As some of you know, I completed the greatest physical challenge of my life during the summer of 1988, when I walked the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail over the course of six months. I vividly remember starting out at the Mexican border; the 2600 miles to Canada seemed like an incomprehensible distance. But I soon forgot about that. Instead, I would open my tent fly each morning, and say to myself, “OK. How many miles can I make today? Where am I going to replenish my water? What’s a good place to make camp this evening?” Some days were exhilarating, but most days were grueling. Through it all, I put one foot in front of the other, but never counted upon completing the trek, until one crystal clear afternoon in early autumn, I stood on a mountaintop peering into a valley thousands of feet below me. The valley was in British Columbia. I had arrived.
Now I have retold the story a number of times over the years just this way, always leaving a piece out. But today I’m going to let you in on the sequel. The day after the momentous day that I crossed into Canada, I took a bus back to San Francisco, and sank into a deep depression. I didn’t know what to do next. I wandered aimlessly from one job to another. It took me many years to be that happy again, to be as happy as I was trudging northward on the trail, day in day out. I can’t say I completely emerged from my listlessness until I entered Rabbinical school.
We think we will be satisfied once we have reached our goal. Once we get that pay raise, once we get recognition for our work, once we marry, once we move, once we have children, once the children are out of the house… then we’ll be content. My experience from the Pacific Crest Trail taught me a different lesson. The satisfaction of achievement is short-lived at best. True satisfaction comes from working toward a goal, not from reaching it.
What’s true in our personal lives is all the more true when it comes to societal change. Even the most dramatic revolutions are not ultimate victories, but merely milestones along the way on the long march toward freedom. The United States abolished slavery in 1865, but it took a century and a half to elect the first African American president. South Africa dismantled apartheid twenty years ago, but on my recent trip to Cape Town, I noticed its legacy alive and well in the squalor of the surrounding townships and the opulence of some exclusive suburban enclaves. Even today, we are witnessing the waves of social upheaval washing over the Arab world, but it remains unclear whether they will leave in their wake enduring advances toward the cause of liberty.
The Passover Seder characterizes the precariousness of freedom. Passover is supposed to be zman ge’ulateinu, the time of our redemption; but are we truly redeemed? The Seder liturgy itself is ambiguous. At one point, we sing: avadim hayinu, atah bnei chorin, “once we were slaves, now we are free;” elsewhere, we pray: “this year we are slaves, next year may we be free.” Even the meaning of Passover’s most important symbol, matzah, is unclear. Is it lechem oni, “the bread of affliction,” a sign of oppression, or is it zecher le-g’ulah, “in commemoration of redemption?” (Rashi on bPesachim 108a)
The other day I came across a Talmudic ruling that made me reassess what it means to celebrate freedom, which, after all, is the fundamental purpose of Passover. I always figured that the point was to celebrate how far the world has progressed in the eradication of oppression, starting with the Exodus from Egypt, even as we acknowledge that it still has a long way to go. Then I read Rabbi Nachman’s opinion concerning the obligation to recline at the Seder table, as a symbolic act of liberty (since only free men and women are at leisure to recline). Rabbi Nachman says that one should recline at the beginning of the telling of the Passover story, when the Exodus is taking place, but not recline at the end of the story, when the Exodus has already happened. (bPesachim 108a) Mai de-havah havah! “What’s done is done,” he says. Accordingly, we should celebrate the blossoming of liberation as it unfolds in the present, not commemorate the historical retelling of liberation once it is over and done with in the past. True celebration, therefore, is in the act of participating in the never-ending process of tikkun olam, not so much in the vaunting of past victories.
God seems to have hard-wired the human being for taking on new challenges. No sooner do we achieve one goal than we are on to the next. To be alive means to be grow; to grow means to strive. When offering encouragement to those facing enormous challenges—anyone from the newly diagnosed patient coming to terms with life-threatening illness to the social worker dealing with crushing poverty and homelessness among her clientele—Rabbis often cite the saying from Pirkei Avot, lo aleicha ha-mamlachah ligmor v’ein atah bein chorin libateil mimenah, “it is not upon you to complete the work, but neither are you free to be idle from it.” (Pirkei Avot 2:21) What jumps out at me is the same term for indicating freedom that is so prominent on Passover: bein chorin. In light of Rabbi Nachman’s lesson, I want to read Pirkei Avot’s famous adage in a new way: “you are not free, so long as you are idle from the work; you are really only free when you are engaged in it (even if you never complete it).”
Honestly, I would have been very disappointed if the early September snows of central Washington state had forced me off the trail so near to the Canadian border, as nearly happened. But Canada wasn’t really the point. The point was the constant march, day in and day out. That is the point of all our life journeys. So I leave you with the blessing of the Irish: “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back.” May you experience the true freedom, satisfaction and joy that come not by reaching the end of the road, but only by traveling along it.
“May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”
-- Irish blessing
Note: This week’s column is the text of my sermon, delivered Friday, April 15. Happy Pesach!
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