Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Behar called "Evolution or Revolution?". You can read it in full here: bit.ly/2K1AjxI and download the accompanying Family Edition here: bit.ly/2HyFq6W. #ShabbatShalom

There are profound differences between philosophy and Judaism, and one lies in their respective understandings of time.

For Plato and his heirs, philosophy is about the truth that is timeless. For Hegel and Marx, it is about “historical inevitability,” the change that comes, regardless of the conscious decisions of human beings.

Judaism is about ideals like human freedom that are realised in and through time, by the free decisions of free persons.

That is why we are commanded to hand on the story of the Exodus to our children every Passover, so that they too taste the unleavened bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery.

It is why we are instructed to ensure that every seventh day, all those who work for us are able to rest and breathe the expansive air of freedom. It is why, even when there were Israelite slaves, they had to be released in the seventh year, or failing that, in the Jubilee year.

This is the way of evolution, not revolution, gradually educating every member of Israelite society that it is wrong to enslave others so that eventually the entire institution will be abolished, not by divine fiat but by human consent.

The end result is a freedom that is secure, as opposed to the freedom of the philosophers that is all too often another form of tyranny.