In preparing for the upcoming Passover holiday and the associated Seders—festive meals when millions of Jews and their families will sit down as a community to recount the Exodus from Egypt, liberation from slavery, the revelation at Sinai, and ideas about freedom—I have been thinking about which lesson to share with my family and friends who will be joining around the holiday table with me this week. One concept that has struck me as particularly relevant today involves the idea of celebrating our freedom but recognizing the responsibility to care for the larger civil sphere; I am constantly seeing far too many around me who are not showing respect for others and spaces in our shared community.

Taking a cue from Isaiah Berlin and his idea that there is a distinction between “liberated from” and being “liberated to,” the story of Passover represents a potent moment where a people were liberated from servitude and oppression. While the Israelites were allowed to grow and celebrate their independence, it is critical to remember that the Israelites still had communal obligations and responsibilities. As Rabbi David Wolpe astutely notes, “A man in a desert alone is not free. Standing in a developed society with a thousand obligations but also a million possibilities, that is freedom.” Thus, the Passover holiday is a powerful reminder that while we have the luxury of autonomy and self-determination today, we still must live lives promoting service to others and working to mend and improve both the world at large and our local communities.

Sadly, the lesson of caring for one’s local community and neighborhood seems to have been lost in our hyper-polarized, selfish, post-COVID world of echo chambers and social media bubbles. In the last day alone in New York City, I watched dozens of individuals of all backgrounds avoid paying their fares for transportation and a pregnant woman ask for a seat on a bus only to be ignored.

I witnessed adults try to kick children out of a park so that they could set up their pickle ball courts even though the area was intended as a children’s recreation space. I even watched a father encourage his child to pick just-bloomed flowers from Central Park while wearing a logoed hat from an expensive prep school, suggesting that this person was not a tourist but someone who is a local member of the community. When another family asked the father to stop destroying what were essentially public goods so that everyone can enjoy the new flowers, the father aggressively yelled back, “What are you going to do, call Alvin Bragg?”—the soft-on-crime district attorney that has let safety fall apart in the city.

Of course, many New Yorkers still care about the city to a certain degree, but what I am witnessing here and nationwide is not a net positive. As a general phenomenon, there is little question that civil society is not as strong as it should be today. There, too, has been a widespread national decline in civic and social spaces and places where people of varied backgrounds come together regularly. We need to be far more kind in and cognizant of our local communities. This is a key teaching of the Passover holiday that is being overlooked and going unpracticed by many today.

Sadly, many scholars are also missing the salience of small, simple acts as supportive of a healthy civil sphere as well. When the Pew Research Center recently released a report on what makes society thrive, nothing was mentioned about fairly mundane and simple acts of local community service and care for others. The survey asked about making choices that help reduce the effects of global climate change, the importance of following current events, and joining demonstrations about community issues. The study ultimately concluded that that while voting is a critical piece of good citizenship, “taking steps to improve the environment and promote public health are also seen as imperative.” Certainly, these behaviors may all contribute to social capital and healthy communities, but critically important questions were not asked about local and simple actions like caring for public shared spaces and looking out for one’s neighbors or children.

We as a society need to have far more discussions about modest, local civic behaviors that benefit the public and one’s neighbors. We are not doing that as we move into the post-pandemic world. So, this week, I will highlight that we must celebrate our freedom and our concurrent obligations to help others and be kind and communal. Passover teaches that we have a responsibility to each other in our communities. Yet this lesson is being lost on too many today. There is no reason we can’t relearn this lesson and improve our communities and civil societies going forward.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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