Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land, The Hebrew Bible in the United States: A Sourcebook by M. Y. Soloveichik, M. Holbreich, J. Silver, and S. W. Halpern, editors, The Toby Press, New Milford CT, © 2019, ISBN 978-1-59264-465-0, p. 344, $29.95.
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California – Historians generally acknowledge the importance of the Protestant pulpit in the evolution and development of America’s story. Using biblical accounts as metaphors for their own plight, Pilgrims perceived England as Egypt, the Atlantic Ocean as the Red Sea, and America, the Promised Land. During the Revolution, the church drew analogies between Persia’s exploitation in the Book of Esther and the British court, while Haman stood for British tyranny. Thomas Paine found the effete British monarchy in the Book of Samuel. Although many of them deists, the leaders of the American Revolution can hardly be acknowledged as religious fanatics, their ideas of governance rising from Roman thinkers, English philosophers, and the nascent European Enlightenment.
On one hand, an early proposal for the governmental seal depicts the Exodus. Even Jefferson and Franklin chose portrayals from the Hebrew Bible. On the other, article eleven of the Treaty of Tripoli, signed November 4, 1796, states “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” A second version of the treaty, signed eight years later, omits this phrase, perhaps reflecting a growing symbiotic union between the church and state.
The country experienced a powerful religious revival of Protestant evangelism and a growing emphasis on morals in the post-revolutionary war years, as evidenced for instance, by the temperance movement and abolitionism. During this period, the stress between the Hebrew Bible and America all but disappeared, except in the country’s westward expansion. The Promised Land now extended to the Pacific Ocean.
The Hebrew Bible played a contradictory role in antebellum and Civil War America. As noted by Lincoln, “both sides read the same Bible.” The Bible endorses slavery, the word appearing in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament more than one hundred eighty times, and the Curse of Ham, referring to one of Noah’s sons in the Book of Genesis, is used to justify slavery of black-skinned people.
Each of the four main sections of Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land begins with an introduction describing the linkages between current events and the use of stories, imagery, and metaphors in the Hebrew Bible by prominent civil and religious leaders. These sections are:
The Puritans to the American Revolution, Revolutionary America, The Early Republic and Jacksonian America, and Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Civil War. There is also a small section dedicated to the Hebrew Bible and the civil rights movement.
Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land is a collection of notable speeches and documents from a given time period intermixed with its biblical sources in both vocalized Hebrew and its English translation. Many of the speakers, authors and documents are well known: The Mayflower Compact, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, a chapter from the Book of Mormon, Julia Howe, and so forth. Others, such as Samuel Danforth, Johnathan Edwards, Jonas Phillips, and Samuel Sherwood, are less well known, but who articulated ideas coming directly from the Hebrew Bible.
The vocalized Hebrew and English translations make Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land truly unique as there is no need to search the Jewish literature to find original sources. For instance, Benjamin Franklin’s opening prayer at the Constitutional Convention in July 1787, draws an analogy “to the tower of Babel as a warning against disorder and confusion.” The editors follow this with his biblical sources, Genesis 11 and Psalm 127. The same is true of the abolitionist Congregationalist minister William Channing (1780-1842). The editors provide excerpts from his book Slavery followed by the Hebraic sources, Deuteronomy 24; Mishna, Avot 3:14; and the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a.
Yet, why do we not find within its pages any speeches and biblical support for and against American Indian genocide; xenophobic hatred of Irish Catholics and Chinese immigrants; and racial discrimination against Jews, Muslims, and now Hispanics? The answer might lie in the fact that for American leadership, these actions no longer need God’s support: Our moral leaders are struck dumb and our morality has no standard; we act pragmatically in the short term, as though there are no consequences for our indecency.
Despite our pledge that there is “liberty and justice for all,” we know this is not so, making Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land a much needed and marvelous resource, reminding remind us that at their foundations, all religions dictate moral principles by which to live.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. His works include: The Comprehensive Jewish and Civil Calendars: 2001 to 2240; The Jewish Calendar: History and Inner Workings, Second Edition; and Sepher Yetzirah: The Book That Started Kabbalah, Revised Edition. He may be contacted via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.