16 | MARCH 25 • 2021 

N

umerous cultures 
around the world have 
institutionalized slav-
ery, but for Americans, slavery 
means race-based enslavement 
of Blacks in America.
As we prepare for Passover, 
Jews contemplate our ances-
tors’ enslavement in Egypt. 
Freedom came to our ances-
tors, in the biblical account, by 

Divine intervention. The end 
of slavery came to Blacks in 
America by the Union victory 
in the Civil War, 
but the long quest 
for freedom and 
equality drags on. 
Rabbi 
Kenneth Chelst 
of Southfield, 
a professor in 

the College of Engineering 
at Wayne State University, 
devotes a book, Exodus and 
Emancipation: Biblical and 
African American Slavery, to 
comparing the experience of 
slavery and exodus as pre-
sented in the Bible and in 
later Jewish thought with the 
historical experience of slavery 
and emancipation as experi-

enced by Blacks in America.
He emphasizes that “Blacks 
saw God’s hand in their 
emancipation and the Civil 
War just as Lincoln did in his 
second inaugural address.” 
Rabbi Chelst hopes that Jews 
and Blacks can use his book as 
part of their mutual discussion 
of the Bible and contemporary 
issues.
That discussion happens in 
the Coalition for Black and 
Jewish Unity, a partnership of 
the Council of Black Baptist 
Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity 
and the Jewish Community 
Relations Council/AJC. The 
co-directors of the 
coalition are Mark 
Jacobs of the 
JCRC/AJC and 
the Rev. Kenneth 
James Flowers, 
senior pastor 
at Greater New 
Mount Moriah 
Missionary Baptist Church in 
Detroit. 
In words that echo Rabbi 
Chelst’s observation, Rev. 
Flowers states: “Blacks were 
brought to this country in 
chains. We were considered 
property, not fully human. 
This happened with the sanc-
tion of the government. We 
are the only group enslaved 
by law as chattel. And indeed, 
people have worked hard to 
tell us that we are not fully 
human. That damages the 
psyche.
“But people in the Black 
Church read the story of 
Moses, that God called on 
Moses and delivered the slaves 
in Egypt, and we believed 
that God would deliver us,” 
Rev. Flowers continued. “We 
believed that God is on the side 
of the downtrodden. The bibli-
cal narrative promised us that 
God would give us what we 
needed. This belief has helped 
to sustain us through the era of 
slavery and through the era of 
Jim Crow.” 

continued on page 18

PASSOVER

The Binds that Tie

Rabbi 
Kenneth 
Chelst

The Black and Jewish communities both share a 
common abhorance of the evils of slavery.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Rev. 
Kenneth 
Flowers