Hebrew scholar and Jewish tutorial Irene Lancaster displays on Exodus and its connection to slavery and liberation.
The pageant of Purim has come and gone and within the 4 weeks now main as much as Pesach we’re in a frenzy of preparedness. Homes are turned the other way up as we eliminate any hint of leaven. Winter turns into spring and the Ebook of Exodus leads into Leviticus.
The final chapters of Exodus (35-40) learn on the finish of March describe the intricacies of establishing the Mishkan, the development housing the Shekinah, the Presence of G-D.
Leviticus begins with the phrase ‘And G-D known as…’ G-D known as to Moses to inform him the magnificent development constructed by folks in His honour had truly been constructed for the advantage of Moses and his folks, and never so as to exclude them.
This 1st chapter is learn at the start of April, within the lead-up to Pesach.
The Spanish biblical commentator Ramban (1194-1270), who completed his commentary in Acco, Israel, having himself been pressured to flee Spain, states the next within the Ebook of Exodus:
‘This Ebook is the story of the primary divinely-ordained nationwide exile and the redemption from it … The exile was not accomplished till the day they returned to their place and got here again to the extent of their forefathers. After they left Egypt, regardless that they’d departed from the home of slavery, they had been nonetheless thought of to be exiles, for they had been in a overseas land, wandering within the Wilderness. After they arrived at Mount Sinai and constructed the Mishkan and G-D returned and rested His Presence amongst them, then they’d returned to the extent of their forefathers.’
For us it’s nonetheless vital what it means to be a slave and take into account how troublesome it’s to unshackle ourselves from the state of servitude. Though there are nonetheless locations on the earth the place bodily slavery continues to function, we now have a tendency to treat slavery as an dependancy to the most recent fad. This might be social media, public opinion, strain teams and our personal anxieties and neuroses – all these entities which hamper us from ‘breaking free’. Slavery of the addictive type is straightforward to embrace and the will to ‘be free’ is more durable to satisfy than we predict.
In March we now have additionally been watching because the Home of Lords Committee debates the Holocaust Memorial Invoice. If this Invoice is handed, Britain’s personal superb achievement in having introduced concerning the abolition of slavery will probably be forgotten eternally.
In 1833 Thomas Fowell Buxton enabled the eventual passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, first accredited by George III. The Act gave freedom to thousands and thousands of individuals around the globe and is justifiably commemorated by the modest Buxton Memorial located in Victoria Tower Gardens, close to Westminster.
Against this, this Buxton monument to life and liberty, first expressed within the Ebook of Exodus, will probably be shamefully overshadowed by a hideous gigantic development to useless Jews if the present Holocaust Memorial Invoice goes forward.
What message will this ‘vacationer attraction’ give the world? That Jews who had been the primary to combat in opposition to slavery and actively marched with Martin Luther King and different civil rights folks, together with nice rabbis at their head, are in 2025 solely ready to provide lip service to this nation’s super leap ahead in following probably the most chic tenets of our Bible, the Exodus story and all it entails?
This story is the story of the journey of slavery to freedom. It nonetheless enthralls so many peoples everywhere in the world, not least within the continent of Africa. In my very own work I’ve encountered many victims of slavery, civil conflict, rape and mutilation, who’ve informed me that the Jewish story of the Exodus is what has saved them going by means of all their travails, as a result of, simply as to each Jewish man, girl and baby at Pesach, the Exodus story is absolutely alive for them too, and so they have lived it.
The world ought to rejoice with us that Judaism is a faith of hope and of selecting life. They need to rejoice that, in heeding the phrases of the Exodus story retold by Jews everywhere in the world in lower than 4 weeks, a British monarch, George III, enabled the method which finally led, in 1833, (ie earlier than the reign of Queen Victoria), to the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act.
At the moment the British parliament was performing within the spirit of the Ebook of Exodus. Against this, the Shoah was enabled and perpetrated by Europeans caught up within the slavery of dependancy: dependancy to their very own negativity, hate, self-loathing and jealousy.
This Shoah-enabling spirit must be fought wherever encountered and eradicated at supply. As a result of commemorating negativity solely enhances it. Simply ask your self, is antisemitism truly on the wane within the nations boasting 300 Holocaust monuments, museums and memorials, do you suppose? Are Jews at present secure to stroll the streets in these nations?
That’s the lesson we soak up these few weeks main from Purim to Pesach. After the Purim celebration of victory over our enemies in every single place who ‘in each era rise as much as destroy us’, we end the Ebook of Exodus and, as Pesach approaches, we begin the Ebook of G-D’s calling, recognized in Latin as ‘Leviticus’, which is all about service. From slavery to service (the identical Hebrew root) we may have travelled miles, as did the Buxtons and the Wilberforces on their lengthy street to the implementation of timeless Outdated Testomony values.
