You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a “sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow — a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
They weren’t shouting general self-praise, nor self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
“Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.
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We are currently stuck with a demented & deranged president who used to rape children!
ReplyDeleteHe used to hang around the most disgusting & disreputable people imaginable. First there was his father, a racist who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, when he was in his 20s. Somehow this man became filthy rich owning apartment buildings throughout Brooklyn & Queens New York. He got married, had children & then hated his oldest child, because he wanted to be an airline pilot, instead of running the family business. Because of his own father's hatred towards him & an apparently uncaring mother, he became a drunk & died early.
So the family business went to his younger brother, a bully who was then mentored by a truly vile creature, Roy Cohn, a gay man that persecuted other gay men when he was Joe McCarthy's hate filled shyster.
Then he fell in with an even worse man, Jeffery Epstein, who operated a child prostitution ring & Donald was apparently one of his best clients. He even sold off one of his aging foreign whores to Don the Con & she became his third wife, who he of course cheated on, as hi did with the other two wives.
Don the Con, because he always cheats everyone he works with, he never pays his contractors what he owes them & has now grifted the country out of billions, taken bribes for pardons & tore down parts of the White House illegally!
All to put his name everywhere, as he's a narcissistic sociopath, who wants to be king for the rest of his increasingly demented life! And he doesn't care that he's destroying the country, abandoning our allies & making enemies everywhere!
Until he's gone, we as a country are well & truly fucked!
So Clark St. ... you're saying ... what? That Donald Trump is ... a BAD MAN? Thank you for sharing that.
ReplyDeleteA bad man. A very bad man. My mother would have called him a shtunk (Yiddish for stinker) and a mamzer (a bastard). So glad she was not around to experience the past decade.
DeleteDonald J. Trump is the symptom. The problem is republicans. Every. last. one.
Deletehow many "good" republican's would it take to stop him? the answer, i believe is a total of 12.
Don't think donald trump is the problem. Don't act like he is the problem. don't treat the symptom, fight the illness.
Speaking of "stinker," I wish the Trump critics would lay off the Incontinence stories and the like. I don't really care if he shits in his pants or was born irregularly except insofar as those appellations are fanciful markers for the real evil he is responsible for.
Deletetate
He's not just a bad man Neil, he's the absolute worst person in American history. No one ij American public has been this bad! Jeffery Dahmer & John Wayne Gacy were angels compared to him!
DeleteHe never did the horrible things that Gacy and Dahmer did. Gacy raped and tortured boys and young men before killing them. Dahmer operated a "Kitty Auschwitz" in a shed on his parents' wooded property, before graduating to torturing, killing, and eating male humans. Trump didn't do any of the things these two did...as far as we know.
Deletecomeon, Clark St.!
DeleteDonald Trump sucks! Thank you for having a place where I can voice that opinion!!
ReplyDeleteI can't tell if the sun is setting or rising. Dark clouds fill the sky and squalls weaken things. A big storm is coming.
ReplyDeleteFor me, history is a pendulum, swinging back and forth from social gains to losses to gains again. Hoping that we are now about to swing back towards gains. It is painful to not be able to help the less fortunate. Let’s flip the Congress and stop the loss of social gains and begin restoring them to those who have no path forward.
ReplyDeleteThe Liberty Bell crack lets in some light
ReplyDeleteThom - I was also reminded of the song. Let it be so.
DeleteA fine article with food for thought and hope.
ReplyDeleteAnd in another vein: young voters are interested in dem soc. The right tries to brand dem soc. as Communism and fools some.
Very niece piece, Neil.
ReplyDeleteI find the right's use of religion to be appalling. Not just because I have yet to meet a conservative/republican who actually abides by the tenants of religion, but because not a one of them appears to have morals.
I am constantly appalled by not only the media's inability to call out their clearly anti christian (or Jewish) morals; but their inability to ask any leader (aside from the few democrats when they do) to justify their actions as it reflects their claimed religious beliefs. I grow tired of the rights incessant "I can't in good faith support gay marriage because of the bible" yet somehow they can justify treating the poor and immigrants in the fashion they do.
Republicans are liars, cheats, anti American, religious zealots, and an affront to both their religions and United States of American which they claim to support more than anyone else (especially those radical liberal democrats).
Yesterday, for the first time that I can remember, someone said something about a prominent republican and their religious (as the Romans would say) torus sterkus. I believe it should be repeated, ad nauseam to any individual who is considering voting for a republican. I will certainly do so, and encourage all of you to as well.
“There’s one common problem here. It’s always been one person, and for someone who’s got the holiest tongue in the world, he lies more than anyone I’ve ever met.” Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) talking about Speaker Mike Johnson.
Republicans are the problem. any vote for a republican is a vote against our democratic republic.
My grandparents came here from Italy, poland, ireland and Germany in the early 20th century.
ReplyDeleteA farmer, coal miner, baker and factory worker. All Christians none of them church members.
I graduated high school the year of the bicentennial. Even with Watergate ,Vietnam assassinations and riots in the near past at that time I felt pride to be an American but I just felt like we could do better. I did not let those recent events cloud all of the best things about our country.
I can't remember or pronounce the term used for the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding . Current events leave me feeling like our country could do much better. I retain The pride I felt to have won the geographic lottery and live here where my opportunities have been unlimited.
I know it's not this way for everyone who lives here or came here but I refuse to let this fool who we have for a president completely cloud my vision of the place I call home.
All of us together have a chance of making this a better place if we continue to be at odds with half of the people in our country that chance is diminished.
Hopefully we're not in for an even bigger ego maniac for our next president.
Though the job does seem to draw the type.
I hope everyone celebrates the 4th safely and that we have a few more to come I know pretty much everyone around here is getting up in the years.
Franco
Jethro V. Dance (AKA Vladimir Futon) may prove to be even worse as 48 than 45/47. If he were to assume the position this month, he would be the youngest POTUS ever, at 41. (Adolf was just short of 44 when he took control of Germany in 1933).
DeleteEven if he did not win in '28, Jethro could do an enormous amount of damage in 2 1/2 years. And, like LBJ, he could run again if he won...and be around for a decade. Not probable but still possible. A frightening thought. Sofa king bad. We could still be a long way from rock bottom.
A great piece! Thanks for writing it!
ReplyDeleteThe inscription “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof" was the reason abolitionists chose the bell as a symbol of the anti-slave movement. Before the 1830's the bell was called The Statehouse Bell. So we have the abolitionists to thank for the name "Liberty Bell".
ReplyDeleteSince our history cycles through sunrises and sunsets, progress and setbacks, maybe its time to elevate the symbolism of the Liberty Bell back into prominence.
Semiquincentennial
ReplyDeleteAgnostic. In the scheme of things a relativey new term The term was coined in 1869 by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and comes from the Greek word agnostos ("unknown"). I am an atheist. I don't think I am a zealot. I saw this today . https://axismundinetwork.substack.com/p/questions-we-werent-supposed-to-ask-c49 I suppose you could ask a Rabbi the question.
ReplyDeleteSanford
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth would you read that drivel or recommend it to anyone else?
Tom