What is freedom?
A bird sailing high in the sky? But even the sky is a cage.
What is freedom?
The ability to choose between more than one choice? Maybe. But if someone has four options to choose from, and I only have two, is he more free than I am? Can you square freedom? And if you can, what is the square root of it?
À mon avis, freedom is not equivalent to being free. You can be free, away from the confines of prison for example, but not have freedom. On the other hand, you can have freedom, but not be free, for example, if you are in prison and have an hour for yourself, but you are not allowed to leave the prison. We always have the right to freedom, but not the right to be free.
The clicking of the typewriter stopped abruptly. Jonah Rosenthals' hands were frozen above the keys, poised to write his next thought. But his next thought refused to come. "What am I writing?" He muttered to himself. "Freedom doesn't exist, not in times like these. No one is free here..." He leaned back in his chair and stared at the paper. He stared at the blank space, where there were not any letters. "Is freedom the empty page or the part of the page that the writing covers? Hey, David," he called, although he never turned his head to glance over at his brother, "is freedom the empty part of the page or the part with writing on it?"
Jonah's older brother David looked up from the book he was reading on the couch in the corner of the study. "Are you writing another essay?"
"No. No, I'm not." Jonah answered. "I'm not writing an essay. I'm writing something for myself."
"Like a journal?"
"No. I just want to find definitions for things I demand."
"So, you don't have freedom?"
"No. We don't, David. The store is closed, Papa got fired from his job, and nobody except the Goldsteins talk to us anymore."
"Marie from down the street still talks to me."
"Yeah, maybe to you," Jonah said and rolled his eyes. "She doesn't talk to us though." Jonah had never been jealous of his brothers' relationships, the girls had all been quite plain, even if some of them, like Marie, were nice to talk to. Moreover; had been nice to talk to.
At this moment their mother walked in. Esther was beautiful. She had dark brown hair and soft hazel eyes, eyes that neither David nor Jonah had had the pleasure to inherit. David had received his father's rich and sugary brown eyes, and Jonah had startling blue ones, courtesy of his father's uncle. She was always busy, even now, when the shop was closed and there were almost no visitors to welcome into their home except for the occasional drop-by that the children's blue-eyed great uncle made. "What are you two squabbling about?" She asked rather sternly.
"About free-," David started but was interrupted by his younger brother before he could finish the explanation.
"About what it means to be Jewish now." Jonah mused.
"Being Jewish means the same thing it's always meant. There's no need to discuss it. Now David, please go help your father with the car, it's...it's got to be taken to the garage for repairs." David rose at his mother's words and left the room, happy to escape the tension that had flared up the second his little brother had mentioned being Jewish.
Esther closed the door behind David and leaned against it.
"You're going to have to burn that paper, Jonah." She said and crossed her arms.
"I never wrote anything about being Jewish." He answered. "I just wrote about freedom. And then I took the liberty of not writing the rest of it." Relief washed over Esther's face as she heard he hadn't spelled any words out on paper.
"Well then you can go and join your brother with the car, or you can help me in the kitchen. Hannah's still sick, she shouldn't prepare the food."
"Alrighty, I'll help."
"Thank you, Jonah."
"Just give me a few minutes." He asked. "I promise I won't write anything about us." He said with a small smile that was meant to reassure but in truth, troubled his mother.
"Alright. But if you aren't in the kitchen in ten minutes..." She warned.
"I will be, no worries." He promised. Esther smiled weakly and opened the door, but as she was about to leave Jonah called out to her again. "Mama, is freedom the empty part of the page or the written part?"
"Freedom is not knowing what's going to be written next." She answered without a second thought, and then she left the study. He slowly typed the words down but he didn't agree with them, not quite. He stood up to go, but immediately sat down again.
Freedom is owning the typewriter.