The Hebrew word for “freedom,” ḥerut, appears prominently in the Passover liturgy and in the Haggadah, but nowhere in the Bible. Nor do equivalent biblical Hebrew terms occur anywhere in the Bible’s telling of the Exodus story. To resolve this paradox, Yehoshua Pfeffer argues that the Torah does not view the purpose of redemption from Egyptian bondage to be liberation, but rather the actualization of the covenant between God and Israel:

[I]n the Jewish tradition, liberty is not presented as an independent value, but rather as a crucial means by which to achieve an ultimate end. This end is not the freedom to choose, but the choice of forming relationships with others—relationships that involve duty, responsibility, and fidelity. The relationship, with all it entails, is the end. Freedom is merely the means.

The Torah [seeks to create] elevated relationships—first and foremost between each person and God, but also relationships between a person and his family, friends, and acquaintances. The greatest principle of the Torah, stated Rabbi Akiva, is that of “love your fellow as yourself.” A necessary precondition for fulfilling this principle is liberty; a coerced relationship cannot be classified as a relationship, let alone one of love. The end, however, is the relationship rather than the liberty.

Before the Jews entered into their relationship with God, they first had to be redeemed from Egyptian bondage and oppression. Somebody who lives under an external yoke cannot make a covenant with others; he cannot commit himself to the duties and fidelity that true relationships demand, for his duty and fidelity are not his to allocate. The Talmud states in this spirit that a slave cannot fully enter into matrimony; . . . he lacks the most basic tool required for human relationships.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.