Exodus Meaning Borrowed from the Past
Parashat Shemot Exodus 1:1-6:1
Because each Torah portion is named for its first distinctive words, and because in Hebrew each book in the Torah is named for its first portion, what we call in English the Book of Exodus is Shemot, “Names”:
א וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙
1 These are the names…
We enter Exodus, the narrative heart of Judaism, by listing those eleven sons of Jacob, or Israel, who journeyed down to Egypt seeking security from the twelfth, Joseph: Reuven, Simon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. Just a few verses later, their descendants are enslaved, and a few verses after that, Pharaoh commands that the Israelite midwives must slaughter any newborn Israelite son. The rest of Exodus is a chronicle of the Israelites’ spiritual and physical journey out of this oppression, aided by Moses, from the Tribe of Levi.
For the rest of the Tanakh, Israelite characters are identified by tribe, their relation to one of Jacob’s sons. From a literary perspective, Exodus begins by listing their names to foreshadow an Israelite social structure that will endure beyond their enslavement. This sense of identity as something that is shaped by those who came before us is called heritage, a powerful source of meaning borrowed from the past.
One strange feature of American political discourse today is the way new language can take quick root by repetition, accepted for its ease of use in our talking-point driven media and meme-scaled culture. But new terminology has the power to introduce—or smuggle—new ideas into the conversation. It seems to me over the last year that this is the case with “heritage Americans,” a phrase I first heard fairly recently, but have been encountering with increasing frequency. As best I can tell, to those who intend for all of us to know and use the term, a heritage American is a citizen of the United States who can trace their ancestry to colonial times or the early decades of our republic. An article from Politico on the phrase’s growing popularity described an approximate definition:
Like a lot of phrases drawn from internet discourse, the precise definition of “heritage America” can get a bit fuzzy around the edges, and its exact meaning remains the subject of some debate. But in its most basic sense, the phrase refers to present-day Americans who trace their ancestral roots to the colonial period, or shortly thereafter. Depending on whom you ask, the category also includes the offspring of Indigenous Americans and the ADOS, or “American descendants of slavery.”
The concept of a “heritage American” is not radical or offensive on its face. However, terms like this impact the discourse as much for who they exclude as who they describe. The “heritage American” label has been introduced, and claimed with pride, by people who believe it is a synonym for “real American”, or “true American”, or “legitimate American”. The implication is that the rest of us are not as American, and that the Americans who sort into this category are under threat of losing their country to those who do not. Vice President J.D. Vance suggested as much when he accepted his party’s nomination: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future.” In a speech delivered last July, the Vice President attempted to intellectually frame this idea:
“If you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, very few of our leaders would have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America? That definition is overinclusive and underinclusive. It would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of foreigners…At the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people…even though their own ancestors were here at the time of the Revolutionary War. So perhaps the most pressing thing to build now is the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century. America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life…Citizenship should mean feeling pride in our heritage…The Founders understood that our shared qualities—our heritage, our values, our manners and customs—confer a special and indispensable advantage.”
If “the most pressing thing to build is the meaning of American citizenship”, then the subtextual implication is that whatever meaning might exist there already must be demolished. The concept of a “heritage American” is necessary and important to those who would like to upend the American project by making American identity, and apparently, eventually, citizenship, a question of who you descended from. American Jews have known this is wrong since at least 1790, when George Washington told us in a letter.
During his first term in office, President Washington visited Newport to mark the occasion of Rhode Island’s ratification of the Constitution. While there, he was received by the congregation of Touro Synagogue. Moses Seixas, a congregational leader, presented him with a letter to thank him for his service and celebrate the promise of the new republic, “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free citizens.” Washington wrote in his reply:
“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
I’m not sure how this letter from America’s first President could make it more plain that “heritage” in the traditional sense has nothing to do with citizenship in the United States of America. In fact, as the Jews of Touro Synagogue anticipated in 1790, this foundational guarantee of American democracy is what has allowed American Jews to flourish in this country like few other times in our history. If this feels like it is changing now, that is surely not unrelated to the rising tide of “heritage American” rhetoric. History has taught us that wherever they impose tests of loyalty, there will be a test for Jews. That is not what this country is meant to be, as implied by Washington in his allusion to Micah 4:4 in the letter’s penultimate paragraph: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
In referring to American Jews as the children of the stock of Abraham, Washington offers us one final lesson. When converts to Judaism receive their Hebrew names, they are announced as children of Abraham and Sarah, the first Jews, the great grandparents of the brothers listed at the beginning of Shemot. This tradition is an act of radical inclusion–let there be no mistake now, you are so much a part of our people that you are joined to our earliest ancestors. As we read in Megillat Ruth, converts have been vital to the Jewish project from the time of the Judges, those early generations after the days of Moses and Joshua; Jewish conversion is a powerful and necessary reminder that the belonging we find in heritage is not always inherited directly.
This week we recite the names of those who went into Mizraim, the narrow land of Egypt. Reuven, Simon, Levi, and Judah. Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin. Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. It is good to know your stories and tell them, to cherish and celebrate them. It is good to be proud of where and who you come from. And it is even better not to organize society around it.
Adam Zemel is senior storyteller for the marketing department of Hebrew College. He holds an MFA in Fiction from UCRiverside, and his nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, Hey Alma, and elsewhere. He is a contributing writer to the American Scripture Project.
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