Freedom : from slavery to divine service

Freedom :
from slavery to divine service

Étienne Kerber

The book of Exodus can be seen as a battle worthy of a superhero film. On the one side we have the one God, the ineffable liberator, and on the other Pharaoh, the human representative of a deceitful polytheism that guarantees him full powers… including that of making slaves of the children of Israel. However, the two share something in common in their relationship with these last.

In Hebrew, if the root of the word for slavery is Avad: Ayin-Vet-Daleth, it is also the root that describes divine service. The root of the word to describe serving Pharaoh and serving the Lord is therefore the same.

Strange though it may be, there is an intrinsic tension between slavery and divine service. But what can we learn from this?

If we accept a tilt towards the metaphorical interpretation of the Torah, the Hasidic tradition sees Pharaoh as a symbol of our destructive tendency within our own inner lives.

What’s more, the book of Bereshit teaches us that the primary meaning of the root A-V-D is to plough, in other words to work the land. This takes us back to the creation of the first human being, Adam, who, as his name suggests, is made of earth. So when Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden, and the Lord condemns them to work the earth, that is to say, the material from which they are made, the text seems to suggest that whatever we are led to do during our stay on earth, it is all work of the soul.

But are we working for our inner Pharaoh? Or are we performing divine service?

While it’s up to each of us to find our own answer, it would seem that the more we are aware that everything we do resonates in heaven as it does in our own skies, the more likely we are to dedicate our existence to getting out of Egypt and, step by step, into God’s service.

As Aretha Franklin sang… Oh freedom!

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