Watching Iranians protest for their freedom and call for the Khomeini regime to fall, felt eerily fitting this week, given that the parsha tells a similar story of the Jews protesting for their freedom and calling for the Egyptian regime to fall.

But while protests for freedom today advocate for liberation and the complete removal of all servitude, it is interesting to note that in Moses’ request to Pharaoh for the Jews’ freedom, he asks for something else entirely:

“Let my people go so that they may serve Hashem.”

Moses' request seems puzzling and even counterintuitive. If Moses was fighting for the Jews to go free, surely he should have concluded with simply, “let my people go.”

“So that they may serve Hashem” seems to suggest that freedom from the yoke of Pharaoh would only lead to another form of servitude, not to the king of Egypt, but to the King of all kings, G-d.

And yet we celebrate this story each year during Passover as the holiday of freedom.

Because in truth, it is the “so that they may serve Hashem” that cements and actualizes the “let my people go.” Had the request ended with freedom alone, without the qualifier, the Jews may have left Egypt, but in a deeper sense, they would have remained slaves.

While an enslaved person is subjugated to the will of their master or regime, a liberated person without direction will be similarly subjugated to the wills of their temptations and selfish desires.

The common denominator between the slave and the free is that neither is in control of themselves. Neither has agency.

Freedom without purpose is therefore just another form of enslavement.

True liberation means that you are not only free from external forces, but that you are also at peace with yourself, when you feel content and peaceful because you have direction, and when your life is filled with meaning because you have a purpose.

And that is why Moses did not ask only for the Jews to leave Egypt. Such freedom would have been superficial.

True freedom would come only when the Jews were free from a physical master and at the same time connected to their purpose and inner self in service of the divine.

It is reported that one of the reasons the United States has so far held back from striking Iran is the recognition that collapsing a regime is not enough. They need to first be certain that what replaces it will be an improvement.

For that same reason, Moses did not advocate only for the Jews to leave Egypt, but for them to then attach themselves to a higher purpose in service of Hashem.

Regime collapse without an appropriate replacement is only another form of enslavement.