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Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery
Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery
Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery
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Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery

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Presenting a new perspective on the saga of the enslavement of the Jewish people and their departure from Egypt, this study compares the Jewish experience with that of African-American slaves in the United States, as well as the latter group’s subsequent fight for dignity and equality. This consideration dives deeply into the biblical narrative, using classical and modern commentaries to explore the social, psychological, religious, and philosophical dimensions of the slave experience and mentality. It draws on slave narratives, published letters, eyewitness accounts, and recorded interviews with former slaves, together with historical, sociological, economic, and political analyses of this era. The book explores the five major needs of every long-term victim and journeys through these five stages with the Israelite and the African-American slaves on their historical path toward physical and psychological freedom. This rich, multi-dimensional collage of parallel and contrasting experiences is designed to enrich readers’ understanding of the plight of these two groups.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2014
ISBN9789655240856
Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery

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    Exodus and Emancipation - Kenneth Chelst

    forgotten.

    Contents

    Illustrations

    The Journey and Acknowledgments

    Preface

    Introduction

    Part I - JOURNEY INTO SLAVERY: Wagons and Ships

    Chapter 1: The Israelite Beginnings of Slavery

    Uncertainty • Brother Selling Brother • State of Mind

    Chapter 2: Beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade

    Captives of War • Poverty and Justice • State of Mind • Journey to the Coast

    Chapter 3: Group Journey into Slavery

    Pharaoh’s Wagons • Middle Passage

    Part II - SLAVE EXPERIENCE: Political Slavery vs. Personal Chattel

    Chapter 4: Evolution and Institutionalization of Slavery

    Political Enslavement of the Israelites • The Egyptian Masses and Personal Enslavement • African-American Slavery: an Evolving Legal Structure • Animal Imagery

    Chapter 5: Breaking the Human Spirit

    Affliction • Women in Slavery • Separating Husband and Wife • Rape

    Chapter 6: The Burdens of Slavery

    Hard Work • The Whip and the African-American Slave • Leaders as Instruments of Oppression • Work of African-American Slaves • The Laziness of the Enslaved • Lying by Master and Slave

    Chapter 7: Cultural Identity

    What’s in a Name • African-American Names • The Group Name Hebrew • The Group Name Negro • African Cultural Identity

    Chapter 8: Population Growth and Fears

    The Israelite Population • African-American Population

    Chapter 9: Controlling the Population

    Egyptian Slave Bureaucracy • Plantation Overseers and Slave Drivers • Controlling African-American Slaves

    Chapter 10: Rebellion

    Passive and Active Rebellion of Israelites • The Day-to-Day Resistance of Enslaved Blacks • Major Slave Rebellions in North America

    Chapter 11: Righteous Among the Nations

    The Egyptian Princess• Quakers

    Chapter 12: Religion of the slave

    Israelite God of Their Forefathers • The Religion of African-American Slaves

    Chapter 13: Hope

    Israelite Traditions • African-American Hopes

    Chapter 14: Children’s Voices

    Miriam • African-American Children

    Chapter 15: Leadership

    The Unique Individual: Joseph in Potiphar’s House and Uncle Tom • Antebellum Leadership Among African Americans • Tribal Leaders of Israel • Moses and Aaron • Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass

    Part III - FREEDOM’S ROAD: Exodus and Emancipation

    Chapter 16: Social and Psychological Needs of the Oppressed

    Justice: Punishment Measure for Measure • Compensation from the Oppressor • Fear of Continued Victimization • Rebuilding Self-Image • The Oppressor’s Superior Culture

    Chapter 17: Hasty Departures

    Matzah: Unleavened Bread • Runaways and Contraband of War

    Chapter 18: Knowing and Perceiving God: Seeing is Believing

    An All-Powerful God • The African-American Perception of God • God Who Sees and Knows • God of Justice and Retribution • God’s Other Attributes • God’s Hand in the Civil War

    Chapter 19: Breaking the Will of the Oppressors

    Widespread Destruction • Union Army Policy on Destruction • Oppressors Reassert Control • Devastated Aftermath • Breaking the Will of the Leadership • Leader Incredulity • Leadership Legitimacy • Signs, Wonders, and Negotiations • The South Considers Emancipation • Climax: Negotiating a Lost Cause

    Chapter 20: The Celebration of Freedom

    The Eve of Emancipation • Commemorative Celebration • African Americans Celebrate Emancipation • Celebrating Gradual Emancipation

    Chapter 21: Remembering

    West Indian Blacks Choose Not to Look Back • Relevance and Re-experience as Jews Study Their History • Remembering Without Shame • The Egyptian Experience as a Positive Value • Celebration in Darkness

    Chapter 22: Freedom’s Troubled Journey through Stages

    Israelite Freedom: Five Stages • African-American Freedom: Five Stages • African Americans as a Nation • Americans: One People and One Nation Under God • Searching in the Wilderness • The American Colonization Society: an Alternative • Un-Promised Land

    Chapter 23: Freedom’s Transformation and Consequences

    Education and Freedom • The Family Unit • Economic Security and Freedom • Travel • Religious Independence • Archenemies and Never Ending Struggle

    Epilogue: The Struggle Continues

    Bibliography

    Hebrew Bible Commentators and Hebrew Words

    Index

    Index to Biblical Verses

    About the Author

    Illustrations

    1. Photograph of scars from whippings

    2. Slaves tied together as they were marched towards the sea

    3. Slave distribution in 1790

    4. Slaves tightly packed in the hold of a ship

    5. Infant in field with parent

    6. Slave catcher warning in Boston

    7. The riots in New York: The mob lynching a Negro in Clarkson Street

    8. The burning of a freedmen’s school during a riot in Memphis in 1866

    9. The Hunted Slaves by Richard Ansdell

    10. A Negro guard asks General Grant to throw away his cigar before entering an army storehouse

    11. Confederate generals Johnson and Stewart as prisoners under Negro guard.

    12. Recruiting poster: Men of Color – To Arms!

    13. Fort Pillow massacre of surrendered blacks

    14. The 20th U.S. Colored Infantry received its colors in Union Square, New York

    15. Marching On! The Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Colored Regiment marches into Charleston on February 21, 1865

    16. A cartoonist’s depiction of northerners’ perceptions of rebel chivalry

    17. Emancipation by William Travis – a mural of slaves fleeing at night.

    18. Reproduction of the program of Fast-day Services at Beth Shalome Synagogue, Richmond

    19. Emancipation celebration in Washington, D.C. – April 19, 1866

    20. Black soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation in a slave cabin

    21. Am I Not a Man and a Brother – Motto and image that appeared on banners and china

    22. Program for January 1st Celebration, Columbus, Georgia (1973)

    23. Program for September 20th & 21st Celebration, Gallia County, Ohio (1980)

    24. Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, Monday, April 3, 1905

    25. A New England carpetbagger teacher at a beginners’ reading class in Vicksburg, Mississippi

    26. The Barrow Plantation: Oglethorpe County Georgia – 2,000 acres; 1860: Communal slave quarters; 1881: Sharecroppers disbursed

    27. The Ku Klux Klan

    28. Vote Democratic

    Illustration 24 appears compliments of Virginia Commonwealth University; 3: US Census Bureau; 5: provided by Wilson Library University of North Carolina; 7, 10, 11, and 13 New York Public Library; 14, 15, 16, 19, 25, 27, and 28: Harper’s Weekly; 9: Liverpool Museum; 17: Smithsonian; and 20: Library of Congress; and 26: Scribner’s Monthly.

    The Journey and Acknowledgments

    HOW DID A CHAIR of a department of industrial and manufacturing engineering and a professor of operations research, the mathematics of decision making, come to write a book about the Bible and African-American slavery? I must admit it was a long circuitous journey with a number of individuals playing critical roles along the way. It began with a dual education in Jewish and secular studies. My advanced Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University culminated in rabbinic ordination at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary where I had the good fortune to study with both Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein. My most advanced secular degree was in Operations Research from MIT where my research focused on the application of mathematics to police work. My studies under Professors Richard C. Larson, Philip M. Morse, and Arnold Barnett also exposed me to a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving.

    For more than thirty years since completing my formal education, I have given talks and classes about Jewish law and the Hebrew Bible that also incorporated aspects of broader history, sociology, science, and economic theory. Rabbi Feivel Wagner, a long-time friend of blessed memory, was the first to offer me a platform from his pulpit to share my thoughts and analyses. For this I am forever grateful. Almost twenty years ago, I began sporadically drawing limited parallels and contrasts between Israelite and African-American slavery.

    The core idea evolved from a challenging sequence of verses in Genesis. Abraham had a vision which concluded with God’s prophecy that Abraham’s descendants would be strangers in a foreign land where they would be enslaved. Ultimately, they would be freed and leave with great wealth while their persecutors were severely judged. This was followed by an enigmatic statement that Abraham would join his ancestors in peace and die at a ripe old age. I had trouble imagining how Abraham could receive such a dire prophecy and not be in turmoil the rest of his life. What was it in God’s words that offered some comfort? To resolve this dilemma, I focused on God’s promise of judgment of the oppressor and the departure with wealth. I studied these verses from the perspective of a victim’s needs. Abraham knew his descendants would return to Canaan but might have wondered what permanent sociological scars they would bring as a result of the enslavement. God’s promise of justice and compensation were but two elements of His action plan for the exodus. The exodus with its ten plagues was designed so that the scars of slavery would fade in a generation and leave core values such as sensitivity to the oppressed as well as a contract with the Almighty to become a Holy nation. I began to ponder the analogous transformation for blacks during and shortly after the Civil War.

    My efforts took a quantum leap forward when David Tanzman encouraged me to develop and deliver a series of talks on the topic at the Young Israel of Oak Park. Afterwards, he challenged me to write a book on the topic. He proceeded to work with his friend Jules Kohenn to obtain a substantial grant from a local philanthropist, Flora S. Hoffman, to fund a black studies researcher to assist me in my task and pay for editing. Even more important than the funding, Dave Tanzman has encouraged me every step of the way and is now working to bring my work before the local black community in which he has numerous contacts. The generous grant from Flora S. Hoffman was housed appropriately in the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University, which is directed by another important supporter of the project, Fred Pearson.

    The grant enabled me to recruit two key professionals, Kathryn Beard and Eric Schramm. Kathryn was responsible for most of the research needed to develop the African-American perspective on the issues I expound upon in this book. She presented, discussed, and debated with me both the dominant thesis and its alternatives on a wide range of topics. She provided the necessary source material especially numerous quotes of individuals living in the time period we studied. She did an outstanding job and it is hard for me to imagine completing this comprehensive work without her research. Eric Schramm had an equally challenging task, editing my prose and often reorganizing whole sections to make the book a highly readable flowing work. At times he also used his extensive knowledge of the Bible and history to support or question my arguments.

    Marvin Zalman shared his insights drawn from a wide range of knowledge of law, political science, and history and also shared his excellent home lending library. Shalom Lamm made contributions on a variety of topics especially with regard to events leading up to the Civil War. Irv Goldfein believed in the importance of the project from early on, provided critical and sage guidance in identifying a publisher and artist for the cover, and helped develop a marketing strategy. Numerous other members of the Young Israel of Southfield shared their reactions and ideas as I presented different aspects of the evolving book on numerous occasions.

    Nachman Levine designed the strikingly colorful cover. Tzvi Mauer of Urim Publications took a chance on a book that did not naturally align with his company’s portfolio of publications. Rahel Jaskow completed the tedious final editing. Along the way, I received much encouragement and advice from my brother of blessed memory Marvin Chelst and his wife Florence and my sister Anita Kessler and her husband Larry. I also received support from Richard Wagner, Anthony Van Niel, and Philip Lanzisera at various stages of the project.

    Our children Avishai, Azriel, Dassy, and Dov deserve special mention for their sustained support and interest over many years of discussions, questions, more discussions, and more questions. Lastly, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to my wife, Tamy whose support for teaching and research long preceded this specific effort. She introduced me to a different style of Biblical analysis taught to her by her father, Rabbi Isaac Simon, master teacher of Chumash and Talmud for more than 30 years at Maimonides School in Boston. She encouraged me to develop adult education classes in Bible. As this effort evolved over a ten year period, Tamy encouraged, supported, listened, and sometimes questioned the ideas I developed. Fittingly, she was the last to read the final edit one last time.

    Preface

    FOR READERS AND STUDENTS of the Bible, the biblical narrative is an open book containing universal messages that are appropriate for all times. Through its narratives, laws, poetry, rhetoric, and prophetic visions, the Bible touches upon almost every aspect of morality and the human saga. One such drama in the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch, is the story of the Israelite nation’s exodus from Egyptian bondage and its forty-year sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai.

    This book is a collection of essays – my reflections about the biblical description of the exodus. It presents a new perspective on the saga of the Israelites by comparing and contrasting it with the African-American experience in the United States during the era of slavery, the emancipation and the subsequent fight for dignity and equality.

    I recognize that the comparison is between the proverbial apples and oranges or, better yet, of bricks made from straw and mud compared with cash crops of cotton and sugar cane. The Hebrew Bible is sacred literature that was canonized more than two thousand years ago. Associated with this text are oral traditions, some of which go back to ancient times, and hundreds of commentaries. All of these build upon the biblical text to explore religious, moral, and philosophical issues.

    In contrast, the African-American experience is not centered on a single narrative. It is self-reported, summarized, and analyzed in a vast array of literature written over the past two centuries. These include slave narratives, published letters, eyewitness accounts, recorded interviews of former slaves, and numerous historical, sociological, economic and political analyses of this era in American history.

    Despite these obvious differences in breadth and perspective, I have found that a study of African-American slavery and oppression yields important insights regarding the biblical narrative. In addition, this analysis highlights a wide range of developments up through the reconstruction era that precluded African Americans from bringing closure to this part of their history.

    Because I treat the Hebrew text as a self-contained, unified entity, I do not explore issues associated with the Bible’s historical accuracy or its authorship. The analysis of the text is supplemented by references to the Midrash, a collection of Jewish oral traditions recorded more than fifteen hundred years ago. The principal goal of the Midrash is to highlight religious, moral, or philosophical issues even though a superficial reading seems to suggest that the midrashic literature fills in missing historical details. Finally, I draw on primarily Jewish biblical commentaries, both traditional and modern, that explore the subtleties of narrative and language in the Hebrew text.

    Although I attempt a comprehensive analysis of the biblical text with regard to the exodus experience, this work’s exploration of African-American experiences is far more selective for several reasons. The first is that there was no single common experience. The nature of slavery in the continental United States varied with time, region (the North, the Border States, the Atlantic Coast, the deep South), and slaveholder’s demographic status (city dweller, small farmer, or plantation owner). In highlighting this history, my primary interest is the relevance to the biblical narrative. In so doing I present not a complete picture but rather a collage of the African American experience of slavery and its aftermath.

    This collage offers a unique perspective on the biblical story told in the Book of Exodus. In addition, special attention is given to the symbol of hope and national identity that the ancient Israelites offered African Americans of the nineteenth century. This development is analyzed and chronicled by Glaude in Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America.¹

    1. Glaude, Eddie S. Jr. Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2000.

    Introduction

    THE ISRAELITE NATION was born in political slavery in Egypt. The national identity of the Israelites was forged in over two hundred years spent in the Egyptian crucible, elevated by the events of the year before and after the exodus and refined in the forty years of sojourn in the Sinai Wilderness. The biblical narrative presents a relatively terse description of these events in which key words and phrases may be overlooked when read through a modern-day prism. Today’s Western readers generally lack the perspective of having endured massive political oppression. Such a viewpoint may be gained, however, by studying the biblical narrative in light of the more recent and better-documented history of African-American slavery in the United States.¹

    Perception works best by way of contrast and analogy. The human eye sees most effectively when the object stands in sharp relief from its background. Our brains interpret what we see by comparing and contrasting the visualization with information stored in our memory.

    Similarly, the African-American slave experience provides a rich source of both personal narratives and historical analysis that can enhance our perception of Israelite bondage and redemption. Both peoples experienced oppression that stretched over centuries, with the African-American slave population at the time of emancipation in the 1860s roughly double that of the Israelites at the exodus.² However, the two groups’ respective ups and downs in status occurred in reverse order. The Israelites started out in Egypt as welcome guests, became estranged from the political establishment and masses and ended up as slaves. Upon leaving slavery, they received instant citizenship in an emerging nation. By contrast, Africans arrived in the New World as slaves, leaving behind citizenship in various nations. Upon emancipation, their status changed to strangers in the land of their birth even though they received official citizenship several years later. It took a hundred years for them to achieve de jure full citizenship and decades more to approach de facto equality.

    This power of contrast and analogy continues to enrich my reading of the biblical text. The abundant details of the arrival of Africans in America and slavery’s pernicious and pervasive attack on the family unit highlight, by contrast, the significance of the simple phrase that concludes the opening verse in the Book of Exodus, They came as man and household. These words sharply differ from the individual African experience of arriving with no family unit.

    The principle of analogy sharpens my understanding of the biblical description of Moses stopping the brutal whipping of an Israelite slave. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recounts awakening at dawn to the shrieks of his aunt. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush.³ Douglass called the whipping of slaves the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery. The photographs of black slaves with backs so scarred that they resemble the mangled branches of a small bush (Illustration 1) and the narratives describing their scarred psyches add color and dimension to the understanding of the story that introduces us to Moses, the human face of the exodus.⁴

    Try to imagine how many Hebrew children awoke to the sight of their parents being beaten and how many watched helplessly as their siblings submitted to the power of the taskmaster. Yet the biblical narrative is succinct: He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren. What was Moses thinking? We do not know. What was Moses feeling? The phrase of his brethren might be a terse hint at his emotional state. Not surprisingly, Moses became a powerful and compassionate symbol of hope for the African-American slave, as articulated in the famous Negro spiritual Go Down, Moses. Harriet Tubman earned the sobriquet Moses for leading more than three hundred slaves to freedom.

    The biblical narrative has also helped me gain insight into the history of black slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Whatever the setting, slavery takes a terrible toll on the slave community’s self-esteem and value system. The God of the exodus revealed His omnipotence on history’s stage; He directed the Hebrews’ conversion from slaves to free people, from slave families to families sharing the paschal lamb,⁶ and from a nation of individual slaves to a nation of priests, a holy nation. Many of God’s deeds and commandments were designed to speed this conversion and rebuild the Hebrew slaves’ self-esteem. His actions to end the enslavement of one people by another established a precedent for believers to follow under the principle of imitatio Dei, the emulation of God.

    Unfortunately, the American public and its government did not learn from the comprehensive approach of the God of the exodus. The story of black emancipation in the United States lacked closure. Many problems created by centuries of slavery were never addressed. As a result, African-Americans continue to struggle with an inequality whose roots lie in slavery but which continues to linger more than a hundred years in various forms in both the South and North.

    The analogy between the histories of the biblical Israelites and African Americans is not new. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, African-American spokesmen began to identify publicly with the story of the Israelites’ slavery. This concept became a powerful uniting image in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Abolitionists extended the comparison of Jews and blacks beyond the biblical narrative. Several leading abolitionists used the history of anti-Semitism to illustrate how unfounded bias led to centuries of oppression. William E. Channing made the equation simply. For ages Jews were thought to have forfeited the rights of men, as much as the African race at the South, and were insulted, spoiled and slain.⁷ Frederick Douglass compared the two. For, with the single exception of the Jews, under the whole heavens, there is not to be found a people pursued with a more relentless prejudice and persecution, than are the Free Colored people of the United States. In 1845 James Russell Lowell wrote in his work, The Prejudice of Color: Jews, who by a series of enormous tyrannies were reduced to the condition of the most abject degradation among nations to whom they had given a religious system, and who borrowed from them their choicest examples of eloquence and pathos and sublime genius. Here was and is a people remarkable above almost all others for the possession of the highest and clearest intellect, and yet absolutely dwarfed and contracted in mind and by being sternly debarred from any but the very lowest exercise of mental capacity. He noted that Jews could escape their fate by adopting the prevailing religion, an option not available to African Americans, who could not escape the color of their skin.⁸ Prejudice was alive and well even after emancipation, when George William Curtis noted the bitter prejudice against the colored race, which is as inhuman and unmanly as the old hatred and contempt of Christendom for the Jews.

    The contrast embodied in the title Exodus and Emancipation is the subject of this collection. This volume opens with a comparison of the two journeys into slavery and the nature of the respective slave experiences. Later on, it explores the exodus from Egypt and the start of the transformation from slave to free individual. It treats the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the composition of the Song by the Sea and events leading to the revelation at Mount Sinai as closing this phase of the exodus. I compare this period to the experiences of both black and white Americans during the Civil War both before and after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, through 1870 and the first half of the Reconstruction era.

    I have tried to be circumspect in making direct linkages between past and present. Thousands of years have passed since the exodus. Its impact on modern Jewry is primarily through biblical narrative, commandments, and shared literary and historical roots. On the other hand, more than a century of legal and de facto discrimination and oppression bridge and color the gap between the end of black slavery and the end of the twentieth century. It is therefore likely that the roots of the problems that have confronted and plagued the African-American community in the latter part of the twentieth century lay as much in the last hundred years’ struggle for political and social equality as in the slave history of previous centuries.

    1. For now, I am using the term African American because it is the preferred choice at the start of the twenty-first century. Later, as I discuss experiences of slavery and use source material, I often use terms such as colored people, black or Negro. All are consistent with the way slaves and freemen referred to themselves. During the nineteenth century, the preferred term was colored people or people of color, as evidenced by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In fact, in the early nineteenth century the vast majority of blacks would have been offended by the term African American, as it was linked to the proposal to send free American blacks back to Africa.

    2. The census at the time of the exodus produced a count of approximately six hundred thousand Israelite males between the ages of twenty and sixty. Including the elderly, women and children, the total number of Israelites approached two million. The 1860 census in the United States reported that the African-American population included almost four million slaves and another half million who were free. They accounted for 14.7% of the total population of the U.S.

    3. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, edited with an introduction by David W. Blight. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1993, 42.

    4. Illustration 1 is a photograph of a former Mississippi slave named Gordon and was taken by Assistant Surgeon T.W. Mercer of the Forty-seventh Massachusetts Infantry. The photograph was reproduced in Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. NY: The Free Press, 1990, after page 242. (MOLLUS-Massachusetts Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute)

    5. Buckmaster, Henrietta. Let My People Go: The Story of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolition Movement. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992, 214–215.

    6. The paschal lamb is the name of the sacrifice offered by the Israelites on Passover eve.

    7. Richards, David A.J. Conscience and the Constitution; History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 63.

    8. Pease, William H., and Jane H. Pease, eds. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965, 278 and 313.

    9. Richards, Conscience and the Constitution, 63.

    Part I

    Journey into Slavery

    Wagons and Ships

    INCIDENTS OF BROTHER selling brother and tribe selling tribe began both the Israelite and the African journey into slavery. In the book of Genesis, the ten eldest children of Jacob turned against their brother Joseph, their father’s favorite son, in order to prevent Joseph’s dreams of future leadership from coming true. The brothers even considered killing him before ultimately deciding to sell him into slavery. Ironically, it was in that distant land, Egypt, that all the brothers eventually came to live, each becoming the head of his own tribal family. In effect, then, the elder brothers sold another future tribal leader into slavery.

    Similarly, the African’s entrance into the Atlantic slave trade most often began with one tribe selling the captives of another tribe at a local inland slave market. The next phase was an overland journey that lasted for weeks or even months until the captive arrived at a port on the western coast of Africa. Once there, the captive might wait months in deplorable conditions in a stockade until being sold again and placed on a ship, which might wait months¹ more in port or along the coast until making its six-week journey to the New World.

    In this section we discuss the events leading to the long-term mass enslavement of both the Israelite and African peoples. We begin by exploring the individual’s transition from free individual to slave. That discussion is followed by an analysis of Joseph’s journey to slavery in Egypt. Joseph’s journey is compared to the African slave, who was taken by force from his native land to the seacoast in order to be sold again. Finally, we explore the sharp contrast between the stately caravan journey of Jacob’s family into what eventually became Egyptian bondage with the journey of the near-naked African, the Middle Passage, endured in an overcrowded ship’s hold, in the depths of despair.

    1. Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. London, 1788. Reprinted in Mintz, Steven, ed. African-American Voices: Life Cycle of Slavery. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1993, 57. Falconbridge reported on his roughly three-month stay on the coast as batches of slaves were bought and loaded.

    Chapter 1

    THE ISRAELITE BEGINNINGS OF SLAVERY

    THE EVENTS LEADING TO Israelite slavery commenced long before the sale of Joseph. They began with God’s prophecy to Abraham, which outlined a fearful future but gave no specific details. The prophecy was part of the events and the dream state that surrounded the covenant God made with Abraham, known as the Covenant amongst the broken pieces (Genesis 15). In this covenant God reaffirmed the agreement to give the Land of Canaan to Abraham’s direct descendants, who would one day number as many as the stars of heaven. However, before this could happen, Abraham’s descendants would spend their formative years as strangers and ultimately oppressed slaves in a foreign land. This forecast was so bleak and foreboding that God delivered the message to Abraham while he was in a deep sleep.

    As the sun began to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great dark dread descended upon him. And He said, Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years; but I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve, and in the end they shall go free with great wealth. (Genesis 15:12–14).¹

    The end of this prophecy, but I will execute judgment, gave hope to future Israelite generations who experienced the brutality of Egyptian servitude. Although African Americans had no similar prophecy, they possessed something that was almost as powerful: the story of the Israelites’ exodus from bondage. African-American slaves knew that the God Who had heard the Israelites’ cries throughout the long night of slavery heard theirs as well. They hoped, prayed, and expected that He would deliver them from bondage as He had delivered the ancient Israelites.

    Uncertainty

    When, where, and how slavery would come to an end was as unknown to the African Americans as it was to the Israelites. God’s prophecy to Abraham was enigmatic. Abraham’s descendants would be strangers, later enslaved and oppressed, but the duration of the various stages was not foretold.² Even the period of four hundred years mentioned in the prophecy was considered only an approximation, especially when no starting date had been specified.³ The dream gave no hint as to how soon and where this journey into slavery and oppression would take place. Although we as readers recognize that Joseph’s sale into bondage began the process that led to the Israelites’ descent into Egypt and later slavery and oppression, Joseph himself did not perceive it as such. Although he saw God’s guiding hand in his life story, as when he told his brothers in Egypt, God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance (Genesis 45:7), he could not know what was to follow. Even Joseph the dreamer could not imagine that Egypt would become the place of enslavement and oppression foretold to Abraham, as evidenced by his recounting to his brothers of how God has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt (Genesis 45:8).

    As the elderly Jacob approached the last habitation of Canaan, the city of Beer Sheba, on his way to see Joseph in Egypt, he had a vision in the middle of the night in which God told him: I am God, the God of your father. Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation, and I Myself will also bring you back (Genesis 46:3, 4). The Bible does not record Jacob’s emotions at this time, but from God’s response we can intuit a fear for the destiny of the Jewish people. Although he knew that Egypt would provide his family with much-needed sustenance in a time of famine, he was concerned that his descendants would grow comfortable there, forget their destiny, and not wish to return to the land promised to their forefathers.⁴ Thus God offered him a personal guarantee that Jacob’s fears would not be fulfilled.

    As he neared death, Jacob passed the message on to Joseph: I am about to die; but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers (Genesis 48:22). Nothing in the vision or in Jacob’s words explicitly referred to slavery and oppression, but the reader senses that Abraham’s earlier prophecy is lurking behind these words. Joseph’s dying exhortation to his brothers also carried no hint of the dreadful time of slavery that God had foretold to Abraham, but he reminded his brothers that the destiny of the Jewish people as a nation with a homeland would be played out not in Egypt but rather in Canaan. God would see to that. God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob (Genesis 50:22).

    Joseph went so far as to demand that his brothers swear to carry his bones with them on their return to Canaan. This would ensure that his descendants, though born in Egypt to an Egyptian woman, would share in the destiny of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet his statements to his brothers, all of whom outlived him, seemed to apply to a time in the near future when they themselves might return to Canaan. There was no hint that more than two centuries would pass before the Israelites would journey back to their ancestral homeland.

    The lack of specificity in the original prophecy to Abraham suggests that God had not, in fact, pre-ordained any of the ensuing details. There would be enslavement, but by whom, for how long, and with what degree of severity were as yet undetermined. Since the free will of human beings would establish the direction and timeline within the broad parameters that God had established,⁵ the instigators and perpetrators would be held accountable for their choice to impose an oppressive form of slavery: I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve.

    The initiating act of bondage surely engendered a range of responses from those who were captured. Joseph was almost certainly shocked by the sudden attack of his brethren that quickly transformed his privileged status into servitude. In contrast, an African captive sold into slavery might not have been too surprised by his fate. The slave trade was a common element of the local economy. However, the captive’s sense of uncertainty as to his fate could only have grown if his journey into slavery stretched into weeks and months and passed far beyond familiar territory and recognizable tribal dialects. He must have been terrified at the sight of the Atlantic Ocean as he was herded into large holding complexes. His terror certainly would have peaked as he met Europeans for the first time, a bizarre-looking race whose complexion, facial expressions, and hair were so unlike his own. As he was handed over to them and placed in the stifling hold of ship, his first thought might have been that he was destined to be eaten.⁷ As a result, the stunned captives often attempted to jump overboard, seeking the certainty of suicide over the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

    Later, on the American continent, the enslaved African and his African-American descendants could not have known, over hundreds of years, when or even if their slavery would end. Events along the way might have seemed misleading or full of false hope. The nineteenth century, for example, began with the passage of laws prohibiting the importation of slaves. The 1830s were even better: Great Britain eliminated slavery in its territories, patrolled the seas, and negotiated treaties in order to end the transatlantic trafficking in human beings. However, the 1850s saw a series of major political setbacks for the abolition movement in the United States. In January 1861, as the secessionist movement gained momentum among the southern states, no slave could have dreamed that five years later, constitutional amendments would be passed that would not only end slavery but also guarantee the rights of the newly freed.

    Brother Selling Brother

    The first Israelite steps toward national political enslavement began tragically with one brother’s journey into slavery. Almost from the very moment that Joseph, the favored seventeen-year-old son of Jacob, is introduced in the biblical narrative, his dreadful descent into slavery is set into motion. His first reported activity involved helping the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah as they tended their flocks. However, immediately we read that Joseph reported some unspecified misbehavior of these brothers back to Jacob.⁸ Clearly this presaged a difficult relationship with his brothers. Then as the brothers saw Jacob’s special love for Joseph, as symbolized by the gift of a special garment,⁹ they hated him; and they were not able to speak to him peaceably. This failure to communicate compounded their misunderstanding of Joseph’s every motive, most of all the symbolism of his dreams and their validity as prophecy rather than as reflections of his personal desire for power. To make matters worse, Joseph insisted that his brothers hear his dream: And Joseph dreamt a dream and told his brothers and they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Please hear this dream that I dreamt…. My sheaf arose and also stood, then behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf (Genesis 37:5–7). The brothers quickly read a disturbing meaning into the dream: ‘Would you then reign over us? Would you then dominate us?’ and their hatred of him grew more (37:9). His final dream seemed even more explicit and radical. Unlike the first dream of bowing sheaves of grain, in this second dream the focal point was Joseph himself. He saw the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to me (37:9).

    The Joseph story is often characterized as jealousy taken to extremes, complicated by an inability to communicate. However, classic Jewish commentaries found this simplistic analysis difficult to accept because each of the brother protagonists was to become the founder of a tribe within the Israelite nation.¹⁰ Their tribal leadership formed the basic structure of the first Commonwealth of Israel. Each tribe had its own area of the land to settle, its own stone on the jewel-studded breastplate of the high priest, and a distinct mission within the community of Israel, as envisioned by Jacob on his deathbed.¹¹ This diversity was supposed to be an integral part of the Jewish people as it pursued its national and religious destiny.

    Given the status accorded the brothers, many commentators have wondered how these powerful leaders who became such a critical element of Jewish nationhood could succumb to petty jealousy over a father’s favoritism. How could their jealousy of Joseph’s special coat drive them to the point of considering murder before deciding to sell Joseph into slavery in a far-off land? These commentators believe that the reason is much more than mere jealousy over favoritism shown toward a son who had dreams of grandeur.

    The commentaries combine several midrashic traditions to present a deeper analysis of the motivations that drove ten of Joseph’s brothers to debate extreme strategies. The brothers’ core fear was that they would end up like Ishmael and Esau, cut off from the destiny promised to the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the pre-nation status of the Jewish people and religion. Each patriarch, who had a unique personal relationship with God, offered future generations a distinct role model. Each was given his own promise that the Land of Israel would pass to his descendants. However, both Abraham and Isaac faced the difficult choice of passing on their primary heritage to just one of their two sons. Isaac, not Ishmael, and Jacob, not Esau, were promised the land of Canaan and a unique relationship with God.

    The birth of Jacob’s twelve sons presaged a new era, the development of a nation. With Jacob, the chain of transmission blossomed such that all of his children would be part of the development of nation-state and religion.¹² However, the brothers felt that Jacob’s treatment of Joseph and the unique status accorded him undermined and possibly precluded this broader destiny.

    Jacob’s favoritism took the form of declaring Joseph a ben zekunim, a son of old age. This term is more than just a descriptive statement that Joseph was born to Jacob in his old age. This would be true of all of Jacob’s children.¹³ Rather, the designated ben zekunim had the primary responsibility for staying with and caring for the elderly father and was almost always at his side. The midrashic tradition asserts that Jacob took special interest in educating Joseph and personally taught Joseph the traditions he had received from his father, Isaac, who in turn had received them from his father, Abraham.¹⁴ An extraordinary robe symbolized this special status; it was more than just a fashionable multicolored garment. In effect, Jacob had declared Joseph to be first among equals or, worse yet, the heir apparent.

    The brothers saw in Joseph’s dreams a growing threat to their vision of a shared destiny. It was clear to them that Joseph saw himself as more than first among equals; rather, Joseph dreamed that he would be in charge and all his brothers would be subordinate to him. Joseph’s persistent recounting of his dreams seemed to indicate his desire to rule over them. The second, more grandiose dream conveyed an even more ominous message. It was as if Joseph, upon seeing the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him, had elevated himself to godlike status with not only his family but also the whole universe under his domain. It seemed that even before Jacob died, Joseph envisioned usurping the role of leader and guiding the family destiny. Yet unlike the earlier dreams of the patriarchs, Joseph’s did not include a vision of God or an angel to validate the prophecy.¹⁵ Thus, the brothers judged him guilty and concluded that in order to save the shared destiny of the children of Israel, drastic action would be necessary.

    The opportunity to act out upon this conviction arose while they were tending the family’s flocks in Shechem, several days’ journey from Jacob’s home base in Beer Sheba. As the unsuspecting Joseph approached, they said to one another, Here comes that dreamer (Genesis 37:19). At the suggestion that he should be killed for his perceived misdeeds and in order to prevent his future usurpation of power, the thoughts of at least one unspecified brother may have been on revenge: We shall see what comes of his dreams (Genesis 37:20).¹⁶ They stripped Joseph of his special tunic, cast him into a waterless pit, and continued their discussions over a meal. Soon after, Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver to a passing caravan of Midianites and Ishmaelites and ultimately sold in Egypt to Potiphar, a courtier and chief steward of Pharaoh.¹⁷

    State of Mind

    The Bible is silent in this chapter about Joseph’s reaction to his brothers’ attack. The Midrash views the low price paid for him as evidence that his confinement in the pit so depressed him that his appearance deteriorated rapidly.¹⁸ Much later, however, the Bible records the brothers’ remorse for their action when their initial meeting with the unrecognized Joseph, the vizier of Egypt, turned hostile: Alas, we are punished on account of our brother, because we looked upon his anguish, yet paid no heed as he pleaded with us (Genesis 42:21). Implied in their statement were three reasons that they should have reconsidered their plans and shown Joseph mercy. He was their brother; they saw his anguish; they heard his pleas. However, they were unmoved and simply continued to eat as the caravan of traders drew near.

    Thomas Mann, in his three-part novel Joseph and His Brothers, goes beyond the biblical narrative to give voice to Joseph’s unrecorded pleading:

    Brothers, where are you? Ah, go not away, leave me not alone in the pit. It is so earthy and so horrible. Brothers, have pity and save me still out of the night of this pit where I perish. I am your brother Joseph. Brothers, hide not your ears from my sighs and cryings, for you do falsely to me. Reuben, where art thou? Reuben, I cry thy name from below in the pit…. Brothers, he cried, do not that with the beast and the robe, treat not the father so, for he will not survive it. Ah, I beg you not for myself, for body and soul are broken in me and I lie in the grave. But spare our father and bring him not the bloody garment – it would kill him.¹⁹

    Mann also explores Joseph’s psychological state while in the pit.²⁰ The suddenness and brutality with which the brothers stripped him of his robe had shocked him even before his imprisonment in the depths of the earth. Mann goes on to describe Joseph’s thoughts in solitude, in which he slowly comes to realize how his behavior had engendered such hatred. For this he is overcome with remorse, especially because he knows it will lead Jacob to grieve for his missing son.

    Much had gone on with him, ever since the astonishing and horrible moment when the brethren fell upon him like wolves and he had looked into their faces distorted by fury and hate…. My God, the brothers! To what had he brought them? For he did understand that he had brought them to this: through manifold and great mistakes which he had committed in the assumption that everybody loved him more than themselves…. In the brothers’ distorted and sweating masks he had read clearly with one eye that the premise had gone beyond human power and over a long period had strained their souls and given them great suffering…. With amazement he contemplated the riddle of self-destructive arrogance presented to him by his own extraordinary behavior…. He wept over poor Jacob, who would have to summon his endurance, and over the brethren’s confidence in his death.²¹

    The novelist’s insights, midrashic in nature, give the reader a glimpse of what might have been Joseph’s mindset at the time, speculation that fleshes out what the biblical narrative chooses not to discuss.

    In Genesis, Joseph’s journey by caravan from the waterless pit near Shechem down to Egypt was evidently too insignificant to be recorded, except for one interesting aside. The caravan was transporting gum, balm, and laudanum (Genesis 37:25). Thus, the smells and scents that accompanied Joseph on the ship of the desert were far different from those smells that overwhelmed the senses of Africans and their transporters as they traversed the Middle Passage.²² One former slave, Olaudah Equiano, recalled, I was soon put down under decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything.²³

    Once in Egypt, Joseph was sold to Potiphar, a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward. It is at this point that the Bible offers us a simple insight into Joseph’s fortunes: The Lord was with Joseph (Genesis 39:2). The phrase is used when Joseph’s fate took a turn for the better through his success in the house of an important Egyptian personage. The same phrase is repeated (Genesis 39:21) when Joseph’s world was turned upside down and he was cast into Pharaoh’s political prison. This sense of God being with Joseph is a message that resonates throughout Joseph’s life in Egypt. In addition, Joseph perceived this and ascribed his life experiences to God’s intervention so that the phrase God was with Joseph also a represented a corollary characterization of Joseph’s state of mind.

    After thirteen years in Egypt, including two years in prison, Joseph, now age thirty, had risen to the rank of vizier of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. The Bible offers the reader another look at Joseph’s state of mind on the birth of each of his two sons: Joseph named the first-born Manasseh, meaning, ‘God had made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home.’ And the second he named Ephraim, meaning, ‘God has made me fertile in the land of affliction’ (Genesis 42:51–52). The first-born’s name implies a puzzling contradiction. Joseph praised God for taking away the pain; time heals wounds through the blessing of forgetting. But was he really thankful that he had forgotten his parental home? Naming his son Manasseh in its own way served as a constant though indirect reminder of a life gone by.²⁴ How could he ever forget his home if his son’s very name reminded him of what he had forgotten? The second name makes it clear that Joseph did not view his current status as ideal. He again praised God, this time for his bounty. Yet he described his adopted country as a land of affliction. Although the pain he had suffered thirteen years earlier had abated with time, Joseph was still afflicted by an as yet unresolved family conflict.

    1.. At the time of this vision, God had not yet changed Abram’s name to Abraham. However, since the name Abraham became his permanent name, I have used it throughout except in direct quotes pre-dating the name change.

    2.. Ramban on Genesis 15:13.

    3.. Biblical commentaries generally assume that the birth of Isaac is the beginning point of the four hundred years (e.g., Rashi on Genesis 15:13).

    4. Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Bereshit (Genesis), translated by Aryeh Newman. Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 1981, 501.

    5. Aqaydat Yitzchaq: Commentary of Rabbi Yitzchaq Arama on the Torah, translated and condensed by Eliyahu Munk. Jerusalem:Rubin Mass, 1986. Chapter 28, Va-yeshev.

    6. Rambam, Book of Knowledge, Laws of Repentance, Chapter 6, Law 5. Maimonides argued that God’s decree of Israelite slavery in Egypt was a general decree. The decree did not impinge on the free will of any specific individual as no individuals were chosen or ordered to carry out the enslavement. Therefore, the Egyptians were punished for their actions. Ramban on Genesis 15:14 argues that Egyptian accountability was a result of their going beyond God’s intent and treating the Israelites with a harshness not decreed by God – for example, drowning the male children. The Rabad’s comments on the Rambam are logically consistent with those of the Ramban. God’s guiding hand on the voyage through Jewish history is best illustrated by the story of Joseph’s journey to find his brothers. When Joseph was unable to find them, a mysterious individual appeared and directed Joseph to his brothers’ encampment. God’s intercession to prevent Joseph’s confrontation with his brothers from being delayed cannot take away any of the guilt from the brothers’ decision.

    7. Barbot, John. Prepossessed of the Opinion… that Europeans are fond of their flesh, reprinted in Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 31–32.

    8. Rashi (Genesis 37:2) states that Joseph’s evil reports pertained to the children of Leah, whom he had seen treating the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah with contempt and calling them slaves. Ramban disagrees and states that Joseph’s reports related to the brothers whom he was with, namely the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Midrashic tradition claims Joseph’s defamation of his brothers included charges of eating flesh cut from a living animal, treating the sons of the handmaidens with contempt, and sexual immorality. Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:3, n. 36. Jerusalem: Mechon Torah Shelemah, 1973, 1393–1396.

    9. Although the Hebrew term ketonet passim is popularly translated as multi-colored garment, most commentaries translate it differently. Rashi simply calls it a garment of fine wool. Hirsch pictures it as having impressive trim at its hems as a mark of importance. Ibn Ezra characterizes it as embroidered.

    10. See, for example, Seforno and Hirsch on Genesis 37:18, and Or ha-Chaim on Genesis 37:20.

    11. Genesis 49.

    12. The Midrashic literature and the commentaries suggest there was as an unrecorded prophecy indicating that Jacob would have twelve children who would presage the rapid expansion of the core family, which in turn would grow into a nation. For example, see Rashi on Genesis 29:34. The Matriarchs, who were prophets, knew that Jacob would beget twelve tribes. Bereshit Rabbah 70:17 points out that Jacob was aware of this prophecy as well. (Note: BT Megillah 14a names only seven women prophets. The list, which starts with Sarah, does not mention any of the other matriarchs – not even Rivka, who was described in the Bible as seeking and communicating with God [Genesis 25:23].)

    13. The report of the birth of each of Jacob’s first eleven sons appears in Genesis 29:31–30:24. Immediately after Joseph’s birth, Jacob asked his father-in-law’s permission to return home. One might assume that this occurred soon after he kept his promise to work a second set of seven years for the right to marry Rachel after having been tricked into marrying Leah first. In that case, the eleven births occurred during a seven-year period and Joseph was no more than a year or two younger than Zebulun. It has been calculated that Jacob was eighty-four when he married Rachel and ninety-one at the birth of Joseph. See Chavel, Charles B. Ramban (Nachmanides): Commentary on the Torah: Genesis, Translated and Annotated. New York: Shilo Publishing House, 1971, 451, and n. 36. Also see Hirsch, Genesis 30:26.

    14. Chavel, Ramban, 452. This is the intent of the sages when they said: Whatever Jacob had learned from Shem and Eber, he transmitted to him, meaning that he passed teachings of wisdom and secrets of the Torah to him, and that the father found the son to be intelligent and profound in these areas as if he were a mature elder.

    15. Armstrong, Karen. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, 101.

    16. Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:17, n. 121, page 1420. This Midrash, which is not extant, is quoted by Rashi (BT Sanhedrin 102a).

    17. Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, 400–409. The actual sequence of the sales is obscured in the text by the use of pronouns and contradictory references to both Ishmaelites and Midianites. The brothers decided to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:27). However, in the next verse, When Midianite traders passed by, they pulled Joseph up out of the pit. The pronoun they could refer either to Joseph’s brothers or to the Midianites. The next verse confuses the issue further. They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt. Again the pronoun they is ambiguous. Verse 36 further confounds the problem. The Midianites sold him to Egypt. All classic Biblical commentaries attempt to address the ambiguities and seeming contradictions that arise in these verses. The Ramban offers the explanation that the camel drivers were Ishmaelites but the merchants were Midianites. Thus the caravan included both Midianites, who owned Joseph the slave, and Ishmaelites, who transported Joseph.

    18. Midrash Tanchumah Vayeshev B. Quoted by Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:28, n. 167, page 1429.

    19. Mann, Thomas. Joseph and His Brothers. Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter. London: Vintage, 1999, 380–383.

    20. Ibid., 386. In Mann’s narrative, Joseph spends three full days in the pit. The biblical text offers no specific statement as to how long Joseph was there. The verse which records Joseph being cast into a pit, Genesis 37:24, concludes a paragraph. Verse 25 begins the subsequent paragraph with They sat down to eat a meal. The impression is that this meal began immediately afterward. However, that need not have been the case. Mann seems to split verse 35. Mann places the first part referring to the meal immediately after Joseph was thrown into the pit. His narrative has all of the brothers present at this meal and they could hear Joseph’s pleas from the pit. He describes an event three days later when eight brothers, excluding Reuben, are lounging under a tree and a ninth, Naphtali, comes running with news of a caravan moving in their direction. Ibid., 380 and 400.

    21. Ibid., 384–391.

    22. Rashi on Genesis 37:25 asks: Why does Scripture announce what they were laden with? It is to tell how great is the reward of the righteous. It is not usual for Arabs to carry anything but naphtha and itran (tar), which are evil-smelling, but for this one (Joseph the righteous) it was specially arranged that they should be carrying fragrant spices so that he should not suffer from a bad odor. Translated into English and annotated by Rosenbaum, Rev. M.and Silbermann, Dr. A.M. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1935, 183.

    23. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, excerpted in The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd ed., edited by David Northrup, 69. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

    24. Malbim on Genesis 42:51–52.

    Chapter 2

    THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

    THE EARLY MARITIME PROWESS of the Portuguese laid the foundation for Western European trade in African slaves in the first half of the fifteenth century. The Portuguese captured the first slaves themselves by attacking Africans living on the coast of the Bay of Arguin in modern-day Mauritania. Some Africans were captured at sea, while others were taken in attacks on coastal villages.¹ However, it was not long before the Portuguese realized it was more efficient to make use of the existing African slave trade. Prince Henry authorized the negotiation of treaties with Africans in which

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