yet
the passage of millennia has not dimmed its vitality.  Indeed, its
advent brings a timely, imperative and hopeful message to the world
today.  That message is one of freedom, of man's irrepressible
yearning for liberty, of the tyrant's inability to crush that
desire, and of the nature of real freedom.
     Passover's message is timely because the moral sights of
mankind seemingly fastened on principles strongly and beautifully
expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
of the United States of America seem to be challenged in many
countries today and even in parts of our own.  What was so
cherished as the cornerstone of good society--namely, the freedom
of the individual to speak out, to worship, to assemble, to publish
his own views, to be free of censorship, to have dominion over his
own property--all this has been challenged in too many places.
     Against his dismal scene, the summons of Passover comes as a
clarion call.  "Liberty is everything," it proclaims.  "Rather
starve in the desert as free men than cluster about the fleshpots
of Egypt as slaves."  That was the spirit of the Exodus, a
forsaking of security and serfdom for adventure, hardship and
liberty.  The ancient Israelites had no illusion about the
consequences of their choice.  There was no moral weakness in that
epic decision, a decision which changed the course of history.  The
people as a whole had faith in themselves, in their future, in
their divinely inspired leader, Moses--all of which means they had
faith in God.
     Is there any message the world needs more today than this
message of Passover?  Is there any word more timely than this
emphasis on liberty in human life and the dominion of God in the
affairs of men?  
     Passover proclaims also, and this is its message of hope, that
in the long run the tyrant is weaker than his victims.  If history
has any meaning, it is that.  From Pharaoh to Hitler, the despot's
success, brief or extended, has been temporary.  Liberty, like
truth crushed to earth, will rise again, for the simple reason that
liberty and truth are the same.  They are the indispensable climate
for the free soul of man.
     The tragedy of human history is that this truth has had to be
proved on so many occasions, that the warning signs of the despot's
ambitions have been so casually dismissed.  Eternal vigilance is
still the price of liberty, in Europe or Asia or America, abroad
or at home.
     And last, what is the liberty stressed in this message?  It
is not the liberty of license, of free-wheeling through the world
or society without consideration of the rights of others.  It is
the liberty which crowned the miracle of the Exodus, the liberty
which sealed the transformation of Egypt's slaves into a free
people, the liberty which came to full flower at the foot of Mt.
Sinai--the liberty of law.
     Writers are fond of saying that it was ancient Rome which gave
the world law.  Rome did, but long before that so had Israel, in
the basic law of the Ten Commandments, accepted at Sinai and in the
expanded law of the Five Books of Moses.  That law commanded love
for one's neighbor, care for the poor, consideration of one's
employees, discouragement of slavery.  The essence of that law is
that there is no hierarchy of peoples, that all men and women have
the same rights under a universal God.
     This great message cannot be repeated too often or too
strongly.  It goes to the very heart of the world's ills today, to
the future of civilization, of human life itself on this distraught
planet.
     Are the peoples of the world ready to declare that ALL men
shall be free?  Man must destroy war, or war will destroy man. 
Which alternative will men choose?  Will we continue to careen
heedlessly and crazily down the reckless road to global
annihilation, or will we heed that same law, which proclaims in
Deuteronomy:  "I have set before thee life and death, the blessing
and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou
and thy seed"?
     Man's choice will be determined by his reaction to the
challenge and the promise of the Passover message of freedom, for
freedom is life, and enslavement is death--intellectually,
spiritually and physically.  As Americans, our tradition points in
one direction which is inscribed on our Liberty Bell in words again
taken from the law:  "Proclaim liberty throughout the land, unto
all the inhabitants thereof."
     America's first task is to establish liberty completely at
home.  But after that, her task is to persuade the peoples of the
world to establish liberty everywhere else.  That way lies peace
and achievement--the true humanity that approaches divinity.  God
grant that we accept the challenge and fulfill the promise!

____________________________________________________________
Is there any message the world needs more today than this message
of Passover?  Is there any word more timely than this emphasis on
liberty in human life and the dominion of God in the affairs of
men? 

Liberty, like truth crushed to earth, will rise again, for the
simple reason that liberty and truth are the same.

Man must destroy war, or war will destroy man.


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