How can we wholeheartedly speak of liberty and freedom this Pesach, when our nation is bound to the will of the world?

Furthermore, how can we celebrate when a cloud of doom looms over the Jewish people, with our own government planning the destruction of entire Jewish communities, from the synagogues to the cemeteries?

The questions of vital importance are: how did we manage to reach such a situation and how can we get ourselves out of it? The answer, like many others, lays rooted in thousands of years of exile and the toll it has taken on our mighty nation. After so many years of being hated, we have learned to hate ourselves. In every generation the nations rose to destroy us, until we gave up and started doing the job for them.

We have taken instructions for so long that we now long for instruction.

Instead of standing up to our enemies and creating a de facto peace through acts of strength, we cower away, building fences and disengaging from reality.

Every Pesach, Jews spends day and hours ensuring that there is no chametz (leavened foods) in their possession, searching and cleaning their properties down to the last crumb. But how many truly search within themselves to eliminate their inner chametz?

How many Jews question the effects that 2,000 years of exile have had upon our mindset?

How many are ready to expel the slave mentality that has crippled our growth for so long?

At the Seder table, we dine like kings and speak as free men, while during the rest of the year, we bow to Gentile rule and apologize for having been created.

Outside of Israel, even the orthodox practitioners of Jewish ritual are enslaved to the Gentile way of life, putting their own personal wealth and success ahead of Jewish unity and the return to our Homeland. While in Israel, the pathetic longing for international acceptance continues. Indeed, some are willing to do almost anything to achieve their impossible dream of 'peace and quiet', and obtain their very own bungalow within the 'global village'.

But let us not forget the generation of the exodus, which had to die out before the nation could enter the Land of Israel. Even after having seen the revelation at Mount Sinai, they still feared Gentile kings and didn't believe in themselves as a nation.

No less is this true in our generation, after experiencing the miracles of our return home after 2,000 years. When handed the Temple Mount by miraculous means, we froze and watched as our apologist leadership handed over the keys to the Muslim enemy.

It seems that 57 years after having regained partial sovereignty over part of our country, we have yet to break the shackles of the exile and stand alone as one nation, following the Word of G-d and illuminating the universe.

We can never lose hope that the future is ultimately in the hands of the G-d of Israel. At the same time, we are given the unique opportunity to change things for the better. As the sages taught, "It is not our obligation to complete the task, though neither may we defer from it." Let us not forget that the Reed Sea only split for the Jewish people once the faithful Nachshon ben Aminadav followed the word of G-d and entered the raging waters.

Only a true understanding of the Jewish slave mentality can explain the suicidal policies that our governments continue to pursue. This mentality must be rectified and expelled from our psyches, lest we continue down the path of slavery.



Avi Hyman made Aliyah five years ago from the UK where he had been an activist from a young age and later National Director of Betar . He now lives on a new hilltop community in the Shomron and hosts a weekly radio show on Sundays called The Activist Hour