Thursday, 3 July 2008: selections from the Exodus story in the Old Testament of the Bible (student provides; King James / Revised Standard version preferred);

Text-objective discussion leader: Keith Vyvial

The Jewish Exodus as Immigrant Narrative 

Objective 4: “National migration”

• Unlike the normal immigration patterns of individuals or families immigrating with intentions or expectations of assimilating to their new home, some groups immigrate as communities with the intention of not assimilating.

• These groups may be identified by religion, but religion interwoven with all aspects of community, including economics and ethnic relations.

• Some of these groups may become the dominant culture of a nation or area.

Examples of national migration and dominant culture for Objective 4

• Our deep historical model for “national migration” is the ancient Jews who migrated from Egypt to Canaan in the Bible’s Exodus story.

• The standard immigrant story concerns families and individuals who strive to adapt to the prevailing culture.  In contrast, the Jews moved to the Promised Land as a group not as individuals or families and resisted assimilation and intermarriage with the Canaanites.  American Jews have followed this pattern until recent generations, when intermarriage has increased.

• Our American historical model for “national migration” is the “Great Migration” of English Pilgrims and Puritans to early North America, where they imitated the Jews in Canaan by refusing to intermarry or assimilate with the American Indians.  This English culture became the basis for the USA’s dominant culture.  In brief, this is the culture to which the American immigrants assimilate.

Exodus 1.8-10: Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.  And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come on, let us deal with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

• Prejudices and hardships experienced in the homeland.  Leading them to seek a better life elsewhere. 
• Reminiscent of the homeland experiences in “Children of the Sea.”

Exodus 3.7-8: And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey;

Deuteronomy 11.10-12: For the land, whiter thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowdst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.

• Promised land; American Dream
• US sometimes referred to as the “land of milk and honey”

Exodus 20.4: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…

• Given a sense of the Statue of Liberty as such a “graven image”

Question: Do you see this as a fair idea?  Is US fairly seen as a land of false promises?

Exodus 14.11-12: And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.

Exodus 16.3: and the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

• Stage 2 of the Immigrant Narrative: Journey to the “New World”

• Resistance to leaving the homeland.
• Comparison of journey of Jews with journey of Pilgrims: Jews cross the Red Sea / Pilgrims cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Question: Compare/contrast attitude of the Jews with other migrating immigrants we have read about.

Exodus 15.15: …all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.

Leviticus 18.3: After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.

Deuteronomy 7.1: When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Gir’gashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Per’izzites, and the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

• Displacing of the Canaanites Jews go from Egypt to Canaan not to join but to displace Canaanites.
• Ordered to follow neither the customs of their “Old World” and their “New World?”
• Similar to the Pilgrims displacing the Native American Indians; 20^th century Modern Jews displacing the Palestinians

Exodus 20.1-2: And God spake these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Exodus 20.5: …for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

• One view is to parallel this with the US saying, “We have brought you here to this better life, but you must follow our rules and assimilate.”
• Counter to Stage 3 of the Immigrant Narrative: Do NOT assimilate.

Question: Is this a fair comparison with the US?

Question: Can you compare this “National Migration” of the Jews with the African Americans in slavery times or during the Civil Rights movement?

• Some elements of national migration and correspondence to exodus may also appear in the “great migration” of African Americans from the Old South to the urban North during slavery times, in the early twentieth century, and in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.