What is one of the most powerful tools we have as human beings? "Death and life are in the hands of the tongue."1
One of the best-known elements of that day is the story of the Haggadah. The Haggadah tells the story of slavery in Egypt and the subsequent way out to freedom. And it is curious that this freedom is not only thought, must be related and communicated. It consists in a family exercise where everyone, including boys, girls, and adults, sits around the Pesach table and relate and communicate the values of freedom. Because freedom is not about an isolated and individual reality, but about a collective and social experience.
On the contrary, the symbol of maximum slavery is manifested in the character of the Pharaoh, a cruel and violent figure who promoted slavery. Pharaoh in Hebrew is called "Paroh". If we divide this word into two, we get "Pe-rah", which means "bad mouth."2 On the other hand, if we divide "Pesach" into two, it results in "Pe-sach" –"the mouth that tells." Pharaoh is the mouth of evil which communicates the ideas of slavery and death. Pesach is the mouth that communicates the ideas of freedom and life.
Your personal choice
Everyone can choose on which side he wants to be.
"I set before you, life and death, blessing and curse, and you will choose life."3
This is a tremendous responsibility: deciding between life and death. And no one can escape from this obligation. We were not given the choice whether to be in this battle or not. We were only given the power of choice: on which side do we want to be? It is a personal and very individual decision. And the mandate is decisive and clear: "You will choose life." Big challenge.
We live on a moral battlefield, in the middle of a constant tug-of-war between life and death. And each one must make the choice to improve himself and thus become a vehicle that transmits life, blessing, and freedom, or allows himself to be dragged before the overwhelming slavery and become an agent that promotes evil. That is the battle between Pe-sach and Pa-roh. "The mouth that tells of freedom" versus "the mouth of evil." This is the battle that is fought precisely in the month of the energy of speech.
Greed and power
This battle happens not only on an external and social level but also on an internal and individual level. Two voices fight within ourselves: the voice of ego and envy on the one hand, and the voice of humility and harmony on the other.
"Envy, uncontrolled desires, and the ego take man out of the world."4
These are the negative internal forces that enslave and exile us. That is what this strange and curious expression "they take man out of the world" refers to. It means that these internal forces are so powerful and harmful that they can take man out of reality and make him live in a parallel and fanciful world.
From narrowness to breadth
There is no worse slavery than the lack of knowledge, and there is no greater freedom than having knowledge:
"If you have knowledge, what do you lack? If you lack knowledge, what do you have?".5
In Hebrew, knowledge and wisdom are called chochmah. If we divide it into two words, we get "koach ma", i.e., "force of what?" It is the ability to ask oneself, "What?" So wisdom does not reside in accumulating information but in the ability to question and reflect.
We can conclude that the degree of freedom is proportional to the degree of knowledge, and the degree of knowledge is proportional to the ability to wonder and investigate. So, self-reflection feeds knowledge, knowledge feeds freedom, and freedom in turn feeds back to self-reflection. This is called mental breadth: the ability to expand more and more in a process of constant growth.
What was the first thing that happened when Moses arrived in Egypt to announce and communicate the ideas of freedom? People did not listen to him. They had simply lost that ability to reflect. They were so deep in the mire of slavery that they could not even listen to him.
"And the Jewish People did not listen to Moses, because of their narrowness of spirit."6
Internal slavery is defined by the level of personal narrowness. It is the narrowness imposed by the limits that enclose and imprison us. Egypt in Hebrew is called Mitzraim, which means metzer –narrowness, anguish.
Freedom is being able to leave that narrowness towards a reality of breadth and expansion.
Getting to know the enemy
Pharaoh was an expert slave strategist. He was well-versed in the internal dynamics that lead to freedom. He knew that the moment a human being begins to reflect, he unfailingly reaches his obligatory destination: freedom.
We all have an internal Pharaoh that fills us with inexhaustible and frenetic work. He applies whips to our backs so that we continue running in the daily whirlwind without being able to stop and reflect. And so he keeps us imprisoned and sunk in our internal Egypt, our spiritual narrowness that prevents us from recovering the true values we have lost.
And it is a process of constant internal liberation, where hope in God keeps us free even in difficult times. That is the reason we never stop dreaming and longing for greater freedom each year. So we conclude our story this Passover night with the firm determination that "This year we are slaves, next year we will be free."7
