The Jewish contribution to morality is found in Torah’s overt criticism of despotism as displayed by a form of absolute power in the hands of the Pharaoh of Egypt who was confronted by Moses. Among the commandments Jews are to observe as a reminder of their time in Egypt is the one to love the foreigner. Included in that commandment is to welcome, not hate Egyptians because ” you were strangers in their land”. Torah asks that people practice love and respect across national and cultural lines.
This injunction found in Torah was also the guiding light of the Panafrican Luminaries, H.I.M Emperor Haile Selassie and King Mohammed V of Morocco.
They were the first to apply these noble principles as a consistent philosophy concerning the development and full independence of Africa. They were the first to teach us and show us that the evil our generation had to confront and defeat was racism, and divisiveness amongst humankind. Only when this evil is defeated and overturned shall we see freedom and prosperity in Africa. Like the Hebrews of old on our own continent, our generation needs to draw morals from the painful lessons of the past. We cannot treat each other as the colonial powers have treated us. The suffering inflicted on Africans was indiscriminate, whichever part of Africa they came from. So the respect and the love we have for one another must be indiscriminate as well, to extirpate the poison of racism and divisive thinking that colonialists have tried to impose on Africans.
By pointing to racism as the main plague of our time that we must eradicate as a deadly disease, our leaders have given us a spiritual task at the end of which shines the bright redemptive light of a humanity finally aware of its own mission and purpose. As a human united family we will stand proud of each other and as Emperor Selassie I said there will come a time when “men will learn to see each other, as they are in God’s eyes”.