Indeed, "Why is this night different from all other nights?"  That's the question we Jews will ask tomorrow night. Wherever we live, all over this world, why is this night different from all other nights. And then, by way of answer, we'll explain the timeless symbols of the Seder plate:

The Pesach: the lamb bone

The Moror: the bitter herb of slavery

The matzah: the unleavened bread in which all of Jewish history is symbolized.
 

We shall also rehearse the four promises made by God in the book of Exodus. To redeem, to deliver, to free, to liberate us from our bondage to Pharaoh.

And then, there comes that moment when we pour out 10 drops of wine, remembering the plagues by which God finally persuaded even the cruel and calculating Pharaoh to give it up and to let the people of Moses go forth that they might serve their God and embrace their destiny.

Yes, my dear friends, Passover is a great and ever-relevant observance. We Jews relive our story and haven't you noticed, how there's always a tyrant, a Pharaoh of our own day, in need of being overthrown somewhere in our world. Usually, there are more than one or two!

Still, I would insist on this Shabbat HaGadol- this great Sabbath preceding Passover - that should you really want to take a close look at someone in desperate need of freedom's liberating message, well then, you have only to glance in a mirror! For all of our sophistication - our technology and the revolution in communications - we need desperately to "free the free." You know what I mean? For many of us, the hardest work we ever do is finding time to rest. Folk singer Charlie King asks -

And lest you think that this is some anecdotal oddity, particular to the driven baby-boomers, be aware that in her book, The Overworked Americans, author Juliette Schor, reports in analytic detail how most Americans work longer and harder, and according to someone else's schedule, than they did 30 years ago. And, mind you, this life-situation crosses what we usually see as class lines: single mothers who are working at minimum wage for fast food chains feel desperately overworked, and so do wealthy brain surgeons!

Now you ask, "Why is this happening?" The experts claim that it is because doing, making, profiting, producing, and consuming have been elevated by our society into idols. And while corporate profits have zoomed upward and the concentration of wealth has increased, the fact remains, real wages have remained stagnant for 20 years, and the pressure has only intensified for us to work harder and longer, just stay in the same place.

I certainly hope that it comes as no surprise to anyone here, that at the root of our religious and spiritual tradition as Jews is an unambivalent critique of these idolatries. Judaism, from its origins, perceived ever so clearly that human beings need time for self-reflective spiritual growth. For the love of family, and for communal sharing. Moreover, our Torah repeatedly makes clear that the earth itself deserves to be nurtured by human communities that afford it rest.

Somehow, the authors of the Torah understood - undoubtedly, way ahead of their times - that a society which is driven by work and unceasing labor is likely - as ours does - to treat the earth, the air, the oceans, and the mountains, as mere objects for exploitation rather than respect and reverence. As essential as Free Time and Rest are for the healing of human society, so essential are they for the well-being of this planet Earth.

I always stand in awe of the perception and the sensitivity exemplified by the Torah's prescription that not only should we not work on Shabbat but neither should our employees, nor the ox, nor the donkey, nor even the visitor within our gates in order that everybody of all classes may enjoy the sacred privilege of rest and refreshment. Why?

Because you were a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore the Lord commands you to observe the day of Sabbath rest.

Moreover, "When you harvest the harvest of your land, you are not to finish to the edge of your field and harvesting, the full height and gathering of your harvest, you are not to gather; your vineyards you are not to glean, ... Rather, for the afflicted and the sojourner, you are to leave them..."

You see, in our Biblical tradition, every landless person was entitled to walk onto the land of any farmer, to glean and to eat from the corners of the field or the orchard or the vineyard of whatever the harvesters had missed. One full year of every seven, the earth itself must be given time to rest. No organized sowing or reaping; human beings could eat what they had stored up in advance or what the earth gave freely as it had millennia before to hunting-gathering societies. For one year, there would be no slaves and no bosses. Rest for human beings from their toil, rest for human society from its hierarchies, rest for the earth from its being simply used: that was the Divine Will for creation.

Now please don't think that I believe that work, doing, making, are intrinsically evil. They are not! Modernity has made possible much that is valuable and unprecedented! I wouldn't trade places with any generation. Just imagine the advances and benefits that we have in the way of health care. But not withstanding, a society that never pauses to catch its breath and reflect on its values, which never pauses to love and affirm community and family - such a society transforms Production and all that that infers 'consumption and overwork' into idols.

Said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his famous essay on the Sabbath:

To set apart one day a week for freedom, ... a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, ... a day on which we stop worshiping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, ... a day of armistice and the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature - is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for 'human' progress than the Sabbath?

So on this Sabbath preceding Passover, I would simply ask us all to reflect on our own lives and the quality of relationships that we are able to maintain with the schedules that we hold so sacred. There are many who would ask us to work toward that day when we can affect the following:

• A reduction in the hours of work imposed on individuals without reducing their income.
• Encouraging the use of more free time in the service of family, spiritual growth, and a sense of genuine community.
• To make work itself sacred by securing full employment in jobs with decent income, health care, dignity, and a degree of self-direction.

How often I talk to people who tend to divide their lives into two periods. The first, when both parents did not need to work outside of the home and the second, when it became necessary for both to do so. We know that our society, the social fabric, the vitality and the quality of our family life has been vastly affected by what has taken place in these last 40 years. If we cannot turn it back and return to how it was; if the model of Ozzie and Harriet is truly beyond us, and it may well be, then surely we can still reclaim our dignity by doing all that is in our power to free the free. "Let my people go that they may serve Me!" That command still stands and awaits our earnest response.