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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.
Perception succeeds optimally by way of contrast and analogy. The human eye sees best 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 slave population at the time of emancipation in the 1860's roughly double that of the Israelites at the Exodus. However, the two groups' respective ups and downs in status occurred in reverse order. The Children of Israel started out in Egypt as welcomed 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 official citizenship was given them a few years later. It took a hundred years to achieve de jure full citizenship and decades more to approach de facto equality.
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