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Day 1
An Escape From, A Movement Towards
Consider the significance of Passover – the commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. As generations did before us, we observe the essence of Passover when we personally experience the exodus, when we break loose from the yoke of slavery and flee from danger. But deliverance, per se, is no more than casting off one’s shackles. It leads, therefore, only to quandaries, questions, and confusion. Freedom as a positive concept calls for a personality with a will of its own.
Passover represents exodus, an escape from; Shavuot is the movement towards, a route leading to a goal.
Passover, then, is a festival that receives its spiritual significance from the Torah given seven weeks later, on Shavuot. The gap of time between these two festivals symbolizes the wandering and the search, the transition from a negative reality of physical labor – and nowadays, of spiritual enslavement – to an essential quest for the meaning of that freedom.
--Rabbi Steinsaltz, Shavuot: Understanding the Purpose of our Freedom, https://steinsaltz.org/essay/shavuot-freedom/
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