Joe Ben Malinis a Hesder Yeshiva student from America and will be joining the Israel Defense Forces next year.
There is no doubt in my mind that many leaders of the American Revolution and the abolitionist movement were devout Christians who cherished the Bible and saw themselves as carrying out the word of G-d, but can the comparison be made between them and the Exodus?
Stuart Halpern and Jacob Kupietzky created The Promise of Liberty Haggada. This Haggada has on its cover an illustration of the splitting of the Sea, and in one of the ancient Israelites hands there is a large American flag. This Haggadah highlights the similarities between the Exodus and the fight for American independence and equal rights through the eyes of famous American personalities.
The Haggada also quotes various American Founding Fathers and important people in the fight for African American emancipation and equal rights who explain that their struggle was biblically ordained. There are also many stories about “Jewishness” throughout American history. All these quotes and stories seem to be designed to compel one to believe that American Judeo-Christian values are no different than Jewish values, and the society that Americans have created is one that is propper according to the Torah.
It would be nice if Americans saw themselves as similar to holy Biblical figures and believed that they are fighting for the same ideas as our forefathers and prophets, but that just is not the case.
American colonials were indubitably just for fighting against British oppression, but their right for self-determination has little to do with the Jewish Exodus. The Jewish Exodus at its essence was to escape the immorality of Egypt. The Founding Fathers did not see the British as a morally corrupt oppressor lacking in all human decency, and that therefore must be eradicated. Many of America’s principles about government and individual rights were taken originally from the British and then slightly modified by America’s founding fathers. The Americans just wanted representation, the tyranny of the British was in not allowing the Americans to have an identity. They did not enslave them and force them to do evil, like the Egyptians did to the Jewish People.
The Promise of Liberty Haggada also features selections from the writings of Thomas Paine. Paine was a highly intelligent and talented American revolutionary, but his ideas related to kingship do not align with Judaism and our goals for Redemption. The authors quote Paine stating that kings were never supposed to rule over Israel and the Jews were punished for asking for one. There is some truth in what Paine wrote, yet all believing Jews look forward to the messianic age which has as a central feature a Jewish king who will rule
in Israel. In the Rambam's Hilchot Melachim written by the great Rambam, he calls Moses and Joshua kings, this was before Israel’s act of asking for a king. On top of that, if we were never truly supposed to have a king then why didn’t G-d cease kingship within Israel after Saul instead of appointing David? It is clear that there is in fact nothing evil about having a king, otherwise Moshiach would not exist.
Emancipation and equal rights may well be America’s greatest accomplishments. But they are simply incomparable to the Exodus of Egypt. We were not just enslaved but we were being influenced by the Egyptians to worship idols and the land of Egypt itself was morally grotesque and so was not comparable to Israel. The Gemara asks why the Jews didn't just stay in the part of Egypt they were living in, Goshen after destroying Egypt: couldn’t Egypt just be their holy land? And yet G-d took us out.
African American slaves on the other hand did not want to leave America, because America was not evil in its essence, they just wanted equality. Let us recall the Midrash that reveals that the Jews in Egypt that wanted to stay in Egypt (as equals) were killed by G-d during the Plague of Darkness.
Halpern and Kupietzky's Haggadah quotes a letter by David Einhorn, a Reform clergyman where he expressed his opinion that Judaism does not permit slavery. It might hurt for some modern Jews to learn this but slavery is not wrong according to Jewish Law. Just because the current societal norm is against a Jewish idea does not mean that a person can change what the Torah says. Of course, there are detailed laws about the respectful way slaves must be treated but there is still the concept of slavery within Judaism. Many of our greatest leaders owned slaves, including Avraham Avinu, David HaMelech, and others. Even if African American slaves were treated with the same respect that the Torah demands, they still would have wanted freedom.
Even though I fundamentally disagree with most of the commentary in The Promise of Liberty Haggada there is no denying that it is probably one of the best illustrated and designed Haggadahs available. It is truly a work of art. A lot of effort and hard work was dedicated to it and it is a shame that erroneous ideas were included with such art.
This new Haggadah shows the extent that far too many Jews in Galut will go to appease the modern tormentors of Jews: the purveyors of western decadence and western morality. Western society seduces us into foregoing our ideal Jewish lives and nation and deceives us into believing that their goals are no different than ours. We must not be fooled by the lack of nuance of the Christian’s understanding of our Torah. It is clear that if they understood the Torah to a greater extent, they would have not attached their deeply religious beliefs to their struggles for freedom. The logical basis itself is enough of a reason to throw off the yoke of British oppression and give equal rights to African Americans.
One wonders if it may be more preferable for many of today's Jews to be slaves in some modern Egyptian slavery because as the Midrash states, the Jews in Egyptian slavery at least held true to three things; their names (national identity), their modesty, and their language (Hebrew). There are a few Jews that do have some Jewish identity, but too many of them think that Jewish identity means bowing down to the most powerful nation of the world instead of pursuing authentic Hebrew independence in the Torah context.
