Is someone who is bound necessarily a slave? And is an independent person truly free at all times?
If you, too, have wondered why we conduct our lives according to two calendars in parallel—the Gregorian calendar on the one hand and the Hebrew calendar on the other—this column is for you.
We usually think of slavery and freedom in terms of chains. Whoever is bound is a slave; whoever is released is free. But Rabbi Isaac Arama, author of Akedat Yitzhak (Isaac's Binding), offers a far more surprising definition: the true difference between a slave and a free person lies not in physical force, but in control over time.
This is how he explains why the first commandment given to the people of Israel as a people was not ritual, but almost civic in nature: the sanctification of the new month. Tracking the new moon and constructing a calendar that updates accordingly. Even before Shabbat, even before dietary laws—“This month shall be for you the first of the months.” Not by coincidence.
A slave, Arama writes, is not master of his time. His day is dictated from the outside. He rises, works, rests—not because he chose to, but because it was decided for him. His time is not his own. That is the essence of bondage. A free person, by contrast, is one who can determine a daily order, set beginnings and endings, decide when something ends and when a new page opens.
Here lies the profound insight: sanctifying the new month is not merely an astronomical act of observing the moon. It is a philosophical declaration. The moon disappears and renews itself, breaking an ancient worldview that held the world to be governed by rigid, blind, unchangeable laws—a worldview common in Egypt and in ancient philosophy. Rabbi Isaac Arama teaches that renewal points to the existence of a Renewer of the world. Not everything is predetermined. The world is not deterministic, and outcomes are not fixed in advance. We have control over ourselves—our future, our choices and our condition.
This awareness is what drives us to act, to create, to d and to strive: the belief that something can be different as a result of choice, decision and initiative.
And when God says to Israel the word “for you”—that is, I grant you the authority to determine when the month begins—He grants them not only a calendar, but a consciousness of freedom. You are not subject to fate, luck or blind nature. You are partners in the governance of time. You can initiate a beginning.
In other words, leaving slavery is not merely a geographic transition from Egypt to the desert. It is a psychological shift—from a mindset of “this is my fate” to a mindset of “I can renew.”
In my role as CEO of Fiverr, I faced a significant decision: selling the company versus remaining a public company with limited liquidity. The feeling was that without some form of change—such as an acquisition—the situation would remain the same. Simply engaging in the examination of alternatives—going private, a SPAC, a sale or a new market listing—created, on a cognitive level, a sense of renewal, which itself felt like a form of freedom.
This week, I read that Israel is approaching an optical fiber bottleneck. In other words, in the coming years, we are expected to reach peak capacity, especially as data usage grows by about 30% annually. There is no doubt that diplomatic, political and economic thinking and action—through new agreements or the renewal of existing ones, including undersea cables connecting Israel to the world—can address this challenge. The very awareness that a solution must be found may even advance peace. This, then, is action that does not bind, but enables a long-term solution.
This idea also resonates with Aristotle, who viewed a free person not as someone who acts without constraints, but as someone capable of initiating a new action through conscious choice. In the worlds of management and leadership, the translation is sharp: a leader who does not control their time—schedules, decision-making pace and the ability to pause and change direction—is not truly free, even if they hold authority. Managerial freedom begins the moment a person stops reacting automatically to a given reality and understands that they have the capacity to renew, redefine priorities and open a new chapter in time, rather than merely operate within the old one.
This may be one of the most relevant insights for modern life. Many of us are not enslaved to people, but to schedules, inertia and habits. We live with the sense that everything is predetermined—the career, the system, the personal story. The sanctification of the new month offers a subversive thought: freedom begins the moment a person believes they have the ability to begin again.
Before changing reality, we change our relationship with time. Because one who is not master of their time is not master of their life, so take control of your time.