America's Prophet; How the Story of Moses Shaped America

269 Pages·2016·2.43 MB·English

by  Bruce Feiler

America’s Prophet
Moses and the American Story
Bruce Feiler
For Debbie and Alan Rottenberg
Next year with you
Contents
I Moses! Moses!
II An Errand into the Wilderness
III Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land
IV A Moses for America
V Let My People Go
VI The War Between the Moseses
VII Mother of Exiles
VIII The Ten Commandments
IX I’ve Seen the Promised Land
X A Narrative of Hope

Giving Thanks
The Books of Moses
Select Bibliography
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by Bruce Feiler
Copyright
About the Publisher
I
MOSES! MOSES!
T
HANKSGIVING IS THE mandatory holiday in my family. It’s the one time of year
when we clear our calendars, pack up gifts, and travel across the country for a
ritual that is one part Americana, one part Hanukkah, one part nostalgia. The
event begins when my mother polishes dozens of apples, pears, pomegranates,
and kumquats and arranges them with a pumpkin, some Indian corn, and
cranberries to create a cornucopian centerpiece. It continues with Thanksgiving
dinner, a mix of trendy roasted this and that along with some embarrassing
1950s classics we love, notably a hot fruit compote made with five different
kinds of canned fruit baked with macaroons and sherry. During the meal, in a
custom that makes me cringe yet always seems to work, my sister insists that we
go around the table and say why we are thankful. The weekend concludes with
an early celebration of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. It’s a classic
American event, a mix of church, state, shopping, and turkey.
Passover is the equivalent holiday for my in-laws. Every spring, my mother-
in-law hosts thirty-five people on one night and a different thirty-five people the
second night for a ritualized retelling of the Israelites’ escape from slavery in
Egypt. The food is equally ritualized: chicken soup with matzoh balls; gefilte
fish with hot pink horseradish sauce; “Debbie’s tasty brisket” with carrots and
potatoes; and Auntie Barbara’s Jell-O mold with, yup, canned fruit. Passover is
so important to my in-laws that when they expanded their home some years ago
they redid not their bedroom or bathroom but their dining room, just for these
two nights a year. The centrality of these two holidays to our respective families
is such that when my mother met my future mother-in-law for the first time they
retreated into a corner and came out a few minutes later with smiles on their
faces: The Feilers would get Thanksgiving; the Rottenbergs would get Passover.
Though it took me a while to realize it, discovering the unexpected bridge
that links these two holidays would occupy the coming years of my life.
Before attending my first Passover with my in-laws, I warned them that I
would make the world’s most insufferable seder guest. I had just returned from a
yearlong journey through the Middle East, in which I actually crossed the likely
yearlong journey through the Middle East, in which I actually crossed the likely
Red Sea, tasted manna, and climbed the supposed Mount Sinai. In the liturgical
list of Four Sons included in the seder service, I would surely be the Pedantic
One. In ensuing years, I continued my biblical wanderings, traveling through
Israel, Iraq, and, with my bride, Iran. “A honeymoon in the Axis of Evil,” she
called it. A year later she gave birth to identical twin girls: Eden, for the Garden
of Eden; and Tybee, for the beach near Savannah where I grew up and where we
celebrated our wedding. They seemed like emblems of our lives: ten toes in the
Middle East, ten toes at home.
One theme of these travels was exploring the explosive mix of religion and
politics. But I realized upon returning that the front line of that battle had
migrated back home. The United States was involved in its own internal war
over God that in many ways mirrored—and in some cases fed—the wars being
waged in the Middle East. The buzzwords only hinted at the battle lines:
left/right, red/blue, believer/nonbeliever, extremist/moderate.
These tensions were reflected in all the usual places of modern discourse—
the ballot box, the call-in show, the Bible study, the book group. Yet they were
most acute at home. So many of the laments I heard about religion were
variations on a theme: “I can’t talk to my brother about it without getting into a
fight.” “My father is a Neanderthal.” “My daughter is making a big mistake.”
“He doesn’t understand what made this country great.” With greater mobility
and more choices, we no longer passed down religion seamlessly from one
generation to the next. Nearly half of Americans change religious affiliations in
their lives, a Pew study concluded. Stuck with our parents’ genes, we seemed
less interested in being burdened with their God as well. And we certainly didn’t
want to talk to them about it.
Thanksgiving, the symbol of American blessing, the one holiday that marked
the union of God, the people, and the land, had, for many families, become a
minefield of fraught conversation.
Around this time I began noticing something else. On a trip to visit my in-
laws on Cape Cod, we stopped off in Plymouth and I took a tour of the
Mayflower II. A reenactor was reading from the Bible. “Exodus fourteen,” he
explained. “The Israelites are trapped in front of the Red Sea, and the Egyptians
are about to catch them. The people complain, and Moses declares, ‘Hold your
peace! The Lord shall fight for you.’ Our leader read us that passage during our
crossing.” Moses, on board the Mayflower.
On a trip to visit my parents in Savannah, I stopped off at my childhood
synagogue. A letter from George Washington hangs in the lobby, sent after his
election to the presidency: “May the same wonder-working Deity, who long
since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the
promised land, whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in
establishing these United States as an independent nation, still continue to water
them with the dews of Heaven.” Exodus, on Washington’s pen in the first weeks
of the presidency.
On a trip to visit my sister in Philadelphia, we went to see the Liberty Bell.
The quotation on its face is from Leviticus 25, which God gave to Moses on
Mount Sinai: PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE
INHABITANTS THEREOF. The law of Sinai, in the bell tower where the Declaration
of Independence was signed.
In coming weeks, I found a similar story over and over again. Columbus
comparing himself to Moses when he sailed in 1492. George Whitefield quoting
Moses as he traveled the colonies in the 1730s forging the Great Awakening.
Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, comparing King George to the pharaoh.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, in the summer of 1776,
proposing that Moses be on the seal of the United States. And the references
didn’t stop. Harriet Tubman adopting Moses’ name on the Underground
Railroad. Abraham Lincoln being eulogized as Moses’ incarnation. The Statue
of Liberty being molded in Moses’ honor. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin
Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson tapping into Moses during wartime. Cecil B.
DeMille recasting Moses as a hero for the Cold War. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
likening himself to Moses on the night before he was killed. The sheer ubiquity
was staggering and, for me, had been completely unknown.
For four hundred years, one figure stands out as the surprising symbol of
America. One person has inspired more Americans than any other. One man is
America’s true founding father. His name is Moses.
For two years, I traveled to touchstones in American history and explored
the role of the Bible, the Exodus, and Moses in inspiring generation after
generation of Americans. I examined how American icons of different eras—
from the slave girl Eliza carrying her son to freedom across the Ohio River in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin to an orphaned Superman being drawn out of a spaceship
from Krypton—were etched in the image of Moses. And I probed the ongoing
role of Moses today, from the Ten Commandments in public places to the role of
the United States as a beacon for immigrants. Even a cursory review of
American history indicates that Moses has emboldened leaders of all stripes—
patriot and loyalist, slave and master, Jew and Christian, fat cat and communist.
Could the persistence of his story serve as a reminder of our shared national
values? Could he serve as a unifying force in a disunifying time? If Moses could
split the Red Sea, could he unsplit America?
Just as I was completing my journey, the 2008 presidential election was
reaching its historic climax. Once again, Moses played a prominent role. Hillary
reaching its historic climax. Once again, Moses played a prominent role. Hillary
Clinton compared herself to the Hebrew prophet. With “every bit of progress
you try to make,” she said, “there’s always gonna be somebody to say, ‘You
know, I think we should go back to Egypt.’” She asked, “Do we really need to
move forward on transformative social change?” before answering: “Yes, we
do.” Barack Obama also placed himself in the Mosaic tradition, though he
claimed the role of Moses’ successor. “We are in the presence of a lot of
Moseses,” he said in Selma, Alabama, in 2007. “I thank the Moses generation;
but we’ve got to remember that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses
was…he didn’t cross over the river to see the Promised Land.” He concluded:
“Today we’re called to be the Joshuas of our time, to be the generation that finds
our way across this river.”
Obama’s use of the Exodus story became so prominent that his rival, John
McCain, issued a video in which he mocked Obama for anointing himself “The
One.” The video concluded with a clip of Charlton Heston splitting the Red Sea
in The Ten Commandments. But the echoes of the Exodus only continued. On
the day before the election, the African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop for
Ohio stood up before 60,000 people in Columbus and thanked God for “having
given us a Moses and a Martin called Barack Obama.” As civil rights pioneer
Andrew Young said to me days later, “We are living in biblical time. The
amount of time that passed between Martin’s assassination and Obama’s election
—forty years—is the same amount of time the Israelites spent in the desert.”
Four centuries after the earliest colonists in North America likened
themselves to their Israelite forebears, Americans once again found meaning by
drawing parallels between their ongoing struggles and those of the central
figures of the Hebrew Bible. The analogy took on added poignance as
Americans again confronted challenging times, with economic turmoil at home
and a shifting role in the world. As with every hard time in American life—from
the frozen cliffs of early New England to the snowy camps of Valley Forge;
from the fractured fields of the Civil War to the bloody streets of the civil rights
era—Americans turned to the Exodus for direction, inspiration, and hope. And
so they did in another moment of national anxiety, when the country was asking,
What is the meaning of America? What are our values? Will we rise again? As
he had for generations, one figure held the answers and pointed the way. And I
couldn’t help wondering if our ability to repair our damaged sense of purpose
and reclaim our national unity might depend on our ability to recall the
centuries-old interplay between the Thanksgiving and Passover narratives and
remember the central figure in both stories and why he had proven so
inspirational all along.
II
AN ERRAND INTO THE WILDERNESS
T
HANKSGIVING BEGINS EARLY in America’s Hometown. It doesn’t start on the
last Thursday in November, the day Abraham Lincoln first invited Americans to
observe a festival of praise to honor the country’s “fruitful fields and healthful
skies.” It doesn’t begin on the second Saturday in October, the day the re-created
Pilgrim village outside Plymouth, Massachusetts, hosts the first of its
seventeenth-century Harvest Dinners with turkey, mussels, corn pudding, and
psalms. It kicks off, instead, on a Friday in mid-June, the day the members of the
Old Colony Club, the “oldest gentlemen’s club in America,” board rickety
vessels on Plymouth’s clam-covered shore and set out toward the mysterious
Clark’s Island. For these Keepers of Thanksgiving, this excursion is their annual
pilgrimage to the accidental spot of America’s First Sabbath.
Clark’s Island is the forgotten front door of America’s founding story. On a
stormy Friday evening in 1620, a band of nine beleaguered Pilgrims, half a day’s
sail from their families on the Mayflower, were scouting the Massachusetts
coastline in an open boat for a suitable place to settle. Having barely escaped
from a skirmish with Indians that morning, the Pilgrims were frightened, lost,
and out of food. But as the afternoon wore on, their situation worsened. And at
dusk, fierce winds and rain nearly overturned their vessel, forcing the men
ashore. The wreck was the latest deflating detour on the Pilgrims’ flight from
slavery to freedom. For these men had crossed the sea and arrived in this great
and terrible wilderness, convinced they were on a mission from God to escape
the oppression of a latter-day pharaoh and build in America a new Promised
Land.
Everything the Pilgrims had done for two decades was designed to fulfill
their dream of creating God’s New Israel. When they first left England for
Holland in 1608, they described themselves as the chosen people, casting off the
yoke of their pharaoh, King James. A dozen years later when they embarked on
a grander exodus, to America, their leader, William Bradford, proclaimed their
mission to be as vital as that of “Moses and the Israelites when they went out of
Egypt.” And when, after sixty-six days on the Atlantic, they finally arrived at
Egypt.” And when, after sixty-six days on the Atlantic, they finally arrived at
Cape Cod, they were brought to their knees in gratitude for safe passage through
their own Red Sea. “May our children rightly say,” Bradford wrote, echoing a
famous passage in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Moses, “Our fathers were
Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in the
wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice.”
And the Pilgrims weren’t alone in applying the Exodus story to their lives in
the New World. The settlers at Jamestown had likened themselves to Moses
when they arrived in Virginia in 1607. John Winthrop, gliding into Boston
Harbor aboard the Arbella in 1630, quoted Deuteronomy three times in his
sermon, “Model of Christian Charity,” and ended by quoting Moses’ farewell
speech to the Israelites on Mount Nebo. Cotton Mather, writing in 1702, said
these pioneers had no choice. “The leader of a people in a wilderness had need
be a Moses,” he said. “And if a Moses had not led the people of Plymouth
Colony,” he wrote of Bradford, then the colony would not have survived.
Yet these leaders did have a choice. For centuries, European explorers had
set out for new lands without using expressions like pharaoh and promised land,
New Covenant and New Israel, Exodus and Moses. By choosing these evocative
lyrics, the founders of America introduced the themes of oppression and
redemption, anticipation and disenchantment, freedom and law, that would carry
through four hundred years of American history. Because of them, the story of
Moses became the story of America.
But why? Why did these leaders choose this three-thousand-year-old story?
Why did they take an ancient tale, unproven and unprovable, and transform it
into a revolutionary ideal that would sacrifice lives, launch wars, unmoor
millions of families from their lives and propel them through uncertain waters
into an unknown wilderness based only on an untested notion of freedom? In
short: Why did this story have such power?

ON BOARD THE small fleet of boats heading toward Clark’s Island this afternoon,
the men of the Old Colony Club were ebullient. This annual excursion was one
of the highlights of their year, along with the August clambake, Past Presidents
Night in the fall, and Forefathers Day, held every December since 1769, when
the members dress in top hats, bear arms, and celebrate the landing on Plymouth
Rock with “a breakfast that can’t be beat.” The men, ranging in age from old to
older, were more casual today, drinking beer and waving at other boaters on the
water.
“Plymouth Harbor is naturally shallow,” explained Roger Randall, a lifelong
resident. When I first pitched up in town, I quickly learned that the Pilgrims’