Between Obedience and Freedom, Thoughts on Desert Wandering

by Daniel E. Levenson, ALM

April 4, 2011

One of the main themes of Pesach is the tension between freewill/action and obedience – something which is characteristic of the Pesach Haggadah, and becomes even easier to discern in the sections of the Bible following the Israelite Exodus. Indeed, it seems that no sooner has Moses managed to hold off the Amalekites (after also having saved his people from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea) than the Israelites begin to complain quite loudly about the lack of amenities in the desert. On some level, this is understandable -after all, they have just come from a place where food, water and shelter were plentiful and now find themselves wandering in a trackless, seemingly barren wilderness – yet at the same time, the Tanakh portrays life in Egypt as no picnic either.

Something of this tension seems present in Gd’s contradictory desire to warn the people away from idol worship and the creation of elaborate places of worship, while at the same time eventually requiring an complicated and expensively appointed mishkan and temple to be built for him. Chapter 20, Verse 18 is particularly relevant, because it is here that Gd instructs the Israelites (through Moses) that “… an altar of earth (shall) they make for me,” later adding in Verse 20 of the same chapter that if they do construct some kind of ritual structure that “if an altar of stone you make for me, do not build it of cut stone, because if a tool is used on it, it will not be fit.”* This stands in sharp contrast to the actual construction of the Mishkan, which will house the Ten Commandments, which is described as being richly ornamented and elaborately constructed.

On some level, I think this tension within Gd’s own self is reflective of the same uncertainty and lingering ambiguity within the Israelites themselves. The Israelites may have been slaves in Egypt, but they were apparently well-fed slaves with access to pasture land and a regular source of water. On the other hand, their suffering was such that they were apparently willing to follow Moses out of Egypt and into the unknown, so I would suggest that things might not have been as rosy as they seem to recall in hindsight.

As we prepare for Pesach I think we should keep this tension in mind, especially when reading the Haggadah – in some ways we yearn to break free of tradition and add new things to our Seder, while at the same time we continue to base our remembrance of these events on a standard, unchanging text, one which has served for generations to remind us that it was Gd who brought Israel out of Egypt seemingly for some specific (if perhaps unknowable reason) and that our ancestors entered willingly into a covenant which both freed them from slavery, oppression and old ways of thinking, but at the same time bound them to a new way of life, one which we continue to practice, in varied forms, today.

*Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson/The New Vilna Review 2011.