Freedom

“We are now in what is known as the ‘bean cycle’. Beans boiled, beans in casserole, beans with strings, beans without strings. Friday, the 21^st of August, 1942.”

In seventh grade I assumed the role of Anne Frank, the central figure of my class play, Diary of a Young Girl. Anne and her family spent more than two years sequestered inside a small annex in Amsterdam, hiding from the Nazis. I tried hard to immerse myself in my character, reading my lines to anyone willing to listen. People said that I resembled Anne, with my large dark eyes and long, wavy brown hair tied in a bow at the nape of my neck. I imagined how restricted and restrained Anne must have felt, locked in the small apartment, fearful of even the smallest sound. At night, as I drifted off to sleep, safely at home in my warm bed, I imagined how my own father must have felt as a Jewish boy growing up in Iraq during the years of the Baath revolution, confined to his immediate neighborhood, without telephones or any contact with the outside world.

My experience as Anne Frank made me so much more aware of the ordinary things that I had previously taken for granted: the freedom to come and go as I pleased, the right to go to religious school, the ability to practice my religion, and the comforts of middle class life. During the Passover holiday, I often find myself reflecting, once again, on these freedoms that we as Americans have come to take for granted. Do we really appreciate everything we have in this great nation that we call home? Some might quickly answer ‘yes’, without giving it much thought. But then, why do we keep asking for more, for posh oversized houses, expensive luxury cars, high-priced clothing, and everything else that we have come to feel we are entitled? Instead, why don’t we take the time to recognize all that we have?

Recently, I visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I’m not a connoisseur of art, and I have never even read the Saturday Evening Post, but something about Norman Rockwell’s art grabbed my heart. It was so human, so real, particularly his series of four paintings, The Four Freedoms. Each of these works, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want, depicted a man, a woman, or a child experiencing the type of freedom that the painting was about. These four pieces of art, created in the 1940’s, spoke directly to me about how fortunate we are to be living in America in the 21^st century and about how lucky we are to be free.

There is a terrible war going on in Iraq, and just this morning I heard about another suicide bombing in Israel. Women are being raped and killed in Darfour and other women are being sentenced to long prison terms for having abortions in El Salvador. Every time I open the international section of the newspaper, I read about someone else’s civil rights, another person’s freedoms, being violated in another part of the world. I know this will sound trite and idealistic, but all of this hate is about one person’s intolerance of another’s freedoms.

So what’s my point? Embrace your neighbor’s diversity, don’t push it away. If it doesn’t hurt anyone, why should it be a problem for you? Agree to disagree, and agree to be yourself. Above all, appreciate everything this great country has afforded us, and utilize the freedoms that we have to help those who are less fortunate, those who are not yet free.