My job as a rabbi is often to explain to people the meaning of various holidays, and why they connect to the great stories and myths of our world.

And so today: Juneteenth.

Today is the holiday of Juneteenth, and like many people, I didn't learn about it in school. It was in college that I first heard about Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the day - June 19, 1865 - that the black enslaved community of Texas received word from the Union army that they were now freed. But I never realized its significance until now, and really, until I looked at this week's Torah portion.

This week, we read Parshat Shelach-Lecha, in which the Israelites learn that slavery isn't something that you can simply be freed from by someone else: rather, you have to free yourself. In the Torah, the Israelites are wandering in the desert, but when they come to the Promised Land, they are too scared to enter. They still have a "slave mentality," and are unwilling to auto-emancipate.

Juneteenth celebrates the auto-emancipation of the black community. In a profound and important article in the New York Times today, Jamelle Bouie writes: "Neither Abraham Lincoln nor the Republican Party freed the slaves. They helped set freedom in motion and eventually codified it into law ... but they were not themselves responsible for the end of slavery. They were not the ones who brought about its final destruction. Who freed the slaves? The slaves freed the slaves." He goes on to write about the way that Juneteenth represents the former slaves' self-empowerment, their standing up and freeing themselves.

This could describe, nearly word-for-word, the teaching of the Torah this week: Although the Jews came out of slavery because of God's work and Moses' leadership, true freedom was only brought about when they were willing to step forward, confidently and bravely, and walk into the Promised Land.

This is the message of Juneteenth. Freedom is not simply something granted by an authority. True, it is important for authorities not to enslave, not to oppress, not to diminish freedom in our world, but it is up to humans to take it. Sometimes, we describe this as "negative freedom" and "positive freedom," or "freedom from" and "freedom to."

It is up to us to take up freedom. To live free lives, unencumbered by the stresses of the "rat race," by the pressures of achieving sustenance, by the sting of racism, by the confines of depression. It is up to us to rattle our cages until the locks fall off, and then - and this is the hardest part - to step out.

Right now, our society is filled with a great rattling, an earthquake, even, as chains are being shaken and doors are coming unlocked. It is our task to hear in that shaking, not only "freedom from," but also "freedom to." What does a more liberated, more free, more perfect society look like? Police brutality represents a cage that must be unlocked, but the work of the positive creation of a free and flourishing land - in which people can step proudly into their lives free of shackles - is serious work that we must focus on in our lives. This must be, for many of us, our life's work, if we want to improve this country.

So step forward - step up - and be free.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Woodward
Tiferet Bet Israel
1920 Skippack Pike
Blue Bell, PA 19422
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