The dynamic and fiery first chaplain and chief rabbi of the fledgling Israel Defense Forces, Rav Shlomo Goren, almost single-handedly built up the religious infrastructure of Tzahal, establishing the army’s kashrus, shemiras Shabbos and other basic halachic standards. At age 12, he had become the youngest talmid of Yeshivas Chevron, was immediately identified as a Torah prodigy and received semicha at 17. From the time he volunteered with the Haganah in 1936, this leader of great passion and creativity, participated and shaped many seminal moments in modern Jewish history—including no less than the liberation of Jerusalem. Rav Goren’s autobiography, “With Might and Strength,” describes the desperate intensity gripping Eretz Yisrael, Erev Pesach of 1948.

Yerushalayim had been under Arab siege for months; supplies were short, rations were at starvation levels and Yom Tov was rapidly approaching. Though the British military governor did not have ownership of the matzah, he did have authority over its distribution, and decided to allocate the scant supply of matzah to the city’s most “religious” civilians; there was nowhere near the amount necessary to provide for all.

After verifying that families who registered to receive matzah had enough to fulfill their primary obligation, Rav Goren commandeered military trucks in the middle of the night, broke into the warehouse and requisitioned the remaining boxes: “On the cusp of redemption, how could it be that our holy chayalim (warriors) in the first Jewish army in two thousand years, go without matzah?”

As yeshiva students spread throughout the frontlines to spend leil haSeder together with the soldiers under fire, Rav Goren shared a timeless message with those assembled at Schneller army base: “After millenia of physical and spiritual slavery, we have merited to celebrate the Chag HaCherut—the festival of freedom. And just as when we left Mitzrayim, we saw miracles, so too, we will merit to see great nissim in the holy land. With great bravery and self sacrifice, we shall raise high the flag of freedom. Let us envision the complete redemption and celebrate Chag HaPesach as free men.”

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Ribbon Kol HaOlamim is a deeply moving tefillah often appearing between Shalom Aleichem and Eishes Chayil. This traditional leil Shabbos prayer expresses an array of uplifting bakashos, capturing the faith, hope and yearning that a Yid uncovers in the sacred moments preceding Kiddush. In one line, we ask in a unique way for Hashem’s compassion: שתרחמני עוד בגלותי, לגאלני—“May You further show me mercy and deliver me in my exile, to redeem me.” It seems that rather than asking to be saved from our galus, we ask to be delivered within it. The great Reb Shalom Rockeach, the first Belzer Rebbe—known as the Sar Shalom, zt”l—explained that there are three expressions of galus, each one more harsh than the preceding. One is a physical exile among non-Jews, another is a form of exile among fellow Jews and the third is an experience of being in an internal galus, exiled within oneself.

When we beseech the Ribono Shel Olam שתרחמני עוד בגלותי we are referring to exile consciousness which is self-induced; we are asking to be saved from ourselves. In other words, it is easier to take a Jew out of galus, than to take galus out of a Jew …

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וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם  …

“I will bring you out from under the ‘sivlos—labors’ of Egypt … ” (Shemos, 6:6)

Chidushei HaRim interprets (Vaeira, 5636) the word “sivlos” as “savlanus—patience.” Hashem took us out from being “savel Mitzrayim—having patience” for Mitzrayim. That is, He saved us from the sad state of “tolerating” our exile—accepting our slavery—making peace with where we were. The greatest impediment to freedom is complacent acceptance of stuckness. Without a will to be liberated, we are at the mercy of the gravitational pull to remain mired in where we currently are—where we don’t really want to be.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel explored the insecurity of being free, and the fear of the unknown versus the safety and stability and even suffering of staying stuck. The greatness of our salvation is that it did not just take us out of Egypt; it took Egypt, the meitzarim—the slave mentality and inner stuckness—out of us.

In “The Shawshank Redemption,” Morgan Freeman’s character “Red” has a monologue reflecting on the nature of long term imprisonment and the effect it has on a prisoner: “These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ‘em. That’s ‘institutionalized’… they send you here for life and that’s exactly what they take—the part that counts, anyway.”

After millenia of physical and spiritual slavery, it seems that once again, we have settled for the status quo, accepting exile as an expected, tolerable, perhaps even respectable, condition. Chas veshalom! That is the bitter stuckness of conceptzia—a fossilized, detrimental state of self-imposed exile, detrimental galusdik group-thinking that has weakened and paralyzed Knesses Yisrael. We are a people of great faith and vision who yearn for victory and redemption! For far too long, we have been entrapped in a defeatist mentality—blinded from seeing our collective spiritual and national potential and our own essential greatness.

And yet, we are living in extraordinary times, a תקופה גדולה of great historical importance. An unwanted war has led to an awakening of authentic Jewish heroism, gevurah and sacrifice, an expression of deep and renewed faith, identity and holiness, of expanded consciousness and holy pride. There is an opportunity right now to break out of our passive acceptance of galus, and say, “Ad masai (until when)? How long do we need to push off becoming who we really are as a people? How long will we cower in the ‘safety’ of our self-induced exile?”

הָשַּׁתָּא הָכָא, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּאַרְעָא דְיִשְׂרָאֵל. הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין.

“Now we are here, this coming year we will (all) be in the land of Israel; this year, we are slaves, this coming year, we will be free people!”

Wherever we will be celebrating Seder this year, may each of us raise high the flag of freedom and envision the גאולה השלימה והאמיתית—the complete and true, internal and external, final redemption. May the great, redemptive days of Nissan free us from all of our self-limiting “conseptziot,” so that we may celebrate Chag Pesach as a free, independent holy nation in our land! לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין

Rav Judah Mischel is executive director of Camp HASC, the Hebrew Academy for Special Children. He is the mashpiah of OU-NCSY, founder of Tzama Nafshi and the author of “Baderech: Along the Path of Teshuva.” Rav Judah lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife Ora and their family.