By ANNIE ROIPHEFreedom and social conscience(photo credit: AVI KATZ)
It is July 4th season in America as I write this and the word Freedom is raining down upon us from every quarter.I like a parade as much as anyone else, but I am suddenly confused about this word. We speak as if it were sacred, as if we understood its meaning, as if we were all agreed on exactly what we mean when we say it, when we fight for it, when we link it to “our way of life” or “the wars we fought to preserve it,” or “our God-given right to own assault rifles to protect our families from the tyranny of government.”All American politicians use the word to stir their followers and win the independents to their side. They speak of this “great free country.” They speak of “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as if all of us had infinite choices and none of us were cowards.Yes, I know it’s rhetoric. Words shouted out to throngs intended to rouse emotion and keep reason in the back of the bus. However, I think it’s time for Jews to make sure that this vaunted “freedom” is a real and actual political condition, not a banner, not a blindfold on reality, not a slogan, not a song, even a lovely song, but something we have and can extend to others and that comes from the core of who we are, not cant or cover for unkind acts or the little tyrannies.For example, if you had an illness like multiple sclerosis and you had lost your insurance, until the new health care plan you were perfectly free to do without aid or to pay more than most citizens could manage. But your freedom not to buy health insurance clashes with your neighbor’s need for a more encompassing health system.Freedom to choose whether or not to buy into a plan comes at the expense of someone else’s freedom to choose to go to the doctor.That is just one example of the many ways in which freedom is a double-edged sword. Your freedom to keep your money from our government’s taxing intrusions may make my freedom to attend school impossible.Jews tend to look at words carefully. We study them endlessly.We know that they can be stood on their heads and their meanings turned inside out. We know that public screeds, even when they sound very lofty, may hide ugly thoughts against minorities, against us.In America these days, every demagogue and every public official uses the word freedom as a curtain over reality, a magician’s cape to hide the mechanism of the trick, which might be to deprive the poor of food stamps, or the teacher of her union, or the public of its right to know, or the immigrant of hope. In freedom’s name we have an appalling gap between the top 1 percent of the society and the 99 percent below.I don’t want America to lose its way and become something other than the land of opportunity and liberty. But I do want us to be very careful about empty words, words that are used to rally crowds but become dust in the mouth of those whose environment will be polluted and whose children will be unable to afford education or the luxury of expectations.It is a Jewish thing to watch words as they spin through the air.If my freedom is purchased at the expense of yours, then it isn’t freedom at all. Words, like freedom, if abused, can, like a child’s balloon, float off into the sky, leaving our language and our lives impoverished.
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