I want to share an idea on Shelo Asani eved (servant): Hashem, we're praising you for the fact that we're not an eved. The question was asked: It seems like we are very much an eved. We use that term when we say we're an eved Hashem, we're a servant of God. But aside from the term, the experience can sometimes feel like we're in servitude to God. We're meant to put aside what we want to do, just like a servant has to do that. They may want to watch television, and the owner of the house says, “Get up and do the laundry,” and they've got to get up and do it because they're a servant. So when we say to Hashem, “Thank you,” or we're praising you because of the fact that we're not made into avadim (slaves or servants), what do we mean by that?
I heard a beautiful explanation of this that really brings a lot of meaning. The analogy that's used is this: If you can imagine a violin or a guitar, a stringed instrument makes sound by the tension between the top, where the string is tied in, and the bottom, where the string is tied in. When you loosen it and there's no tension between the two sides, the string makes no sound. A string needs to be tied down in order to produce its sound. And a person needs to be in a certain alignment, with a certain structure, in order to be able to produce the most beautiful sound they could produce.
The reason we're saying that it's not an eved, that we're not in servitude when we talk about serving Hashem, as opposed to when we were in Mitzrayim, for example, where we were servants, is because when we serve God, that service is ultimately really serving myself, and serving my greatness, and what I'm able to bring out. God sets us up for that. As opposed to standard servitude, it's not really serving myself. It's not helping me develop and grow into...
At most, you have that it's serving myself because I get some food to eat by being in slavery. But when Hashem sets us up and says, “Okay, don't do this. I want you to live a life where you don't have that,” that's what our soul needs in order to be able to produce the most beautiful actions, the most beautiful behavior. And when we don't have that, and everything's a free-for-all, it seems like it's freedom because we could do whatever we want. But can you really? Can you really do whatever you want? Or are you a servant now to your base desire, to your animal instincts of what you are programmed naturally to do, and you don't have an ability to change and to become something bigger? So we get stuck. We serve the side of us that is not able to elevate, grow, and develop. And Hashem comes along and says, “No, I'm going to tell you, this is a program. You follow this program, and you're going to be able to do whatever you want, and you're going to be able to be successful.” Do these mitzvot (commandments), and you could elevate from being a human to being an angel on earth.
What seems like servitude is really Hashem giving us the ability to be released so we can perform the most. It's almost like they say: You need to be able, in life, to say no to one thing to be able to say yes to another, right? It's true, we have freedom. If we had freedom—true freedom, not true freedom, but unlimited, absolute freedom, where we could do whatever we want and not have to answer to God—we'd do anything. But because we could do anything, it doesn't allow us to do everything. Or, more importantly, it doesn't allow us to do the thing, the thing that's elevated, the thing that's higher, a higher way of living.
So Hashem ties us down through the structure of our mitzvah (commandment), and He gives us the possibility. He says, “No, you can't have this. No, you can't have that. No, you can't have this. No, you can't have that. This is what you need to do. This is what you need to do.” And when we do those things, all of a sudden we open ourselves up to a new world of things that we could do.
Imagine a person who owns his own business. He starts up his own business and has a few people who work for him. He's busy. He does everything in the business. He's cleaning the bathroom, ordering paper towels, doing all those things. Because he's doing those things, there are other, higher-value things that he can't get access to because he's so busy, inundated with these low-level tasks.
Hashem says these low-level things are not for you. I don't want you to have every single type of food. I don't want you to always be able to be intimate with your wife. I don't want you to feel like you're open to a relationship with any woman down the street, because when those things are not options, then the things that remain are the things that are high level. Hashem says, “This is beneath you, this is beneath you, this is beneath you.” And so it feels sometimes like it's restrictive, but it's really Hashem putting the blinders on so we can focus and really hustle down the race course to be the most successful, energetic, developed person on earth. And that's what makes us unique. That's what makes our nation unique: We are limited in certain ways, and those limitations are actually removing distractions and anchors that weigh us down and allow us to achieve ultimate success in this world.