Meeting of Moscow Jews at the synagogue with Israeli Ambassador Golda Meir on an Israeli bill of 10,000 shekels and the phrase “Let my people go!”
“Let my people go!” ( Hebrew שלח את עמי!, Shalah et ami! ) Is a phrase from the Book of Exodus in which Moses demanded from Pharaoh to free the Jews from Egyptian slavery.
 | And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord: Let my people go , that they may serve me. ( Ex. 8: 1 ) |  |
After the pharaoh’s refusal, Egypt suffered various disasters (“ Egyptian executions ”), which forced the pharaoh to allow Jews to leave the country .
Use phrase
- During the period of slavery in the United States, the phrase sounded in the songs of African slaves ( spirituals ).
- The phrase is used in the American song Go Down Moses , which became world famous by Louis Armstrong .
- Under the slogan “Let my people go” in the 1960-1980s, there were demands to allow the free emigration of Soviet Jews from the USSR to Israel [1] [2] . Then a new bill of 10,000 (after the denomination of 10) shekels was issued, which depicted the meeting of Golda Meir with Muscovites in September 1948, during her visit to the Moscow synagogue , and the Hebrew text “Let my people go!”.
Sources
- ↑ Peter Steinfels. Soviet Jews seeing fruit of efforts // New York Times , December 22, 1989
- ↑ Twenty years from the day of the grand rally “Let my people go!” // isra.com, December 4, 2007
Links
- Go Down Moses, Let My People Go (Lyrics)