Missing Pharoah: What’s Most in the Way of Black Christian-Jewish Renewal

It is a common practice among those of us who value the Black Christian-Jewish relationship to center our connection on our mutual identification with the Exodus story. But this narrative, moving as it is, is holding us back. And if our relationship is to evolve in the best way, the story of our journey in the wilderness holds out more promise. That’s why the national Black Christian-Jewish Bible study group that I have been part of for five years has recently begun unpacking the meaning of the post-Exodus experience.

At first glance, the wilderness story is a puzzling narrative, marked by a repeated claim that the Jewish people were better off in Egypt. One of many examples:

Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword…it would be better for us to go back to Egypt (Numbers 14:3)

What could they possibly have been thinking? It is typically explained that the generation of the Exodus had a slave mentality. Externally the Jewish people were free, but inwardly they feared the responsibility of freedom and preferred a state of childlike dependency, however miserable.

But perhaps it was not slavery the Jewish people wanted to revisit. It was the romantic moment of leaving Egypt they longed to recapture. The wilderness presents a different set of challenges than Egyptian slavery. There was a moral clarity to the fight for freedom that was missing after the Jews got out. Pharaoh was the epitome of evil. Defeating him was an unambiguous objective.

Once the Jews crossed the Red Sea, everything changed. They were free but still struggling. The solutions to the challenges they faced now were much murkier than the ones they faced as slaves. No wonder they wanted to return to the heady days of the Movement.

Much has been written about the decline of the Black Christian-Jewish relationship. We may never entirely agree on what went wrong. Feelings of betrayal are common on both sides. Black Christians say Jews ‘became white.’ Jews say we were kicked out of the oppressed club. More generously, it’s been said that each of us chose shoring up our group identity over assimilating into the American mainstream. Black Christians adopted African names, grew out their hair. Jews (inspired by Black Christians) stopped changing their names, their noses. What was good for ethnic pride was not so good for the relationship.

But perhaps there is a simpler explanation. It was easy for Black Christians and Jews to rally around the Exodus story. Bull Conner and George Wallace were clear Pharaoh’s. Segregation was an unambiguous evil with a simple solution. You could either ride the front of the bus or not. But what happens when you defeat Pharaoh and your next stop is the wilderness, not the Promised Land?

Inevitably, the challenges we face in the wilderness are more complex than when we were living the Exodus story. For the Black Christian community, the challenges of overcoming more subtle forms of racism, achieving upward mobility, finding the best education and ending de facto segregation do not lend themselves to solutions as simple as integrating a lunch counter. Some in the Black Christian community still cling to the Exodus narrative, for example, calling mass incarceration ‘The New Jim Crow.’ But bus boycotts and freedom rides will not keep Black men out of prison. That moment has passed. We live in the wilderness now.

We Jews, too, have had our share of Exodus’s. Ethiopian and Russian Jews marched to freedom with a mighty arm. The Six Day War victory returned the Jewish people to the Kotel and ended 2,000 years of subjugation. Yet, the rebirth of Israel, as spectacular as it has been, has not ended antisemitism. Most of the greatest challenges we face as a Jewish people today do not lend themselves to simple solutions. How to respond to assimilation in America, how Israel can be a Jewish and democratic state, what kind of Judaism will predominate in Israel, how to create Jewish security without subjugating another people—these are wilderness challenges.

When these challenges overwhelm us, we yearn to go back to Egypt, to simpler times. We resurrect Pharaoh. For many in the liberal community, Zionists are the new Pharaoh. For MAGA supporters, the Pharaoh is the elite, the illegal immigrant, the advocates of ‘wokism,’ the university, the government, and, of course, the Jews.

But as nostalgic as we might be for the Exodus moment, we cannot go back there. Over the years, many Black Christian and Jewish congregations held Freedom Seders together. But the Exodus story is no longer true to our experience today. Perhaps a more appropriate holiday for Black Christians and Jews to celebrate together is Sukkot, the holiday that commemorates our wilderness experience.

We know what it was like to be allies in the Exodus narrative. We knew exactly what tasks were demanded of us. Can Black-Christians and Jews be allies in the wilderness? If the answer to that question is yes, all of America will be the better for it.