No Slave ever Escaped Egypt...
(Thoughts for MLK day and this Shabbat)

Carved in granite, looking with austerity over the Mall in Washington, the face of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial awaits the day celebrating on man on whom it is modeled.   The starkness of the portrayal, the defiance etched in the stone of the monument that took fifteen years to create, has not been without controversy.  Many, within the African American community and without, have expressed criticism that the stern posture and affect of Dr. King does a disservice to his legacy of nonviolence and peace and some have blamed the disconnect on the fact that the sculpture was undertaken by a Chinese artist whose work in China included many statues of totalitarian communist dictator Mao Zedung.   Leaving aside the valid concerns, the counterarguments from King’s own family and even my own similar misgivings on first seeing pictures of the memorial, there is significance in taking seriously the image of Dr. King as both a man thoroughly committed to bringing peace and an unmoving, implacable critic of injustice. 

As we mark his birthday this weekend, the Jewish community also reads in the Torah about the birth of his great antecedent, Moses.   The opening chapter of the book of Exodus, whose name refers to the eventual liberation of the children of Israel from the bonds of slavery, begins with a description of how the family of Jacob went from being honored guests in the land of Pharaoh to a nation trapped and forced into hard labor.   By the time we turn the page, the Israelites are a beaten people, without even being able to take a breath to dream of a different world.   The word that the Torah uses for the “burden” laid upon the Israelites is from the same root as the word for patience.   The Egyptians so oppressed the children of Israel that they became used to it and no longer tried to resist.

This reality is what is at the heart of a pronouncement in rabbinic tradition that “No slave ever escaped Egypt.”   Was it because of the fortifications and surrounding desert?  Perhaps. But in a deeper sense, anyone who would even try to escape Egypt needed to cease to be a slave.

The story of building this resistance and fostering the capability to be liberated from bondage is the story we read about Moses whose sense of justice was so refined that he left the very palace of Pharaoh to help free his people.   While Moses took on their hardships, he succeeded in bringing a different mindset.   In Egypt, as it would be in Alabama and Washington D.C., the restoration of hope was expressed as faith in a G*d who created human beings to live lives of dignity, not servitude. 

On the monument in Washington is inscribed a number of powerful words spoken by Dr. King in his campaign to end segregation and foster racial equality in America.  One of his quotes also gives shape to how the monument itself is designed, “Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”   The sculptor created a vast mountain of granite broken in half that stands behind the stone on which is carved the likeness of Reverend King.  It is from this backdrop that the great man’s features stare out and testify to his resolve. 

On this weekend, may we be inspired to see our own dignity and our own responsibility to not accept the degradation of any one created to live free.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Michael