by Bruce Feiler
Which leads to my third message: Act. One reason Moses has inspired so many Americans over the centuries is that he evangelizes action; he justifies risk. He gives ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty. As I found in my own travels in the Sinai desert over the years, no matter how full of hope the Israelites were when they departed Egypt, they were still leaving the most civilized place on earth for the most barren, based only on the word of a God they’d never actually seen and a leader they barely knew. Moses is the enemy of caution, which is one reason he has inspired so many visionaries—Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King. And these people were not born to greatness. They became great by tapping into the anger and hope within themselves. The moral of their lives, like that of Moses, is that each of us must become our own agitator, our own entrepreneur, our own freedom fighter. Our own Moses.
We must take these steps ourselves because Moses cannot do it for us. If we are to achieve the Promised Land, we must do it without him. In 1879, the English novelist George Eliot wrote a poem called “The Death of Moses.” The climactic image is adapted from the last chapter of Deuteronomy, which says, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom the Lord singled out, face to face.” In Eliot’s version, “face to face” means something more than a meeting: “…Upon the death-dewed lips/A kiss descended, pure, unspeakable.” In the end, God summons Moses’ body to heaven but leaves behind his soul.
The Bible suggests a similar ending in Deuteronomy 34 when it says that Moses’ successor “was filled with the spirit of wisdom” because Moses had laid his hands on him. Moses’ farewell gesture is also an act of love: He teaches. He may not achieve the Promised Land, but he transfers his wisdom to those who shall. The man becomes a book. Born on the lip of the Nile, he dies on the brink of the Jordan. The boy who was given life by being floated on the water becomes the prophet who yields to death at water’s edge. And in doing so, he leaves the crossing to each of us, who must hear his words and heed his story. Left with only his telling and his wisdom, we must split the sea ourselves now. We must run our own errand into the wilderness.
I will tell my daughters that this is the meaning of the Moses story and why it has reverberated through the American story. America, it has been said, is a synonym for human possibility. I dream for you, girls, the privilege of that possibility. Imagine your own Promised Land, perform your own liberation, plunge into the waters, persevere through the dryness, and don’t be surprised—or saddened—if you’re stopped just short of your dream. Because the ultimate lesson of Moses’ life is that the dream does not die with the dreamer, the journey does not end on the mountaintop, and the true destination in a narrative of hope is not this year at all.
But next.
Giving Thanks
I would like to thank the dozens of people who appear by name in this book, many of whom welcomed me into their homes, workplaces, or houses of worship and answered my sometimes probing, sometimes personal questions with wisdom, wit, and good cheer. Their insights and intimate recollections provide the heart of this story and I am grateful for their time and generosity. Many other people provided assistance, counsel, or ideas along the way, and I am pleased to offer a small expression of my appreciation. A partial list includes: Peggy Baker, Arnold Belzer, Darren Boch, Gabor Boritt, Walter Brueggemann, Eric Campbell, Joanne and Sidney Cohen, Jane Cowley, Frances Delmar, John Duncan, Paula Fisher, Roger Freet, Wes Gardenswartz, Bruce Gill, Andrew Heinze, Joe Hough, Wayne Kempton, Andrea Kornbluh, David Kraemer, Sandy Lloyd, David McClain, Michael Miller, Carol Muldawer, James Nevius, Michelle Pecararo, Letty Pogrebin, Steven Jay Perlman, Richard Shenk, Phil Sheridan, Barry Shrage, Donald Smith, Gordon Smith, and David Tribble.
David Black is my agent, friend, and partner. I can’t imagine my life without him. Brian Murray and Michael Morrison have created a home for me at HarperCollins that extends far beyond work. First Lisa Gallagher, then Liate Stehlik, were strong and creative advocates for this project. Henry Ferris lived inside this book with me for its duration and edited every draft with passion, precision, and care. I am extremely appreciative of his judgment and wisdom. Sharyn Rosenblum is an unparalleled professional and one of the treats of my life. Thanks also to Lynn Grady, Mary Schuck, Debbie Stier, Holden Richards, Peter Hubbard, Shawn Nicholls, and all my colleagues at William Morrow. And a huzzah to Antonella Iannarino, Dave Larabell, and the gang at Black Inc.
The multitalented Greg Takoudes helped track down many of the original sources quoted in this book, along with the photographs, prints, and drawings that are assembled here. I am grateful for Carlton Sedgeley, Helen Churko, and all the masters at Royce Carlton. Thanks to Steve Waldman and all my friends at beliefnet.com. I am honored to work closely with Craig Jacobson and Alan Berger. Special appreciation to Roger Triemstra.
I have a long-standing, long-suffering community of fellow writers and friends who embolden and inspire me, even as I get distracted for long periods of time. My love to Sunny Bates, Laura Benjamin, Justin Castillo, Avner Goren, Bob Hormats, Corby Kummer, Karen Lehrman, Evan Oppenheimer, Will Philipp, Joshua Ramo, Lauren Schneider, Chip Seelig, David Shenk, Jeff Shumlin, Max Stier, Teresa Tritch, Joe Weisberg, and Bob Wunsch, along with their spouses and kids. Karen Essex read an early draft of this book and offered support and edits in just the right measure. Jane Lear read the completed manuscript and navigated my many humiliations with her typical acumen and grace. Beth Middleworth brought her inimitable eye at just the right hour. The incomparable Ben Sherwood has been kind enough to lend me his ferocious mind and unflagging friendship in endless abundance.
I sit around a Thanksgiving table of unimaginable blessing every year. My parents, Jane and Ed Feiler, believe in me when few others do and lift me up when few others can. My sister, Cari Feiler Bender, is a town crier for Philadelphia and helped me gain access to places few ever get to see. I offer an embrace to devoted readers present and future—Rodd, Max, and Hallie Bender. My brother, Andrew, seems never to have forgotten any history he learned and is ever willing to pause his own life to read an extra draft of mine, apply his forceful logic to my ill-formed pages, and open his heart to making my life richer.
I have been double-blessed to enter a family where Passover is the table of choice. I treasure the camaraderie and love of Elissa and Dan Rottenberg, Rebecca and Mattis Goldman. I know of no two people who devote their lives so selflessly to the comfort and well-being of those around them as Debbie and Alan Rottenberg. I simply would not have had the space or time to undertake this project without their unending support. I am honored to dedicate this book to them.
Their daughter Linda provided the foundation of our family and the moral focus of this endeavor, all while extending her own peerless vision to the far reaches of her own Endeavor community around the globe. As I wavered in my search or stared anxiously with nighttime doubts, she rested the only hand that comforts and re-sent me on my way. And when over a period of many months I sent out pages flailing for clarity and meaning, she gave up yet another evening and found in my confusion thoughts I didn’t know I had.
For nearly twenty years, I have been blessed to write books on a schedule of my own choosing. Oh, well! I wrote this book in an office that shares a wall with my daughters’ bedroom; on a timetable that adjusted variously for overnight feedings, abandoned naps, four-lung tantrums, and the occasional erased page; and in an atmosphere of wonder and joy, giggles and awe that reminded me on a daily basis of the true fortune of freedom and family. It is a gift far greater than I have ever known to imagine this story sitting quietly for years to come until they are ready to retrace its steps and understand how much I made it for them.
The Books of Moses
The bulk of this book is drawn from my own travels, interviews, and reading (or, in the case of films, viewing) of primary sources. But at every step, I have been educated, entertained, and uplifted by the extraordinary work of
scholars who understand these issues far more than I and whose work shaped and deepened my own ideas.
First, a few notes. Except when otherwise mentioned, or when quoting a historical figure citing a different translation of the Bible, I have tried to quote passages from The Torah: A Modern Commentary, edited by W. Gunther Plaut and published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Quotations from the remainder of the Hebrew Bible are taken from Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text, published by the Jewish Publication Society. Quotations from the New Testament are taken from The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, published by Oxford University Press. In keeping with long-standing academic custom and a recent trend in popular writing, I have used the nonsectarian terms B.C.E. (“before the common era”) and C.E. (“of the common era”) in lieu of the terms B.C. and A.D.
A number of scholars discuss the broad themes of this book and how they apply to specific periods in American history. I found myself referring to their work repeatedly. These books include Sydney E. Ahlstrom’s A Religious History of the American People, Sacvan Bercovitch’s The Rites of Assent, Brian Britt’s Rewriting Moses, Conrad Cherry’s God’s New Israel, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s Exodus!, Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll’s The Bible in America, Martin E. Marty’s Pilgrims in Their Own Land, Mark A. Noll’s America’s God and A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, Jonathan Sacks’s The Chief Rabbi’s Haggadah, Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution, and Melanie J. Wright’s Moses in America.
Pilgrims
My account of the Pilgrims’ departure from Europe, arrival in the New World, and landing on Clark’s Island draws on William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation and Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation and Good Newes from New England, as well as Cotton Mather’s The Life of William Bradford, Esq., Governor of Plymouth Colony. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower presents a captivating, hour-by-hour retelling of these events.
The history of Moses in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought is discussed in Images of Moses by Daniel Jeremy Silver and Moses by Mordecai and Miriam Roshwald. For a more detailed discussion of the history, science, and archaeology behind the Moses story, see my extensive, on-the-ground reporting across Egypt, Israel, and Jordan in Walking the Bible.
The quotations from Columbus come from The Four Voyages of Columbus, edited by Cecil Jane; they also appear in Charles Brock’s Mosaics of the American Dream. The statistics about Bible production during the Reformation are found in The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch. My historical discussion of the Bible in Europe also draws on Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero by Robert Kolb, and Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman.
The influence of Moses on Puritan thought in the New World is detailed in The Puritan Heritage by Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel, as well as God’s Sacred Tongue and Hebrew and the Bible in America by Shalom Goldman, and The Puritan Dilemma by Edmund S. Morgan. I was also helped by Perry Miller’s The New England Mind and The Life of the Mind in America.
Revolution
George Whitefield and the Great Awakening are admirably depicted in Frank Lambert’s Inventing the “Great Awakening” and “Pedlar in Divinity,” as well as Harry S. Stout’s The Divine Dramatist. Charlene Miers has written a detailed history of the Pennsylvania State House called Independence Hall in American Memory. For my discussion of the Liberty Bell, Jacob Duché, and Philadelphia in 1776, I also benefited from Ring in the Jubilee by Charles Michael Boland, Christ Church, Philadelphia by Deborah Mathias Gough, American Gospel by Jon Meachem, The Meaning of Independence by Edmund S. Morgan, and Starting America: The Story of Independence Hall by Edward M. Riley. Samuel Sherwood’s The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness, along with many sermons of the era, are available at the Digital Commons of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Many of the primary documents associated with the history of the seal can be viewed at John MacArthur’s www.greatseal.com.
George Washington
Freemasonry is explored in impressive detail in Steven C. Bullock’s Revolutionary Brotherhood and Paul Naudon’s The Secret History of Freemasonry. I also benefited from The Radicalism of the American Revolution and The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon S. Wood; The First American by H. W. Brands and Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson; His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis, Washington by James Thomas Flexner, and Washington’s God by Michael Novak and Jana Novak.
Details about George Washington’s Bible come from Paul Gutjahr’s An American Bible. The sermons of Nicholas Street and Samuel Langdon appear in Conrad Cherry’s God’s New Israel. Samuel Cooper’s sermon appears in We the People, edited by James F. Gauss. Franklin’s essay appears in The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, edited by Henry Steuber, published in 1834.
The analysis of the use of biblical quotations during the Revolutionary period comes from Donald Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought” (The American Political Science Review, vol. 78, 1984), and Martin E. Marty, “Religion and the Constitution” (The Christian Century, March 23–30, 1994).
The lyrics sung to Washington during his crossing to New York come from Sweet Freedom’s Song by Robert James Branham and Stephen Hartnett. The Papers of George Washington at the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia contain many of the documents and sermons surrounding Washington’s death and funeral. Philander D. Chase, the editor in chief, has written a detailed account of the events, which is published at http://gwpapers.virginia.edu. Robert Hay’s study of the sermons is “George Washington: American Moses” (American Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 4, Winter 1969).
Underground Railroad
Fergus M. Bordewich has written an extraordinary overview of the Underground Railroad, Bound for Canaan. Ripley, Ohio’s role in the movement is impressively detailed in Ann Hagedorn’s Beyond the River, which also contains an extensive discussion of the name of the slave girl who crossed the Ohio River. I have followed the consensus that she was called Eliza. John Rankin’s letters are gathered in Letters on American Slavery; John P. Parker’s memories are recorded in His Promised Land.
The role of religion in general, and the Exodus in particular, in slave communities is explored in Albert J. Raboteau’s Slave Religion and Eugene D. Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll. My discussion of the use of quilts in the Underground Railroad draws on Hidden in Plain View by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard. The life of Harriet Tubman is painstakingly re-created from limited sources in two recent biographies, Harriet Tubman by Catherine Clinton and Bound for the Promised Land by Kate Clifford Larson.
Civil War
My discussion of the exegetical battle over Moses in antebellum America is deeply indebted to Mark A. Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, which also contains many of the statistics I cite covering the influence of the Second Great Awakening on American life. Jonathan Blanchard and Nathan L. Rice’s Cincinnati debate has been recently republished as A Debate on Slavery. My account of the life and writing of Harriet Beecher Stowe draws on Joan D. Hedrick’s Harriet Beecher Stowe. The quotation from journalist D. B. Corley comparing Uncle Tom to Moses comes from A Visit to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1893.
The religious views of Abraham Lincoln are artfully mined in The Almost Chosen People by William J. Wolf and Allen Guelzo’s Abraham Lincoln. I benefited tremendously from the essays gathered in Religion and the American Civil War, edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, as well as Stout’s Upon the Altar of the Nation.
Lyman Beecher’s sermon, “A Plea for the West,” as well as the sermons by Benjamin Palmer and Henry Ward Beecher on the eve of the Civil War, appear in Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel. Gabor Boritt’s The Gettysburg Gospel and Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg dissect the events and reaction to Lincoln’s famous oration. My version of Henry Ward Beecher’s journey to Charleston is informed by Debbie Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America as
well as by research at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights.
Emory University’s “The Martyred President” gathers fifty-seven sermons given on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at http://beck.library.emory.edu/lincoln. I also consulted Waldo W. Braden’s Building the Myth, as well as Sermons Preached in Boston on the Death of Abraham Lincoln and Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Voices from the Pulpit of New York and Brooklyn, which contains Beecher’s eulogy. Charles Stewart’s analysis of the sermons appears in “A Rhetorical Study of the Reaction of the Protestant Pulpit in the North to Lincoln’s Assassination,” an unpublished 1963 dissertation.
Statue of Liberty
The history of the Statue of Liberty is explored in Marvin Trachtenberg’s The Statue of Liberty, as well as in Barry Moreno’s The Statue of Liberty Encyclopedia and Hertha Pauli and E. B. Ashton’s I Lift My Lamp. I also benefited from Albert Boime’s Hollow Icons and The Changing Face of the Statue of Liberty: A Historical Resource Study for the National Park Service, compiled in 2005 by John Bodnar, Laura Burt, Jennifer Stinson, and Barbara Truesdell and stored at the library on Ellis Island. Esther Schor has written a wonderful biography, Emma Lazarus.
My discussion of the Jews in America draws from Jews and the American Soul by Andrew R. Heinze, The Jews in America by Arthur Hertzberg, Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience by Jonathan D. Sarna and David G. Dalin, as well as Sarna’s American Judaism and “The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture” (Jewish Social Studies, vol. 5, nos. 1–2, Fall 1998/Winter 1999). The cartoon of Moses dressed as Uncle Sam and splitting the Atlantic Ocean, called “The Modern Moses,” was drawn by Frederick Burr Opper and Joseph Keppler and appeared, along with an unsigned editorial, in Puck, December 1881.
