God’s charge to the Jewish people at Sinai was to be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ Nowhere is freedom found in this exhortation, even though the Jews had been freed from slavery only seven weeks prior. That is because the Jews were not liberated merely to become a free people. God wanted them and expected them to evolve into a nation committed to creating a law-abiding society. From this perspective, freedom is just a necessary precondition to achieving this. America’s founders understood this and wove this idea into the basic fabric of the democracy they were creating. What has for centuries set America apart from other nations is its synergistic linking between freedom and the law, which, of course, is something that goes to the heart of the Exodus story. The first of the national goals enumerated in the preamble to the US Constitution is ‘to form a more perfect Union, ‘ followed by ‘to establish Justice.’ We truly believe that America is and always has been a great country. Yet greatness does not equate to perfection, and America’s history is marked by episodes, slavery foremost among them, that were far from the founder’s stated goals for their emerging nation. Falling short of the mark, as the American and Jewish people have done more times than either would like to remember, does not negate their aspirational national goals. It just means that we must be prepared to honestly assess morally challenging situations when they arise and then recommit ourselves to our goals, be it becoming ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ or creating ‘a more perfect Union.’ Never losing sight of this is the true enduring lesson of Exodus.
About the author
Reuven Travis has taught a wide range of classes, including Jewish law, Bible, and Jewish history, to students from grade two through high school. He received his BA from Dartmouth College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He holds a master’s degree in teaching from Mercer University and a master’s in Judaic studies from Spertus College. In addition to this Curious Student’s Guide series, he has also published three scholarly works on the books of Job, Numbers, and Genesis, respectively.
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