Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWhen I first met Aichana while doing research in Africa, the heat from the Sahara that was sweeping through Mauritania's capital had made it so difficult to sleep indoors that she had thrown a mattress on the terrace of a friend's home. Aichana's dark skin blended easily into the night. The blue scarf she'd wrapped around her long hair was about the only bright spot coming from the shadows. Everything else about her faded into the blackness of the evening.
I'd never met anyone like Aichana. A few months before, she had been a piece of property - for that's what you call someone owned by someone else. For the 29 years she'd been with her master, a man named Mohamed Ould Moissa, she had scavenged for firewood and herded livestock and done all the cooking and cleaning. Mr. Ould Moissa was her life because she had no life; he was her life because she was a slave.
This is the weekend when Jews mark Passover, their holiday of liberation. Passover celebrates the Jews' exodus from slavery in Egypt about 3,300 years ago. It is not, though, a parochial holiday: Most broadly, it honors the quest by all people to be freed from fetters and restraints. Thus, Passover is an apt moment to remember Aichana and the millions of other slaves around the globe.
The shackles that bind contemporary slaves may be political, economic, sexual. They may even be shackles of the imagination, for what is worse than a mind whose confines are defined and imposed by others?
Slavery persists around the world, although often it does not correspond to our traditional notion of a master and a slave. The International Labor Organization, for instance, has estimated that around the globe, 218 million children ages 5 to 17 are working; of these, 74 million children perform especially hazardous work from which they should be immediately withdrawn. Another 8.4 million children have been coerced into prostitution or pornography or into militias in war zones. From Russia, tens of thousands of women have disappeared into brothels in Germany, Greece, Portugal, Israel, China, Japan, Thailand and the United States. Debts as high as $30,000 to the "agency" that "resettled" them consign these women to not years but a lifetime of prostitution. Also known as "bonded labor," this form of debt has trapped millions of people in nonprostitution slavery, especially on large farms in South Asia, where entire families are kept like cattle.
In Mauritania, Aichana was among the lucky few: By the time she reached her late 20s, she resolved to leave her master. She first escaped by herself, then returned a few weeks later with government officials who freed her four children. They all moved to Nouakchott, the capital, where, with difficulty, they got by; Mauritanians do not take lightly to someone flouting the nation's rigid caste system.
But hard as her new life was, Aichana was relieved. When slaves are too old or too feeble to do what their master wants, he figuratively takes his foot off them and rolls them into their grave. The slave is done with his life; the master is done with his property. This is as basic a transaction as you can find, a transaction that is ancient and primeval and horrible, all at the same time - a transaction that slights everything we have come to believe about the intractable and inevitable and progressive trajectory of this race we call human.
Africa convinced me that universal abolition remains a compelling and durable myth. For if slavery is being practiced today, if people - anywhere - are still being treated like commodities that walk and talk just like the people who claim ownership over them, then some parts of the world have traveled little moral distance in the last century. And some people - "slaves" - are still forced to do their damnedest to cheat the devil of the cruelest theft of all: the theft of dignity and honor and strength, a theft that means that the rich, satisfying banquet of true freedom is for others, while their own lives are stunted in service to "masters," a word as rueful as it is antiquated.
Thankfully, slavery today is a fraction of what it had been more than a century ago. Yet not completely eradicating it may be proof that we humans are more flawed than we like to admit, that we haven't quite made it to the point of treating all people with an essential decency. Maybe we never will, yet the promise of Passover - the Promised Land of freedom, the blessed land of dignity - should be the horizon on which we set our eyes. Without that, pharaoh reigns, with death as his companion.
Arthur J. Magida is writer in residence at the University of Baltimore. His latest book is "Opening the Doors of Wonder: Reflections on Religious Rites of Passage." His e-mail is amagida2@aol.com.
© 2008 Baltimore Sun
10 Comments so far
Show AllOooh my god, Tom Robbins ( Even Cowgirls Get the Blues ) was right
"MiMiCcS — Did those aliens have really big inhumanly big noses ?"
Nope...those were the Ashkenazim, originally from the Georgia-area N. of Turkey, and who were forced to cabbage-onto a Mythos around the time of Mohammad...and who had NOTHING-whatsoever to do with any 'Passover', or any of the original-Israeli's/Judean's.
[The Aliens _did_ have freckles&red-hair, however...!]
MiMiCcS -- Did those aliens have really big inhumanly big noses ?
According to a recent piece from Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist, no evidence whatsoever has been discovered of any such captivity or escape. In fact, documents from that time reveal that no such events occurred.
And, just what exactly was passed over? If you remember your Bible studies, you will recall that God was going to slaughter the first born in all of Egypt but if the Israelites were to put the blood of a particularly fine lamb on their door posts and lintels, well then God would pass over their houses and kill the neighbors' children instead. Exodus 12:13
Just what does this act in accessory to organized mass murder have to do with the "quest by all people to be freed from fetters and restraints?"
"Passover - the Promised Land of freedom, the blessed land of dignity - should be the horizon on which we set our eyes. Without that, pharaoh reigns, with death as his companion"
WTF is this, satire?
There is zero evidence of Jews being enslaved in Egypt. Sure, it is in the old testament. People, we can not even believe what is written about what happened last week, by those we know, in a language we can read.
This Old Testament did not get in writing until the end of the Babylonian period was over, and those Jews who returned to Israel wrote up the history, perhaps as early as 500 BC, maybe later. Only the elite leaders had been exiled to Babylon, not the whole people, and Babylon was a rocking place at the time, so who knows what ideas they picked up. In any event, it did not get written up until at least 800 years after the Exodus, so who can say it is true.
The earliest version of the old testament until the dead sea scrolls was 800 AD. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not all released, and many of those that were, were kept under a cloak of secrecy for decades before being released after translation, some as old as 200 BC. Not exactly something us conspiracy nuts find assuring when asked to believe.
When you consider, that many events were not written about for hundreds of years after they took place, and much of this early history was simply translated orally, and even when a few could write, those writings were done under the authority and supervision of those in power, and many people were illiterate. Then over the centuries, these works get translated from one language to the other, then copied by hand (no printing presses), perhaps revised by those copying or translating them, intentionally or by mistake.
But for those taking the old testament as the word of god as a matter of faith, and think it should be taken literally, consider that in the old testament, animal sacrifice, human slavery, polygamy, etc. were all lawful. The New Testament corrects much of that, and most Christians, at least Catholics, are told to not take the Old Testament too seriously, after all, Jesus came because he was not too pleased with what was going on. Remember, he threw the money changers out of the temple, just like Lincon and JFK tried to do.
Personally, I think what happened is aliens came down in space ships as angels, and were the son of God, who noticed the daughters of man were hot, especially Eve who liked them apples hanging beneath the tree of knowledge. They breeded, and created a new race called Nephilim, who were a more agressive and intelligent race than us dumb peaceful humans. They were the chosen race who would globalize the world, by force if needed, and when ET comes back, we can be put to work as they will colonize the civilized world, and we will be slaves producing whatever they need us to produce for their galaxial empire.
But when they tell you you have been chosen to go to heaven in the Godship that has been sent for you to take you to be with your creator, run, because you are going into an oven, having been written off as surplus, troublesome, or one without a trace of Nephilims blood, otherwise known as inferior race.
passover - the promised land of freedom? i tried looking at that blessed horizon and all I saw was Palestinian kids shot for throwing stones,houses bulldozed, olive trees uprooted- must I really go on?
nothing good can happen until people get their heads out of the bible and look at the real world and try to make it better.
The imaginational - a notion that recognizes that perspectives about life are ideas and experiences - is also addressed in the context of what is lost under the 'profits' of slavery: dignity. There is a difference between "dignity" and "pride". The former speaks to integration with reality, the latter posits an individualized concept of self in relation to an event context. The Old Testament speaks to 'begettings' and the lives and names in Genesis tend to be regarded as simple corporal appearances rather than human lives with hearts and minds and ideas - perhaps because they were presented in litany.
Remembering is an important part of Passover.
Remembering the context of the US in occupation of Iraq and the millions of Iraqi lives enslaved and devastated is added to the the financial and reciprocal 'imaginational' cost. Enslaved by a notion of power rather than strength:
One Day of the Iraq War EQUALS
http://www.afsc.org/cost/banners.htm
720 Million Dollars
84 new elementary schools
12,478 Elementary School Teachers
95,364 Head Start Places for Children
1,153,846 Children with Free School Lunches
34,904 Four-Year Scholarships for University Sutdents
163,525 People with Health Care
423,529 Children with health Care
6,482 Families with Homes
1,274,336 Homes with Renewable Electricity
How many other races are 'imaginational slaves' to something which happened 3300 years ago ?
Even in one lifetime, we are constantly learning to unshackle ourselves from our own personal history -- failure to do so culminates in some form of insanity or other. I do not mean forgetting, in fact 'unshackling' involves placing our individual experience in a larger context so that we no longer take it so personally.
Imagine if every culture had such elaborate traditions regarding even their much more recent history. If the race were not dominant, we would conclude it was just another interestingly superstitious ritual . I read a quote from an older orthodox Jewish woman saying "If I eat leavened bread during Passover I will die !" That would be considered voodoo behavior in a non-dominant, dark-skinned culture.
But oh no, Dannon yogurt goes to great lengths to make special kosher Passover yogurt without any of the numerous taboo ingredients using specially cleaned equipment and rabbis drive hundreds of miles to certify the process. What's with that ? Yogurt is easy to make, if the ingredients and process are so important, why not make it at home or in the kitchen of the local synagogue ? Surely the Dannon thing drives up the cost of yogurt for the rest of us.
This will probably attract a lot of ire. But the author himself mentioned 'imaginational slavery'.
In what light can the routine practice of circumcizing infants not be considered 'imaginational slavery' ? What better way to imprint baby boys with the idea that the world is a sharp and wounding place ? Unfortunately, the whole topic is almost totally taboo, there is too much scar tissue to discourse coherently about any of the above.
People treat others not as they themselves would be treated, but as they have been treated by others---one of the uglier constants of human nature.
"This is the weekend when Jews mark Passover, their holiday of liberation. Passover celebrates the Jews' exodus from slavery in Egypt about 3,300 years ago. It is not, though, a parochial holiday: Most broadly, it honors the quest by all people to be freed from fetters and restraints. Thus, Passover is an apt moment to remember Aichana and the millions of other slaves around the globe."
This is the kind of popular Jewish thought and beliefs that I grew up exposed to. It stands in stark contrast to Israel's policy of oppressing the Palestinian people. Fencing Palestinians in and murdering them just like the Nazis did to Jews.
"..that we haven't quite made it to the point of treating all people with an essential decency. Maybe we never will, yet the promise of Passover - the Promised Land of freedom, the blessed land of dignity - should be the horizon on which we set our eyes. Without that, pharaoh reigns, with death as his companion."
Death is surely Israel's companion.