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• Mr. Feiler's official site
• "Moses, the Patron Saint of Washington"
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Acclaimed author says Moses is the patron saint of America because he led an oppressed people to liberty. (1:22)
 

Full Interview (22:13)
 

Tavis: Bruce Feiler's a best-selling author familiar to many PBS viewers for his very popular miniseries, "Walking the Bible," based on the book, of course, by the same name. Other books include "Abraham" and "Where God was Born."

His latest is called "America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story." Bruce, always good to have you on this program.

Bruce Feiler: Thank you, Tavis. Great to be back with you.

Tavis: Good to see you again. Let me start with the obvious - why is Moses America's prophet?

Feiler: Well, I'll tell you how I kind of stumbled onto this story. I didn't really go looking for it. You mentioned "Walking the Bible," I'd spent a decade, as you know, traveling around the Middle East looking at this kind of combustion of religion and politics. There was "Walking the Bible," then "Abraham." As you mentioned earlier, where God was born, last time I was with you.

It seemed that that debate was really headquartered in the Middle East, but then it kind of transferred back here and suddenly Americans were in this debate - left, right, red, blue, fundamentalists, moderate, believer, nonbeliever. Around this time I began - my wife gave birth to identical twins and we thought people would come to us, but we had to go to them to get some help. We went to visit my in-laws in Boston, went to Plymouth. They have this Mayflower and when I went on board, there was this guy reading the Bible. I said, "Well, I'm a Bible guy - what are you reading?" He said, "'The Exodus.' We read it when we were sailing on the Atlantic."

I thought well, that's interesting. Here's Moses in the middle of Thanksgiving. Then in my hometown of Savannah there's a letter from George Washington in which he credits the success the success in the Revolution to the same God who freed the Israelites from Egypt.

I thought okay, that's interesting. Here's Moses in the middle of the Revolution. Then I kept seeing a quote from Moses on the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin recruiting Moses to pass the Constitution, Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her people, all the way through to Dr. King, of course, comparing himself to Moses the night before he died.

I was shocked by this number of references and said, "I should go on this journey, retrace American history," and I think what I found is that as you said, one figure has influenced more Americans. His name is Moses. He really is our true founding father.

Tavis: I'm stunned at the parallels, and you're right about every one of them, obviously. What is the connection between these Americans and Moses? What's the connection?

Feiler: I think the connection at its heart is that America is fundamentally, and has been from the very beginning, about taking an oppressed people who were outsiders, leading them out of a difficult and challenging place, and taking them to a new and better place.

We live in troubled times now, right? The word Egypt in the Bible actually means "a constricted place." So from the very beginning, anybody who's been in a constricted place - first it was the pilgrims, and think about what they did. They were living first in England and then in Holland. They crossed a tumultuous sea, went to an untested wilderness, set out to create a new promised land, and all through their lives was the story of Moses.

They called King James the pharaoh. They quoted Moses on the Mayflower, and it was - it offers people the idea that you can create a better world. So the pilgrims used it all during the Revolution. The slaves, all the way through the civil rights movement, all the way through Barack Obama today.

So I think at its heart is the idea that as Du Bois put it, "Not America, but what America will be." Moses is the patron saint of what America will be. He says there is the possibility that you can create a better tomorrow.

Tavis: Is the only prerequisite, Bruce, for being able to call down Moses, to parallel Moses, is the only prerequisite oppression?

Feiler: No. I think that the story has a couple of reasons that it's right. One is the idea of oppression. The other is that at the heart of the story is the tension between freedom and law. So Moses leads the Israelites across the Red Sea, then there's a period of lawlessness, and then they bring the 10 commandments. So let's just talk about the Revolution.

On July 4th, 1776, okay, I got the minutes of the Continental Congress. It was a Thursday immediately after passing the Declaration that Congress asks three people to come up with a seal for the new United States. The three people were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams. That'll tell you how important they thought it was.

Six weeks later, they make the recommendation the seal should be Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. These are three of the five drafters of the Declaration, three of the defining faces of the Revolution. They thought Moses should be the face of the new United States.

But the parallel goes deeper, because as I said, it's freedom, like oh, we just escaped from England, but it's also law. In the Bible, it's Moses, one figure, leads the Israelites across the Red Sea, brings down the 10 commandments. Same thing in America - George Washington leads the Americans to freedom but then presides over the Constitution.

When Washington dies in December 1799, there are 450 mock funerals around the United States. Two-thirds of the eulogies in these funerals compared Washington to Moses because he also was a reluctant leader, not a man of words, who then led the people out of freedom and then brought down the Constitution.

Tavis: Which raises for me, Bruce, a wonderful irony here, if not wonderful, certainly an interesting irony, which is that for those of us who know the story, Moses was reluctant. Moses didn't want to be a leader. He didn't want - he wanted no parts of this. Talk to me about that.

Feiler: He's born in slavery, raised in the pharaoh's house, right, because the mother has to - and then he sees the overseer. What does he do? He aligns himself with the suffering, murders the overseer, flees, goes to the burning bush - and my wife doesn't like it when I say this, but I think of that voice in the burning bush as being like Uncle Sam - your country needs you. (Laughter) Go back and -

Tavis: I see why your wife doesn't like that. I'm not sure I like it either, but it's your book. Go ahead.

Feiler: Go back and free the people. And he says, "I'm not a man of words. Don't choose me, I'm not a leader, no one knows who I am." By the way, he says to God, "No one knows who you are." But God persuades him, and yet again he aligns himself with the suffering.

I think that's the third element of why this has endured so much in America, because at its heart the theme of the Moses story is that we must build a society that nurtures all of its people.

The Liberty Bell, that quote on the side, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land until the inhabitants thereof?" It comes from Leviticus 25, from a section of the Bible called the Holiness Code that people almost never talk about, and it's the most sacred statement in the whole text.

It says take the hurting in your arms, to uplift the suffering, free the enslaved, and build a society that nurtures all of the outsiders. It's that idea, that's why the Liberty Bell then becomes - when the slaves start singing, "Go Down Moses" they go back to the Liberty Bell, suffragettes go back to the Liberty Bell, and later, of course, King goes to the Liberty Bell.

I think that's what's so surprising about this, Tavis, is that the story was introduced into America by White male Protestants, and then over time Blacks used the same story, Jews used the same story, women used the same story, and used it to claim their place in the American identity.

Tavis: Another irony for me, as I sit and listen to you talk - and let me say this so I don't get you in trouble. I'll just get your reaction to it. I'm glad - happy to say it, which is that if Moses is America's prophet, I don't see a bunch of Moses-like folk today who are leading our country.

What I mean to suggest by that is if Moses is siding with the weak and not the - you know where I'm going with this.

Feiler: Yeah, I do.

Tavis: If Moses is siding with the weak and not the strong, if Moses is siding with those who are politically, socially, economically, and culturally disenfranchised - I can do this all day.

Feiler: Yes.

Tavis: If that's where Moses resides, if that's what it means to call down Moses and he is our prophet, then why do we not see Moses-like leaders in America today?

Feiler: Thirty-six times the Bible - the Torah, the five books of Moses say, "Befriend the strangers, for you yourselves were a stranger once in a land with no hope," and I think there's a lot of reasons for this.

Three weeks after he announced for the presidency, Barack Obama, as you know, stood up in Selma, it was the anniversary of the march that King marched with Abraham Joshua Heschel. They, by the way, as you know, have this connection over Moses, and he said the civil rights generation is the Moses generation.

But remember, Joshua, the successor, still had a job to do. Obama said he had to lead them over - across the river into the Promised Land. What Barack Obama days, candidate Obama said was, "I'm going to be the leader of the Joshua generation, finally take us over the river."

Well, here we are, less than a year into the presidency, and guess what? He's facing an entrenched pharaonic establishment on one hand and a rebellion from his own stiff-necked followers on the other. I had this piece in "Time" magazine a few weeks ago about what Obama can learn from Moses, and it was guess what? You're not Joshua. You're Moses all over again, and remember that you're still out there having to deal with the people who are frustrated.

Unfortunately, as you know, there is and as you just were implying with your question that while the story may be remember the outsider, befriend the outsider, those in power are more aligned with the people who are in power as opposed to the disenfranchised outsiders.

Tavis: But how is it, though, Bruce, that we in a contemporary sense celebrate these men and women who called down Moses, we celebrate them, the men and women, but we want to dismiss their methodology, which is to do as Moses did, celebrating and representing for the least among us?

Feiler: Well, I think that what's interesting is that the story has the ability to continue to inspire, and the people are going to call out the leaders, as C.L. Franklin, Aretha Franklin's father, he said, "Every generation will send forth," as you said, "a Moses."

I think that that's what's powerful about this, is that look, even after the Revolution there was great establishment, there was God's new Israel, America was supposed to be, but there was a little bit of old Egypt and slavery left behind, which is why the slaves then went back to the story, sang "Go Down, Moses," the national anthem of slaves; Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her people.

You had the success of the Civil War. Lincoln, again a Moses-like figure, but then we had Jim Crow. Somehow, because there are disenfranchised left behind, the story circles back because why? At its heart, it's a failure narrative. Moses never makes it to the Promised Land.

That's why the story can keep being reinvented, because failure and disappointment and being disheartened is at the heart of the story, which is why the people then can make it alive and say, "We want a new leader."

Tavis: Well, now you're into the Samuel Beckett formulation - try again, fail again, fail better; try again, fail again, fail better.

Feiler: With all respect to Beckett, that's the biblical formula.

Tavis: It is indeed. (Laughter) Beckett got it from somewhere, didn't he?

Feiler: Exactly.

Tavis: (Laughs) I take that - touché. That said, though, let me completely flip it on you. I'm wondering, for all that I've been saying about how I wish we had more Moses-like leaders today, forget that Jobs for Generations, we need some Moseses.

Having said that, I wonder whether or not Moses would be respected today? I was just in a conversation with a dear friend of mine, Dr. Cornel West, the other day about Dr. King, and we were really working with this notion of how King would be regarded and treated, how he would be able to navigate or not the world today.

I'm not sure that Moses would have the kind of impact today that he had back in the day because the world is so cynical. If you're always talking about the poor, if you're always talking about the least of these, that's politically incorrect, you go on TV, you talk about poverty - nobody wants to hear about poverty. Obama and McCain debated three debates; the word poverty doesn't come up. So if Moses does reappear today, how is he treated?

Feiler: Well, let's go back to that moment. Let's go back to the moment, and I stood in the Mason Temple in Memphis. It's at the bottom of a bowl, and there King went on that rainy, tornadoey night, and he gave that - he didn't want to go there, but the people came and so he got out of the Lorraine Motel and he went over there and he gave that speech, and at that climactic moment, he said, "I have been to the mountaintop. I have seen, I have looked over; I have seen the Promised Land.

"I will not make it there with you, but I know we as a people will make it." I sat with the ambassador, Andrew Young, and he was there, and I said - it's usually not hard for me to come with a question. I (unintelligible) this is unbelievable that he said that. What he said to me was is that Martin, as he called him, often gave that speech, but he went to that dark place and he would usually snap out of it. On this night, he let the darkness linger.

What Andy Young said to me was, he said, "I felt very frustrated, like how could you leave me here by myself? I would much rather have been shot in my place than to try to lead these people without you." But then what he also said was, "That's why King got elevated into the near-prophetic role that he had, because he didn't have to deal with the messiness."

There's something about these kinds of figures who elevate above history, but to me what's powerful is what King said in that moment: I may not make it there, but you as a people, we as a people, are going to make it there.

To me, that's the ultimate role of the leader. It's not to make it to the Promised Land yourself, but it's to prepare us to make it without you. So what I would tell to my daughters is that at its heart the story is about the power of the story, okay? As Shimon Perez once said to me, "The Egyptians built pyramids; the Israelites built stories."

It's about the power of story, and the story is about hope. This year we are slaves, the Passover service says, but next year, we can be free. The ultimate lesson is it calls on us to act. The Moses story evangelizes action. It says to each of us, imagine your own promised land.

Plunge through those waters, persevere through that dryness, and then don't be surprised if you come up short because the ultimate lesson of Moses is that the dream doesn't die with the dreamer, and the ultimate destination is not this year, it's next year.

So to me, be your own Moses. These people, Tavis, that we're talking about here - the pilgrims, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - these people were not born to greatness. They were ordinary people who found in this story a way to make themselves great.

So there's no Moses? Be the Moses. Each of us has the ability to make, to imagine that promised land, and then to lead people to get there.

Tavis: I hear you and I agree with you, but here's the question. You have to have reason to believe - people have to have reason to believe - I hear your argument about hope. I always make the distinction, Bruce, between hope and optimism. Optimism suggests there's a particular set of facts or circumstances, conditions, something you can see, feel, or touch that gives you reason to believe that things are going to get better, so you say, "I'm optimistic."

Hope - you're the scholar here - faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen. To be a Moses or to be Moses-like you have to be able to give people something to believe in, a reason to believe. I'm not sure that -

Feiler: The story is the reason to believe. The fact that it's there and the fact that every generation in this country - why is Moses America's prophet? Because other people didn't have this relationship with Moses. That's in part because people didn't read the Bible then and you could only read it in Latin, and then we got it in English and we got it in the printing press and people were exposed to the Bible.

But the reason is because this story is hard to separate from the American dream. The pilgrims, they're an example. The Founding Fathers, they're an example. Harriet Tubman leading 20 trips on the Underground Railroad, singing "Go Down, Moses," being led by a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of smoke by day, Abraham Lincoln freeing those slaves, Martin Luther King walking with those people into firehoses of water, singing these spirituals.

That's the proof. The proof is in the fact that every generation has gone back to this story and been inspired by it. So don't tell me there's no proof, imaginary person. The proof is why you are here; free, able to do nothing or to do something.

Tavis: Does anyone, any particular group of people who are oppressed, have the right to call down Moses?

Feiler: I'm not sure who's the giver of that right, so sure. I would say anybody who feels that their view is oppressed, provided that what they are offering is not some version where they get to impose their will on other people. I think there are some conditions here. (Laughs)

Tavis: Here's why I ask this question - because if you're on the Palestinian side of this conflict you can call down Moses; "We're being oppressed." If you're on the Israeli side of this question, "We're being oppressed by these neighbors who don't want to live in peace with us. We're going to call down Moses."

That's what I'm asking - can anybody who feels that they are oppressed call this down?

Feiler: I think you can call down the story, you can call up the story, you can dial up the story, you can talk about the story and walk about the story. That's what they were doing in the - they were walking the story in the civil rights movement. But I think there is a difference, because I don't believe that the story, while it is an inspiration, while it is a metaphor, while it is a story that has inspired all of these people to make the world a better place, I don't think you can use it then to solve geographical disputes, to write law based on this law, to actually get into drawing borders and deciding that kind of a thing.

The reality in the Middle East is long before Moses set out for the Promised Land, that was a very disputed piece of land. No one was ever able to control it before Moses got there; no one's ever been able to control it before. I think the real lesson, the biblical lesson about the Promised Land is that it's just a very strategically important piece of land that no one's ever going to be able to control. It's going to have to have some sort of shared existence.

Tavis: Does this story work? Can persons who happen to be agnostic or atheistic revel in this story?

Feiler: Oh, absolutely. I think that the story does not depend - I think the original power of the story came from the fact that God had this relationship with Moses, so if you're a pilgrim, you need hope, there's - it's in the Bible, and the Bible is true to them. They don't have that distance that we have from the Bible today.

But yes, I think that the essence of the story is you can be in a difficult place, you can imagine a better place. You can then leave that difficult place. You will have challenges along the way, but then you can create a society that nurtures all of its people. That does not depend on having God at the heart.

But I do think certainly if you're going to talk about America, the religious story, the secular story, have always been there, always been intentioned. You can't remove the Bible from the heart of that story.

Tavis: Let me circle back to Moses. We referenced earlier in this conversation that he initially was reluctant. I don't want to color the question too much deliberately, but what are the lessons that we everyday people can learn, specifically from the story of Moses the man. Not the story, but Moses the man.

Feiler: Well, I think that first of all he is a man. That's the point. He is not -

Tavis: He's human.

Feiler: Exactly. He's reluctant to lead, he gets angry at God, he has doubts, he's not a man of words, and yet the leadership comes from a very different place. I think the number one lesson from the story is you don't have to be perfect. As a human, you can relate to him. I think Jesus in the text is a more other kind of figure while Moses in many ways is a more human kind of figure.

The other thing is he takes the step, he makes the leap. I think of that moment, okay, back to that voice in the burning bush saying you've got a life here. You're married, you got a son, you're living in the desert, you're a nice shepherd. Do you want to keep that comfortable life, or try to free these people who've been enslaved for centuries?

Time and again, every decision he makes, whether to slay the overseer, whether to accept the challenge of the burning bush, on top of Mt. Sinai, on top of Mt. Nebo, every time the leader chooses his followers. He aligns himself with the suffering and says that my role as a leader is to make everybody better, not to do what's in my own best interest.

Tavis: The cover of the book says it all - you've got pictures of Dr. King; you've got pictures of Abraham Lincoln, pictures of George Washington and all the others we've discussed in this conversation. How do everyday people embody the Moses formulation?

Feiler: The other thing you didn't mention on the cover of that book is the Statue of Liberty. You've got the spikes of light around her head and the tablet in her arms, both of which come from the moment Moses comes down Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments.

The pilgrims sailing into Plymouth harbor comparing themselves to Moses, all those new immigrants sailing into New York Harbor looking up at that symbol, that is a symbol of what is great about America - that America stands for building a society that nurtures everybody and that can represent a set of values that can enlighten and give hope to everybody and enlighten the world.

That feeling that people had going up there, looking up at that statue with the nimbus of light and their outstretched arm, that's the symbol of America enlightening the world and the story calls on us time and again to go to those higher values.

As a German philosopher said, "Ever since the Exodus, freedom has spoken with a Hebrew accent." That feeling that we all have of loving that freedom, that comes from this text and that's how it got into the American dream.

Tavis: Hard to imagine, given his energy and enthusiasm for this conversation, that Bruce Feiler is in a battle right now, as we speak, literally a battle against cancer. He's working on a book now about that journey, and I cannot wait till you get that book out to come back on this program to talk about how you're dealing with that, with these two precious identical twin babies, you and your wife. I'm glad to have you on always, Bruce.

Feiler: Tavis, always great to be with you.

Tavis: It's good to see you, my friend.

Feiler: Thank you.