Quote from America's Prophet
America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story
by Bruce Feiler
Harper Collins, NewYork, New York © 2009 352 pp.
“Because Moses is the greatest prophet, he said. And the story of Moses is the story of the hero. He is weak. He’s fleeing his past. He can’t speak well. Yet he becomes the greatest leader in the history of the Jewish people. If you look at any narrative—in film, theater—there’s an element of Moses in it. It’s the ultimate journey. The hero starts out doubting himself. ’I can’t do it. I can’t be a leader.’ Yet he rises to the occasion and saves the day.” (pp. 225-226)
“One reason Moses has inspired so many Americans over the centuries is that he evangelizes action; he justifies risk. He gives ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty. As I found in my own travels in the Sinai desert over the years, no matter how full of hope the Israelites were when they departed Egypt, they were still leaving the most civilized place on earth for the most barren, based only on the word of a God they’d never actually seen and a leader they barely knew. Moses is the enemy of caution, which is one reason he has inspired so many visionaries—Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King. And these people were not born to greatness. They became great by tapping into the anger and hope within themselves. The moral of their lives, like that of Moses, is that each of us must become our own agitator, our own entrepreneur, our own freedom fighter. Our own Moses." (p. 308)
-- submitted by Barbara Goldberg
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