Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster reflects on Exodus and its connection to slavery and liberation.
The festival of Purim has come and gone and within the 4 weeks now leading as much as Pesach we’re in a frenzy of preparedness. Houses are turned the wrong way up as we eliminate any trace of leaven. Winter turns into spring and the Book of Exodus leads into Leviticus.
The last chapters of Exodus (35-40) read at the tip of March describe the intricacies of constructing the Mishkan, the development housing the Shekinah, the Presence of G-D.
Leviticus starts with the phrase ‘And G-D called…’ G-D called to Moses to inform him the magnificent construction built by people in His honour had actually been built for the advantage of Moses and his people, and never in an effort to exclude them.
This 1st chapter is read originally of April, within the lead-up to Pesach.
The Spanish biblical commentator Ramban (1194-1270), who finished his commentary in Acco, Israel, having himself been forced to flee Spain, states the next within the Book of Exodus:
‘This Book is the story of the primary divinely-ordained national exile and the redemption from it … The exile was not accomplished until the day they returned to their place and got here back to the extent of their forefathers. When they left Egypt, though that they had departed from the home of slavery, they were still considered to be exiles, for they were in a foreign land, wandering within the Wilderness. When they arrived at Mount Sinai and built the Mishkan and G-D returned and rested His Presence amongst them, then that they had returned to the extent of their forefathers.’
For us it continues to be vital what it means to be a slave and consider how difficult it’s to unshackle ourselves from the state of servitude. Although there are still places on this planet where physical slavery continues to operate, we now are inclined to regard slavery as an addiction to the newest fad. This could possibly be social media, public opinion, pressure groups and our own anxieties and neuroses – all those entities which hamper us from ‘breaking free’. Slavery of the addictive kind is simple to embrace and the need to ‘be free’ is harder to meet than we expect.
In March we’ve also been watching because the House of Lords Committee debates the Holocaust Memorial Bill. If this Bill is passed, Britain’s own glorious achievement in having brought concerning the abolition of slavery will probably be forgotten ceaselessly.
In 1833 Thomas Fowell Buxton enabled the eventual passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, first approved by George III. The Act gave freedom to tens of millions of individuals all over the world and is justifiably commemorated by the modest Buxton Memorial situated in Victoria Tower Gardens, near Westminster.
By contrast, this Buxton monument to life and liberty, first expressed within the Book of Exodus, will probably be shamefully overshadowed by a hideous gigantic construction to dead Jews if the present Holocaust Memorial Bill goes ahead.
What message will this ‘tourist attraction’ give the world? That Jews who were the primary to fight against slavery and actively marched with Martin Luther King and other civil rights people, including great rabbis at their head, are in 2025 only prepared to offer lip service to this country’s tremendous step forward in following probably the most sublime tenets of our Bible, the Exodus story and all it entails?
This story is the story of the journey of slavery to freedom. It still 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 war, rape and mutilation, who’ve told me that the Jewish story of the Exodus is what has kept them going through all their travails, because, just as to each Jewish man, woman and child at Pesach, the Exodus story is fully alive for them too, and so they have lived it.
The world should rejoice with us that Judaism is a faith of hope and of selecting life. They should rejoice that, in heeding the words 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 eventually led, in 1833, (ie before the reign of Queen Victoria), to the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act.
At that point the British parliament was acting within the spirit of the Book of Exodus. By contrast, the Shoah was enabled and perpetrated by Europeans caught up within the slavery of addiction: addiction to their very own negativity, hate, self-loathing and jealousy.
This Shoah-enabling spirit ought to be fought wherever encountered and eradicated at source. Because commemorating negativity only enhances it. Just ask yourself, is antisemitism actually on the wane within the countries boasting 300 Holocaust monuments, museums and memorials, do you’re thinking that? Are Jews currently protected to walk the streets in those countries?
That is the lesson we soak up these few weeks leading from Purim to Pesach. After the Purim celebration of victory over our enemies all over the place who ‘in every generation stand up to destroy us’, we finish the Book of Exodus and, as Pesach approaches, we start the Book of G-D’s calling, known in Latin as ‘Leviticus’, which is all about service. From slavery to service (the identical Hebrew root) we could have travelled miles, as did the Buxtons and the Wilberforces on their long road to the implementation of timeless Old Testament values.
