LET MY PEOPLE GO:

Myths reflect the essence of a group's religious feeling and core identity -- and for Jews, the central mythical motif is that of exile.

In the major biblical stories, exile is referenced through the metaphor of separation from a physical land -- exile from the Garden of Eden, exile in Babylon, and exile in Egypt. The metaphor of the faithful wife exiled from her husband is another common expression of exile found in Jewish texts, including poems, prayers, and hymns.

To give but a few examples, In Song of Songs, a beloved young bride is consumed in search for her husband with whom she has been physically separated: "I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer". Bound together in a mutually devoted relationship, yet physically apart, their love is dominated by a sense of yearning, "O daughters of Jerusalem, I adjure you; if you find my beloved; tell him I am sick with love". In a poem by Yehuda Halevi titled "The day the depths were turned to dry land", he writes: "Then return, marry her [Israel] a second time; Do not continue to divorce her; Cause the light of her sun to rise, that the; Shadows shall flee away". In dark times, when tragedy had befallen the Jews, we find the analogy of marriage reimagined in terms of widowhood, as in this poem by the medieval Rabbi Isaac ben Judah ibn Ghiyyat: "I am bound and troubled as one living in widowhood; I yearn intensely, O Lord, for the Day of Comfort".

Themes of exile appear repeatedly throughout Jewish texts, and its significance has been pondered by Jewish thinkers from antiquity to the present. In the mystical school of thought, exile in the biblical texts is interpreted as a metaphor for the human condition. Bound to the earth, separated (or exiled) from God's realm, yet also bound to God in a spiritual union. Philosopher Martin Buber describes this as the essential conflict in Jewish religious life and thought -- the feeling of existing in perpetual dialogue between heaven and earth, endlessly yearning to enter the transcendent sphere in which the two worlds meet. In the Kabbalah, the "Promised Land" is interpreted as a metaphor for this place; not a physical land, but a spiritual place in the heart, which can only be entered by mystical means.

There is often a quest in myths such as these -- the quest to reunite with the beloved, or to re-enter the land from which one was exiled. The mystical interpretation of these quests is that they refer to a spiritual event that must take place within ourselves in order to resist the inner decay that material society demands of us. It is a type of inner slavery, which we are commanded by God to transcend.

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