| More than anything else in our people's history, it would seem, Yetzias Mitzrayim has captured the minds and hearts of others.
American slaves in the 19th century adopted the imagery and language of our ancestors' liberation to express their own hopes to one day be free of oppression. Similar references to Yetzias Mitzrayim were adopted by the American labor and civil rights movements as well.
Chazal say that we should endeavor to see the kings of nations, so that we can meaningfully contrast who they are with what a melech Yisrael is. We might also make an effort to perceive the difference between the Western World's liberation movements and Hashem's extraction of goy mikerev goy.
To the wider world, freedom means the ability to live unrestrained lives. In its "highest" form, to have retired and be occupying a beach chair in the backyard, sunshine on one's face and a cold beverage within reach. Or, at very least, a day off of work, with nothing on one's agenda.
To be sure, there are surely times when we need to relax and recharge. But we know well from our mesorah that a life of leisure is not the true meaning of freedom.
Because after shalach es ami, comes viya'avduni. Klal Yisrael wasn't merely taken from slavery to "freedom," in the word's contemporary understanding. We were, rather, taken from meaningless, onerous oppression to… a different, high servitude, the most sublime kind imaginable: serving Hashem.
The word cheirus, Chazal teach, evokes charus, "inscribed," the word the Torah uses to describe the etching of the words on the luchos. In the two words' similarity, they see a profound truth: "The only free person is the one immersed in Torah."
We live at a time when Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael (and, to a lesser but disturbing degree, in chutz la'Aretz) are threatened – oppressed, in our case, not by taskmasters but haters of various stripes.
The war in Gaza and Iran's recent direct attack on Israel rightly occupy our minds. Our tefillos on behalf of the brave soldiers fighting to destroy a murderous oppressor, and on behalf of all toshvei Ha'aretz who have had to take shelter so often of late, are constant and heartfelt. And, here in chutz la'Aretz, as we witness shedders of Jewish blood being defended – even embraced – on college campuses and city streets, we are understandably anguished.
We might well consider that the key to Klal Yisroel's cheirus from our current oppression lies in embracing the freedom to which Chazal point us, that which was charus al haluchos.
It is tragic, as the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah recently reminded us, that those in Eretz Yisrael for whom Torah-study is their daily mainstay are under siege by elements of Israeli society bent on "normalizing" them. If only those parts of the Israeli body politic understood the power of Torah – which is as protective of Jews as the blood of the korban Pesach was on the mezuzos and mashkofim of our forebears' homes in Mitzrayim – they would pass laws to encourage avreichim, not draft, them.
May they come to understand what Torah-study means to Klal Yisrael.
And may each of us resolve to contribute, in his or her personal life, to our "liberation" from our current oppression, by intensifying our own Torah study and our enabling and supporting those immersed in it.
And, as a result, to sing, like our ancestors did on the far side of the Yam Suf, a song of deliverance, bim'heira. | 
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