Yuval Levin on the Exodus and Freedom

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the alternative names for the Passover holiday that the Jewish people begin to celebrate this weekend is zman ḥeruteinu—the time of our freedom. Freedom is at the center of the holiday and of the Exodus narrative it redescribes. Yet the holiday’s conception of freedom is laden with constraint, and ritual, and forms. It is a conception that would seem to be at least as much about memory, transmission, and consecration as it is about a moment of liberation.

In a 2014 essay for First Things, Yuval Levin—editor of National Affairs—traced ancient notions of freedom through Israel’s exodus. To Levin, contemporary American ideas of freedom–ideas belonging as much to the left as to the right–can best be understood and diagnosed through the lens of the Hebrew Bible. Levin joined Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to talk about this essay in March 2017. Today, we rebroadcast that discussion from just over five years ago.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the alternative names for the Passover holiday that the Jewish people begin
0:12.5	to celebrate this week refers to Zman-Herutainu, the time of our freedom.
0:18.2	And of course, freedom is at the very center of the Exodus narrative and it's at the very center of the freedom. And of course, freedom is at the very center of the Exodus narrative, and
0:22.6	it's at the very center of the holiday. That's because we remember the movement of our ancestors,
0:28.5	oppressed in Egypt, from slavery to freedom, brought out by God's strong hand, an outstretched arm.
0:35.5	Now, of course, there's an awful lot of constraint and ritual and forms
0:41.0	through which we celebrate this freedom, and it would seem to be a version of freedom
0:45.6	that is at least as much about memory and transmission and consecration as it is about liberation.
0:53.4	So what is in the Exodus narrative that can give us
0:56.6	a deeper understanding of what freedom is and what it's for? National Affairs editor and American
1:03.2	Enterprise Institute's senior fellow and program director, Yuval Levin, traces the ancient shape of
1:09.4	freedom through Israel's Exodus, and he reads contemporary
1:13.4	American deformations of freedom, those that we find on the left, no less than those that we find
1:19.3	on the right, against the backdrop of the Hebrew Bible. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your
1:25.2	host, Jonathan Silver. Back in October 2014,
1:29.2	Levin wrote an essay for the magazine First Things, called Taking the Long Way, and we sat down together to discuss it in March of 2017.
1:38.7	Today's conversation is a rebroadcast of that one from just over five years ago.
1:44.2	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,
1:49.2	Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you'll leave us a five-star review to help us
1:54.1	grow this community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast
1:59.3	episodes at podcast at tickfafund.org.
2:03.0	And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
	...

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