Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers

One of the blogs I have written that has received the highest number of hits was a sermon I gave on how cuts to benefits and our perceptions of disability are affecting those living with their reality (it is only beaten by one on the Black Triangle!). 

Passover Matzah and Kiddush Cup

I was deeply moved and inspired and I hope you will be too, reader. 

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Here is one of my favourite quotes: 

“When your people are oppressed, freedom is easy to define.”

Without freedom we are trapped, forced to live a life others create for us. 

Oh, as I watch the million ant-like, unidentified humans scurry about their morning business, I’m sure few feel free. With gas bills and school runs and child care and deadlines and late shifts and obligations and doubt.

But they enjoy a freedom sick and disabled people in the UK are beginning to forget. 

It’s unlikely anyone will scream at them as they park their car. Call them “cheat” or “scrounger” and throw rocks at the windows.

It’s unlikely random thugs will surround them in broad daylight and spit in their face, punch them until they stop trying to get up.

It’s unlikely that their income is dependent on one huge monopoly and if it is, that there is absolutely nowhere else that they can possibly derive an income from. 

We’d all like more freedom. 

Those chains that bind us all – some cruel, some crafted from love, take slice after slice of what we think our freedom is, sometimes, at times, little seems to remain. 

But if you worked all your life, only to find the kids have all grown and left home, and serious illness or disability strikes, it can seem as if all that is left of freedom are memories. 

Live on what they say you need. 

Democracy has failed them – though how hard they tried to engage it! 

Our country has done more to give sick and disabled people freedom than almost any other. 

And today, it is all under threat. 

Those dealing with their own, everyday constraints don’t believe it, or maybe they just don’t hear. Can’t perceive true oppression or that it may stalk by their side in the UK in 2013. 

And that is when freedom becomes everything. 

For once we lose freedom for even one of our own, we lose it for all. 

Nigerian Novelist Chinua Achebe who passed away last week

Chinua Achebe (R.I.P.) in 2007 

pas·chal

 [pas-kuhl]  adjective

1.

of or pertaining to Easter.

2.

of or pertaining to Passover.