The Road to Redemption: Lessons from Exodus on Leadership and Community

Fresh from a stint on Bill Moyers's Genesis series on PBS, Rabbi Visotzky turns his critical attention to the book of Exodus, the story of a people who went from slavery to freedom, from tyranny to covenant and from chaos to law. Visotzky argues that an essential lesson of Exodus is that God is a God of all people, the Creator of the Universe, and that God frowns upon tyranny wherever it is found and in all its manifestations. Visotzky also contends that the acceptance of the presence of God in our lives and the submission of the individual self to the power of the Redeemer are lessons to be drawn from the journey of Moses and the Israelites. Recalling his own climb up Mt. Sinai, Visotzky evokes the palpability of the Exodus miracle in his description of the summit, from which he saw the moon setting in the west over Egypt. With vivid prose, Visotzky mines Exodus for sparkling gems of instruction on individual and community redemption. (Oct.)