Our Moses

By R.M. Hamilton

I’ve got a favourite figure in New Zealand history. It’s not even suffragette Kate Sheppard of ten- dollar bill fame, (although she’s a close second). History books call him Julius Vogel, but I call him, Our Moses.

My family has seen a lot of miracles. But the biggest one on record was the miracle God gave our family, on Mum’s side, 150 years ago in the Shetland Isles.

My maternal ancestors were very, very poor and although they weren't actually slaves, because of the feudal system still in existence in the Shetland Isles at that time, they weren't much better off than slaves.

They were in terrible debt to the lairds (lords) of the Isles and they had no savings or political rights. In addition to this, poverty forced the young men of the isles to go out on the fishing boats, and the waters in that part of the world are treacherous. Many of them drowned.

My family had heard about New Zealand, and they wanted to immigrate but they didn't have any money and they had no way of getting it.

They had very little, but they had God.

They began to pray that God would deliver them from the Shetland Isles and the ruling lairds of the islands.

At this time on the bottom of the world, New Zealand elected her first ever Jewish Prime Minister. He was Julius Vogel and he decided what New Zealand needed was a lot more people. With great effort, he convinced the English government to make loans for ship passage available to people who couldn't afford it.

His actions were the answer my family had been praying for.

The family was in terrible debt to the lairds of the land, and we weren't sure how they could have cleared their debt to leave the country.

 Mum did a lot of research for her book on the subject, ‘To Own a Fig-Tree’, and she found that our ancestors did own a few sheep. We believe they settled their debts with the sheep and that enabled them to leave for New Zealand.

Isn’t it interesting that thousands of years after God delivered the Jewish family from slavery in Egypt, he used a Jewish man to rescue my family from the Shetland Isles?

 Although my family's story of deliverance is a lot less impressive than the one in the Bible, it does share a few peculiar similarities.

 My ancestors were not free.

 The males were drowning.

 They were oppressed by a powerful ruling class, and they cried out to God to save them. And God did save them, through a great Jewish man, the loss of their sheep and the power of his own arm.  

I suppose it just goes to show, even thousands of years later, God is still in the business of rescuing families that cry out to him for help.

Julius Vogel wouldn’t have known about my family. Many people arrived in New Zealand through assisted passage.

But I know about him.

I think about him often. I wonder, would I even exist if it weren’t for Julius Vogel?

Probably not.

The Bible says that Pharaoh and his whole army drowned in the Red Sea. Yet it seems to me that Pharaoh’s ghost still creeps about the earth, looking for people to oppress and enslave.

He has many costumes. He has dressed as kings, queens, lords, lairds and dictators. He is the spectre that haunts any hall in which power passes, hoping to seize whatever throne is available.

Yes, there have been many Pharaohs. And I dare say there will be many more.

And yet, whenever you see Pharaoh rising, look a little beyond. Because to every Pharaoh, there is a Moses.

I know it.

I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t true.

The writing belongs to R.M. Hamilton. The painting of Moses is called Victory O Lord! and is by the painter John Everett Millais.