Ever since the Middle Ages, the Song of the Sea has been incorporated into the shacharit service. This is hardly surprising, because this song of triumph was like a beacon of light in the dark of exile. But the rabbis saw in this song a nearly supernatural force. In a delightful midrash, they explain that it wasn’t only our adults that burst into song. Children sitting in their mother’s lap sang along. Even babies suckling at their mother’s breast took a break to sing. And Rabbi Meir goes on to suggest that fetuses in the womb joined in as well.

We need not take the rabbis hyperbole as a reflection of premodern naivete. Instead, it is a powerful tool for illustrating a profound truth: the liberation of the weak and innocent from the clutches of the evil and arrogant is not simply one of any number of human interactions. It is, instead, a dynamic that resonates throughout the universe. It is to human society what DNA is to the human body.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this. We tend to imagine that human freedom is an obviously shared value of the human community, ignored for short (albeit devastating) periods of authoritarianism of various stripes (fascism, communism, etc.). To the contrary, the vast majority of human beings throughout history, and even today, have not been able to lead free lives. Freedom in the world has been decreasing for nearly the past 20 years, with nearly 90% of the world’s population seeing a decrease in freedom.

If freedom is seen as an ideal among an enlightened citizenry, it is, to a great extent, because Jews made it that way. It is no coincidence that Benjamin Franklin wanted the Great Seal of the United States to depict the parting of the Sea, including the phrase: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to G-d.”; or that Red Sea imagery is one of the most common in gospel music; or is a dominant theme within modern theology ; or that the Liberty Bell is inscribed with the biblical quote, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land.”

The drama, the urgency, the audacity of the Jewish perspective on freedom is captured beautifully in this quote by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“….The world is not a vacuum.

Either we make it an altar for G-d

Or it is invaded by demons.

There can be no neutrality.

Either we are ministers of the sacred

Or slaves of evil.”

Perhaps you didn’t know that this is the high drama we are participating in when we daven.

Now you do.