Passover: Celebrating Freedom
An evening pause: For tonight, the second Passover Sedar, a short video explaining some of the philosophical underpinnings of Passover. Though decidedly from the reform (and liberal) side of the Jewish community, it still summarizes much of what Passover represents. On this holiday each person must imagine themselves a slave, so as to better appreciate what freedom represents.
The orthodox side of the Jewish community would add that this freedom comes from God, for which we must be ever thankful. The orthodox would also note that our freedom exists because of the arrival of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, and the rules for living a good life, handed down to at Mt. Sinai, after the exodus.
I say, be humble and try to do right, to the best of your ability, no matter what others demand (the Bible, even for someone who does not believe in God as the religions do, provides a good instruction manual). Do that, and you will certainly be free.
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Beautiful thoughts on slavery and freedom. Thank you.
In the 1990s I got my first computer and AOL dialup to connect to the internet, which back then was mostly just chat boards. I was a real space nerd when I was young and Compuserve had a space chat board which for the first time gave me access to people actually in the space community. I remember some of their names, Rand Simberg (Transterrestrial Musings), Mark Whittington, Robert Oler, Mark Ruckman. I can’t remember if you were there Bob.
Occasionally they would discuss politics, philosophy, religion, economics, life. It’s amazing how much they influenced my thinking and I still recall some of those wonderful discussions and am thankful.
James Street: I don’t think I was there, but maybe. I did participate in a few chat boards on the old usernets, now abandoned, but not many. At the time I was focused mostly in making the switch from the film business to freelance science journalism and writing my first space histories.