Rabbi's Message

Freedom - It's Ongoing Work

In a couple of weeks, we will be celebrating the Festival of Chanukah. As we gaze at the menorah's candles each night, we will recount the great victory of the badly outnumbered Jewish Maccabees in 165 B.C.E. over the Greek Syrians, who completely had removed Jewish worship from the Temple in Jerusalem. In the words of our prayer recited at this season: "Through the power of your spirit, O God, the weak defeated the strong, the few prevailed over the many, and the righteous were triumphant."

The message of this commemoration is really a universal one. Freedom is not automatic; it is an ongoing struggle; it has to be worked for constantly. In the early years of the Greek Empire, the Jews of Israel found their life relatively tranquil and unencumbered. Perhaps a bit complacent, they did not see their religious freedom slipping away until their lives became a nightmare under the Syrian emperor Antiochus IV. Thankfully, Judah Maccabee roused the Jewish masses out of this slumber.

Unfortunately, this lesson tragically was repeated in the mid-twentieth century. In September 1938, representing the Allies' appeasement policy toward Hitler and ceding the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to him, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held up a scrap of paper and naively proclaimed it was "peace in our time." Freedom was taken for granted; standing up for it was avoided. It took a world war and millions of Allied lives to reverse this grave error.

It is the duty and obligation of every person to do his/her part in the fight for freedom. In this connection, President John F. Kennedy once correctly observed: "In each generation, with toil and tears, we have to earn our heritage again. Freedom does not automatically renew itself. If we fail now, we will have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship ... freedom asks more than it gives; and God requires more of those who are most favored." Let us never take our precious freedom for granted!