Sweet Land and Liberty

A Dead Sea Scrolls conference brought me to the Annenberg Institute in Philadelphia, where for the first time (I am embarrassed to say) I saw the Liberty Bell. There I learned that the name “Liberty Bell” was not given to it by the American revolutionaries but by the abolitionist movement during the decades before the Civil War. As all Americans know, the name stems from the quotation from Leviticus 25:10 that borders the bell, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof” (King James Version). “Liberty” (Hebrew, dror) in reality means “release” and it refers, as […]