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The Time of our Freedom

Esther Rubinstein ל״צז

The only daughter of Rabbi Chaim Yirmiyahu Flensberg, Chief Rabbi of Shaki, Esther Rubinstein
(1881–1924) studied Torah, rabbinic literature and Jewish philosophy with her scholarly father.
Extraordinarily bright, she often startled people by reciting passages from the Talmud by heart. After
marrying Rabbi Yitzchak Rubinstein, they moved to Vilna, where he was appointed the “Crown” rabbi
in 1910. Esther founded several Jewish schools for girls and was a passionate Religious Zionist who
spoke frequently about the critical role women must play in the return to the Land of Israel.
Only a few years after World War I, Esther contracted a rare blood disease and passed away at
the young age of 42. The entire Jewish community of Vilna mourned her death, and thousands
attended a memorial service for her in the Great Synagogue of Vilna. Esther was the only woman
ever given this honor. Many distinguished rabbis and Religious Zionist leaders eulogized her,
including Rabbi Yechiel Ya’akov Weinberg, whose eulogy appears following this essay.

Though most of Esther’s family was tragically murdered in the Holocaust, her son Yosef, who later changed
his last name to Even-Odem, made Aliyah and later published many books on medicine and nature.

The following essay was written in flawless Hebrew and published in the April 1,
1920 edition of HaMizrachi. It is translated here for the first time.

or two thousand years, our But in truth, this is not the case. For us, the preventing us from sinking into the servi-
F nation has celebrated zman “holiday of freedom” is not only a remem- tude of exile and losing our identity.
cheiruteinu, the “time of our
brance of the past, which is already gone,
The people of Israel are never truly slaves.
freedom,” on foreign soil. One
might think that celebrating this holiday but also a yearning for a future that has Rather, a Jew in exile feels that he is locked
yet to come. With this longing, the power
in exile is akin to celebrating the fiftieth of the holiday of freedom only grows, even up in prison and that his freedom has
yahrzeit of a great leader of our people; even during the worst moments of the present. unjustly been stolen from him. And so he
if the celebration is observed with much And so year after year, when a Jew sits waits for the day of his redemption, for
splendor, everyone recognizes that the man with his family on Seder night, he begins the day when justice will emerge like light
at the center of the celebration is no longer his Seder by calling out in joy and elevation from darkness. The people imprisoned in
exile anticipate freedom and constantly
alive and that only his memory lives on. So of spirit: “This year we are slaves – but next hope that they will soon be free, that their
too, every year we celebrate the time of our year we will be free!” The “holiday of free-
“freedom,” even though every Jew knows dom” is about hope for freedom – the hope ancient homeland will soon be redeemed
that we are not free and that nothing is left and faith that the servitude of the present and the scattered ones of Israel “shall
of our freedom except a pleasant memorial exile is only temporary, that we must bear return and come with singing unto Zion”
(Yishayahu 51:11)
day recorded in the columns of our Torah it knowing that it will pass, and that we
scrolls. For the nation is again in exile, will soon be free. Freedom. This must be “This year we are slaves – but next year we
oppressed and silent under the heavy yoke and has always been our people’s greatest will be in Eretz Yisrael!” With this call, a Jew
of servitude, weighed down with ceaseless desire. The yearning for freedom sustained remembers and repeats for himself and his
and bitter suffering. our forefathers, and it also sustains us, children, every year, that our dwelling in a

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