Love, Freedom, and Solidarity

Reflections on the Student Protests and Collective Liberation

I wish all a joyous May Day. It may not be a Jewish holiday, but maybe we would all benefit from understanding it as a secular mix between Passover and Purim — A holiday of remembering and honoring the joyful and liberatory spirit of Spring.

---

nobody told you the truth about staying free?
  not escaping the present
but finding that constant thread of light how brief the tastes are between cages of comfort or crisis 
we cannot get free
   holding tight to anything that isn't love
- Adrienne Marie Brown

---

And no one gets the freedom they were told that they deserve
Till they realize that freedom's not a noun

It's a verb! It's a verb!
Freedom is a verb
Something never finished, never done
It's something you must make
It's something you must take
It's something you must constantly become…
And it happens out of need
It's a fire and a seed
And it's terrible potential has begun
- Freedom is a Verb, a song by Daniel Kahn

---

With the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza — and with the beautiful, heart wrenching, and terrifying events that have been occurring on college campuses across the US and beyond (including the school where I work) — I feel that it is vital that we spend a little bit more time thinking about the tension between peace and freedom. 

This is not to say there is always tension between peace and freedom, but when the peace of the status quo is built on violence and oppression – built on through the exploitation of stolen lands and disaffected workers – the movement towards freedom can look like “lawless” disorder.

As a child raised within a Reform Jewish context, I never saw our Halachic laws as the heart of Judaism. Rather, it is the spirit of these laws, and the stories through which they became codified – along with their deeper meaning and inner purpose – that I aspire to understand and hold fast to. I recognize that laws are not given by G-d, but codified by human communities, reinforced by social power structures. Each Passover, we are reminded of the violence that came with our freedom. Peace built on violence and unjust laws — whether in Mitzrayim or wherever you live today — cannot last. The perennial struggle towards freedom will always arise to interrupt an uneasy peace. Peace, as with freedom, is not truly attained until all people enjoy it.

And so, in this moment, as so many disaffected workers and young people are rising up in efforts to change the institutions in which they are bound, we must struggle with our desire for peace. We must grapple with our privilege and strive to recognize when our peace and freedom come at the expense of others. And we must be willing to stand in solidarity.

“Solidarity is the political version of love”
- Title of a book by Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise

Freedom and love are endlessly intertwined – when I freely act, I am acting out of love; when I lovingly act, I am embodying my freedom. There is no humanity without the struggle to live our love in every moment and action. To live our lives in constant pursuit of lasting peace, of justice and of collective liberation is what it means to me to live as a Jew.

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private… It’s not about you.”
- Dr. Cornel West in a 2017 Commencement Speech at Harvard University

Freedom emerges when we understand that our boundaries are mere illusions, and that our desire to be free and to love comes from both within us and beyond us. Freedom is achieved through recognizing our interconnectedness — we are One with our community, with our institutions, with Life. Together, we must lift each other up.

We embody freedom when we are unlimited by the constraints and oppressive systems that keep us divided. We are free when we see beyond the ideologies and narratives which lead us to hate, to fear, to envy, and to imagine ourselves detached from the rest of Creation. Only through love can we transcend our alienation: alienation from one another, from ourselves, and from the broader social-ecological systems that make our life possible. Through love, we dedicate ourselves to something beyond our ego, beyond our tribe, beyond our limited understanding and our finite lives. Only by working with compassion and love can we sustain our community and find a path towards collective liberation.

“The civil rights movement had the power to transform society because the individuals who struggle alone and in community for freedom and justice wanted these gifts to be for all, not just the suffering and the oppressed. Visionary black leaders such as Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Howard Thurman warned against isolationism. They encouraged black people to look beyond our own circumstances and assume responsibility for the planet. This call for communion with a world beyond the self, the tribe, the race, the nation, was a constant invitation for personal expansion and growth.”

- From “Love as the Practice of Freedom” by bell hooks

A 19th century greeting card made by the early UK Labour Party in honor of May Day. Workers from across the world dancing under freedom. Only together can we bring about a more just world.

---

This post was created through my desire to help us reckon with the many feelings of this present moment. If you feel this would help others as they work to reconcile their desire for justice and their desire for safety, please consider sending this their way.

---

Thank you for reading Jewish Ecology. This blog aims to build a participatory dialogue in which important ideas at the intersection of Judaism and ecology can help us root ourselves in the World. This blog is not just for Jews; I aim for these articles to be accessible and impactful for anyone that is interested in building up an understanding of the role that spirituality, philosophy, and/or ethics play in bringing about a more peaceful, ecological, and sustainable future for all People and the World.