What Do Moses and Roger Casement Have in Common?
It was called the scramble for Africa. In the 19th century the great European powers, England, Spain, and France, had established huge networks of colonies across the world that funded their vast empires. Belgium had yet to claim their piece of the undeveloped world and time was running out. The only area yet untouched was sub-Saharan Africa. So in 1884 the Belgium grabbed an enormous swath of land, 72 times larger than their own country and named it the Belgian Congo.
The purpose of establishing such colonies was to take the natural resources of the land as efficiently as possible and sell them at a much greater price in Europe. For the Congo this meant precious metals, ivory and rubber trees. “Efficiently” can be translated as slavery. The Belgians enslaved the local populations establishing monthly quotas for each village. In order to ensure the slaves were adequately motivated the quotas were initially set above what slaves could achieve. When a village failed to reach its quota, which it inevitably did, the people were beaten. If village failed again, one of the children or women was taken to the center of the village, forced to kneel in front of a tree stump and her hands hacked off with a machete. The wound was quick cauterized to prevent the victim from bleeding to death but the point was adequately made and the slaves would then work literally until they dropped. The average slave in the Belgian Congo survived less than four years.[1]
Thousands of young ambitious European men poured into this wealth making enterprise each year. A few years working in the bush under hideous conditions could lead to a substantial position with a Belgian firm in Antwerp where trading in diamonds, gold, and rubber ensured a very comfortable life style. It was into this environment that a young Irishman, Roger Casement, arrived in 1898. Not long after he landed on the shores of the Congo, he witnessed a slave being beaten to death. From that moment forward Casement kept a secret diary of the atrocities of the Congo. He took pictures of children’s amputated hands and the backs of slaves that had been so severely whipped that it was impossible to find a centimeter of skin that was not scarred. He took all of these with him when he returned to Europe and he submitted a report to the British government telling the story of the Congo. He worked with other human rights advocates like E.D. Morrell to gain access to the press. When these stories were published the outcry was so great, the Belgians were forced to stop all such practices in Congo and finally withdrew from the continent all together. It is estimated that between 5 and 8 million Congolese died from exhaustion, beatings, and starvation during the 12 years that the Belgians controlled the Congo.
Why of all the people who witness this brutality was Casement the only one to act? He had two things working in his favor. He was gay and he was Irish. That is not to say that being gay or being Irish confers some higher morality. They do not. But discrimination against both of these groups was profound. Casement was constantly reminded by the British and Belgians he worked with that the Irish were an inferior race. More than that, he knew if his homosexuality was ever discovered, he would be treated even more savagely than the Congo slaves.[2] He was an outsider that could never hope to be an insider. So when he saw that slave being beaten, he identified with the slave, not the white European delivering the beating.
The story of Casement and the story of Moses are similar. Moses also witnessed a man being beaten and rescued the man even though to do so endangered the privileges he enjoyed as an Egyptian. Like Casement, although Moses was in Pharaoh’s household, his Israelite origins prevented him from having an uncomplicated identity. He could have reacted to this, as people sometimes do, by being more Egyptian than the Egyptians but he did not. He chose to remember how he was different and let that difference be a factor in he who he was and what he did.
We often think of the commandment of “be kind to the stranger[3], for you were a stranger in Egypt” as an appeal to protect vulnerable groups within a population. The stories of Moses and Casement, however, teach us the power of the perspective of the stranger. In both cases, only these two men were shocked by the brutality of their societies. Those who “belonged”, those who were in the majority, had long ago accepted such practices as normal. Allowing strangers, therefore, to live among us and to share their perspectives can be a measure of our willingness to look at ourselves and to uncover our own worst impulses. Listening to the voice of a minority can be a gateway to safeguarding our essential humanity.
These two ways of seeing the commandment to be “kind to the stranger” are fused together. One is reflective of our morality in protecting a vulnerable group and the other is allowing the unique viewpoint of the stranger to shape our understanding of ourselves. The value of being separate in this way is particularly interesting because Judaism is a religion that also commands that we be “separate so that (we) may be holy.” These two commandments taken together make separateness, instead of being alienating, instructive of our deepest selves and a powerfully way to connect spiritually. Our religion’s story begins with the separation of light from darkness and our most important holiday is Shabbat, kept separate so that it may be holy.
It’s the experience of Shabbat that gives us the last and most important key to our understanding of Moses’ and Roger Casement’s actions. Shabbat is kept separate so that we can connect in a special way with God and with each other. Separate in order to be connected is the spiritual lesson. Casement’s, (and Moses’), perspective came from the fact that he was very much an outsider but at the moment that he saw that slave being beaten, he simply saw a man suffering and dying. He didn’t see the man’s race or social status, he just saw another human being. A man just like him. Being separate from the community of his co-workers allowed him to see the basic humanity of the stranger and this made him connected in the most important way possible – to that of the suffering of another – and to use that connection to act in a holy way - to end that suffering. Separateness has no value unless it allows us to surpass the mundane and connect with something far more significant than our individual selves. The most crucial decision we make is how we choose to be separate from people and how we chose to be connected to them.
[1] The story of the Belgian Congo is told in the book “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hoschild.
[2] Roger Casement kept extensive diaries during his lifetime and often wrote how terrified he was of sexuality becoming known. Unfortunately his fears were well founded. In 1916 Casement was arrested by the British government for his involvement in an Irish attempt to gain independence. At the time of his arrest the British had seized all of Casement’s private papers and subsequently discovered his relationship with several men. The judges deciding his fate read these diaries during closed court proceedings. Casement was convicted of treason and sentenced to hang. A high profile group of government and church officials rallied to his causing asking the British government for clemency in light of Casement’s humanitarian work. The British government reacted by circulating selected diary entries among his supporters. Following these revelations his advocates withdrew their petition and Casement was executed on August 3, 1916.
[3] I use the word “stranger” in this essay to denote any person who is alienated from majority because of race, ethnicity, national, sexuality, or any other characteristic.
