Let My People Go!

Nisan, the month of our liberation

Actu­al­ly, the com­plete phrase is “Let My peo­ple go… that they may serve Me.” from Exo­dus 5:1.

It is inter­est­ing how the phrase has been used (and abused).

Exodus and Liberation

When you check the phrase in the Wikipedia you learn not only, what you had know as a child, that the phrase had been used as a “Negro Spir­i­tu­al”, but that

A Hebrew trans­la­tion of the song is a com­mon ele­ment in the Passover seder in Israel.

Jay reports that there is a Hebrew trans­la­tion, though he does not know how pop­u­lar or well-known it is. On Kib­butz Hat­zor it is sung every year. He admits that the first time he heard it he found it very strange, but after years of hear­ing, and singing, it, it seems quite nat­ur­al.
the refrain is
!שלח נא את עמי 

Relat­ed to this is an anec­dote I have been try­ing to track down:

A “Negro” spir­i­tu­al (or escape from slav­ery song) that uses bib­li­cal imagery designed to show the way north and out of slav­ery was sup­pos­ed­ly used by the kib­butzniks help­ing the ma’apil­im know where to land their boats. I think I “learned” this at Habon­im camp in the ear­ly 1960s, but have not been able to ver­i­fy it. The gen­er­a­tion that might have done this is quick­ly dying off.

If any­one has any infor­ma­tion regard­ing this please let me know.

The Civil Rights Movement

I recall a but­ton of black and white hands clasped in a six-point­ed star with the words Let My Peo­ple Go around the perime­ter. How­ev­er, this but­ton is not where I can make a scan to share here.

The Soviet Jewry Movement

In an explic­it­ly Jew­ish con­text, the phrase was used by the Stu­dent Strug­gle for Sovi­et Jew­ry on its lapel but­tons to call atten­tion to the plight of Jews in the Sovi­et Union. A num­ber of vari­ants appeared.

Juda­ic Lapel Buttons

© Mark Hurvitz

Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed 26 March, 2009 (Rosh Ḥos­desh Nisan, 5769)