And us He freed from there, that He might take us and give us the land that He had promised on oath to our fathersDeuteronomy 6:23 (The Israel Bible™)וְאוֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיא מִשָּׁם לְמַעַן הָבִיא אֹתָנוּ לָתֶת לָנוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּעלַאֲבֹתֵינוּHear the verse in Hebrewv’-o-TA-nu ho-TZEE mi-SHAM l’-MA-an ha-VEE o-TA-nu LA-tet LA-nu et ha-A-retz
a-SHER nish-BA la-a-vo-TAY-nu
The Mayflower and the Jews
Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, summed up this verse in a speech he gave to the Peel Commission in 1936. “Three-hundred years ago, there came to the New World a boat, and its name was the Mayflower. The Mayflower’s landing on Plymouth Rock was one of the great historical events in the history of England and in the history of America. But I would like to ask any Englishman sitting here on the commission, what date did the Mayflower leave port? How many people were on the boat? Who were their leaders? What kind of food did they eat on the boat? More than three-thousand three-hundred years ago, long before the Mayflower, our people left Egypt, and every Jew in the world, wherever he is, knows what day they left. And he knows what food they ate. And we still eat that food with every anniversary. And we know who our leader was. And we sit down and tell the story to our children and grandchildren, in order to guarantee that it will never be forgotten. And we say our two slogans: ‘Now we may be enslaved, but next year, we'll be a free people.’ … Now we are in the prison of the Soviet Union. Now, we're in Germany where Hitler is destroying us. Now we’re scattered throughout the world, but next year, we’ll be in Jerusalem. There'll come a day that we'll come home to Zion, to the Land of Israel. That is the nature of the Jewish people.” Read The Israel Bible Daily Inspirations devotional to discover more connections between the Bible and contemporary Jewish history.
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