Yale University President, Ezra Stiles stated on May 8, 1783: “Moses, the man of God, assembled three million people – the number of people in America in 1776.” “Let my people go” and “Go down Moses” became the pillar of fire for the Abolitionists. “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10) is inscribed on the Liberty Bell. The Statue of Liberty highlights a Moses-like tablet. The biography of Harriet Tubman, who dedicated her life to freeing other slaves, is called The Moses of Her People. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was motivated by the laws of Moses, which condemn slavery. She promoted the teaching of Hebrew. Martin Luther King was considered the Moses of his age. Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman, was known as “The Moses of the West.”
A statue of Moses stares at the Speaker of the House of Representatives, towers above the Supreme Court Justices (in addition to seven additional Moses statues in the Supreme Court Building), is featured (along with a statue of Maimonides and 21 additional Law Givers) in the US House of Representatives Rayburn Building subway station and is found in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. Ten Commandment monuments were erected on the grounds of the Texas and the Oklahoma State Capitols. Cecile DeMille‘s hit movie, The Ten Commandments, promoted US liberty, morality and the freedom of religion and expression, in contrast to Soviet oppression.
Theodore White wrote in The Making of the President: “It is as if Kennedy, a younger Moses, had led an elderly Joshua [LBJ] to the height of Mount Nebo…and there shown him the Promised Land which he himself would never entering but which Joshua would make his own.”
5. The numerical value of the Hebrew letter of the Exodus – יציאת מצרים – is 891, which is equal to the combined numerical value of the three leaders of the Exodus, Moses (משה – 345), Miriam (מרים – 290) and Aaron (אהרן – 256).
6. Passover (פסח) highlights the fact that the Jewish People were passed-over (פסח) by the angel of death, in defiance of conventional wisdom. Non-normative disasters have characterized Jewish history ever since slavery in Egypt and the Exodus: the destruction of the two Temples, exiles, pogroms, expulsions, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, daily Arab/Muslim terrorism and wars, etc. The 1948 re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty – against global, regional, economic and military odds – constituted a modern day Exodus and Parting of the Sea. Principle-driven tenacious defiance of the odds is a prerequisite to Jewish deliverance in 2014, as it was during The Exodus some 3,450 years ago.
7. Passover’s centrality in Judaism is highlighted by the first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Passover ethos is included in daily Jewish prayers, Sabbath and holiday prayers, the blessing over the wine, and the blessing upon circumcision, the prayer fixed in the Mezuzah (doorpost) and in the annual family retelling of the Exodus on the eve of Passover. Passover symbolizes the unity of – and interdependence between – the People of Israel, the Torah of Israel and the Land of Israel. In Hebrew, Israel (ישראל) means “overcoming” (Jacob was named Israel because he wrestled and overcame the angel) and it is the acronym of the Jewish Patriarchs (אברהם, יצחק, יעקב) and Matriarchs (שרה, רבקה, רחל, לאה).
8. David Ben Gurion, the Founding Father of the Jewish State: “More than 300 years ago, a ship by the name of the Mayflower left Plymouth for the New World. It was a great event in American and English history. I wonder how many Englishmen or how many Americans know exactly the date when that ship left Plymouth, how many people were on the ship, and what was the kind of bread the people ate when they left Plymouth.