As we prepare to celebrate July 4 this week, we will reflect on the themes of liberty and freedom across our tradition.
For a musical theater lover like myself, it would be almost inconceivable to talk about liberty and freedom without referencing my fellow Hunter College Elementary (and HS) alum Lin-Manuel Miranda and his groundbreaking musical Hamilton. So, I’ll get it out of the way early—and begin the week with a quote from the show. During the first Cabinet Battle, where Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton debate over the latter’s economic plan, Hamilton claps back at Jefferson, saying: Thomas, that was a real nice declaration/Welcome to the present, we’re running a real nation. And then, after the battle, President Washington offers similar counsel to Hamilton himself, saying: Ah, winning was easy, young man, governing’s harder.
Now, the commentary on Hamilton is, at this point, rivaling the Talmud itself for its obsession with each and every word, focus on the historical and cultural references, and intertextual connections. One such commentary on the cabinet battle suggests that Hamilton’s response about the “real nation” might be a:
reference to the school of thought around the Declaration of Independence called the “ideal nation”. This is the idea that the Declaration of Independence was created as a description of a future nation, a goal to work towards, not the nation that would be born from the revolution.
This week finds us in between Shelach Lcha—the story of the spies, their reactions, and a subsequent semi-rebellion by the Israelites—and Korach, where we read of an actual rebellion, a threat to leadership. Both also bring into questions of faith, power, and the meaning of freedom. In our wonderful Spirit of Shabbat conversation Saturday, we looked a classical midrash, a rabbinic interpretation of the Korach story that imagines the Israelites as a petulant child:
This is analogous to a king’s son who wronged his father. His dear friend placated him [the king] once, twice, three times. When he committed a fourth wrongdoing, the hands of the king’s dear friend were rendered powerless. He said: ‘How many times can I impose upon the king?’
So it was with Moses. They sinned with the calf – “Moses prayed” (Exodus 32:11). “The people were as complainers” (Numbers 11:1) – “Moses prayed” (Numbers 11:2). Regarding the spies – “Moses said: Egypt will hear…” (Numbers 14:13).
Regarding Koraḥ’s dispute, he said: ‘How much can I impose upon the Omnipresent?’
(Numbers Rabbah, 18:6)
Ah, winning was easy, young man, governing’s harder.
In discussing this midrash, we discussed the need for—and difficulty of—changing one’s mentality, of understanding our role and place in the world as fundamentally different from how it used to be. Time and again, the Torah makes clear that the generation who left Egypt cannot possibly enter the Promised Land—they are not ready for or capable of that sort of freedom; our time in the desert is meant to transform us from an enslaved people to a free people.
Long before the Declaration of Independence or Hamilton: The Musical, our Torah understood the world we are meant to inhabit to be an ideal one; our job, the Torah reminds us again and again, is to live in the present—and work towards the future.
-Rabbi Sari Laufer