At the Passover seder, four questions are asked, the questions of four sons are answered, and four cups of wine are drunk. Meir Soloveichik, in keeping with this theme of fours, explains that the ritual underscores four aspects of freedom, rightly understood as the ability to “utilize time in the present to connect past and future.” Drawing on sources as diverse as Thomas Paine, the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, and the film Groundhog Day, he argues that biblical freedom is not freedom from restraints, but the freedom to build a moral society obedient to God’s will. (Video, 39 minutes.)
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