Chief Rabbi on slavery

Very strange article in yesterday's Jewish Chronicle. Titled "Talking 'Genes and Genesis' it covers a public discussion between the UK's orthodox Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and Harvard professor of psychology, Steven Pinker. Since I wasn't there I will never know why the Chief Rabbi said that

Exodus was "the ultimate rejection of slavery, but neither England nor America abolished it until the 19th century."

To describe this view as ahistorical (I like that word) would be an understatement. It's downright ridiculous. Just taking the Exodus story at face value, it's not a rejection of slavery but of the enslavement of Jews (well, Israelites) by non-Jews. It's also, of course, a biblical myth, possibly of some use as tribal lore, but nothing to be taken seriously by any modern commentator. There's more: the Chief Rabbi verges on the Freudian when he invokes a Jewish rejection of slavery. A quick look at Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion. shows that in the Talmud, orthodox Judaism's main source of law, slavery and slave-trading are positively encouraged:

Trevor-Roper is also one of the very few modern historians who mention the predominant Jewish role in the early medieval slave trade between Christian (and pagan) Europe and the Muslim world (The Rise of Christian Europe, pp.92-3). In order to promote this abomination, which I have no space to discuss here, Maimonides allowed Jews, in the name of the Jewish religion, to abduct Gentile children into slavery; and his opinion was no doubt acted upon or reflected contemporary practice.

Now obviously it would be despicable to blame all Jews for the writings of one and the practices of some, but why cover this up? What was the Chief Rabbi playing at by using, effectively, a fairy story, to promote Jewish morality over British and American? This is yet another example of the Chief Rabbi's propensity for sheer dishonesty. Shahak has more to say about Jews and the slave trade and how the whole issue is covered up:

the worst attacks against me were provoked not by the violent terms I employ in my condemnations of Zionism and the oppression of Palestinians, but by an early article of mine about the role of Jews in the slave trade, in which the latest case quoted dated from 1870. That article was published before the 1967 war; nowadays its publication would be impossible.

As I said, this nonsense coming from the Chief Rabbi looks like a Freudian slip and it exemplifies why so many Jews, and indeed non-Jews, are slaves (pardon the expression) to a past we're barely allowed to know.

I've written this in a bit of a rush because I find the Chief Rabbi's wilful dishonesty so irritating. I might have to revisit it later.