PASSOVER EDITION 5782 SECTION A PAGE 15
Why is this Passover different from all other Passovers? If you were one of the 32 souls who traveled with Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman to Egypt in January, it’s the fact that you can’t read the Haggadah the same way this year. Because what you saw and heard there downloaded brand-new, three-dimensional multi-sensory images into your mind.
Rabbi Berman teaching at Abu Simbel, a historic site near the border with Egypt. (Sandor Joffe)
“I’ll never read the Exodus story the same way again,” says Harold Berman of Efrat (no relation to the rabbi).
“Being there is what makes the theories come alive — touching the kind of mud brick storehouse built by slaves with the straw still sticking out, perfectly preserved since there’s no rain, really makes you think of Exodus when Pharaoh told Moses and Aaron, ‘We’re not providing straw anymore. Your people will have to find it themselves, but they’ll still have to produce the same quota of bricks.’”
Joshua Berman’s full-time job is professor of Bible at Bar Ilan University, but when not teaching Jewish law, the New York native regularly travels 3,300 years back in time to retrace the Jewish people’s steps in — and flight from — Egypt.
He’s attempting to connect the dots between the divinity of Torah and the historical record with its continuing archaeological discoveries.
Because for Rabbi Berman, there is no conflict; the two dovetail perfectly.
This worldview filled the 10-day journey, under the aegis of Kesher Tours, as the first-ever Bible-themed kosher tour of Egypt since our ancestors bore sacks of unrisen dough during their midnight escape to freedom.
One image captures it: a minyan of kippah-wearing Jews reciting afternoon prayers before the pyramids.
A scene that could never have played out during the hundreds of years the Israelites were under the whips of the Pharaoh’s taskmasters, until their Creator took this rag-tag army out of slavery “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”
That same phrase — used nowhere else in the entire Torah to describe G-d’s actions — is evidence in showing the link between ancient Egypt and the Torah. Because it turns out that, in their historical records, Egyptians described their Pharaohs as having “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”
This is just one example “of how the Torah is both infused with Egyptian culture and is a response to it,” Berman says.
“This tour was to show some of the evidence that there is historical truth to the Exodus; but when I am challenged to show archaeology proving the truth of the Bible, I have to say it can’t prove it scientifically — Abraham lived thousands of years ago — what are you going to find, sheep droppings?”
“But there is good evidence for the Exodus,” the rabbi insists. “You just have to know where to look.”
For example: In the Torah when Potiphar appoints Joseph to be his right-hand man, he has a gold chain placed around his neck. In Egypt, murals depict the same gold-chain ceremony when someone achieves a high station.
Another mural depicts women waving tambourines, just like Miriam did leading the women Egyptian-style in tambourine song after crossing the Reed Sea.
The dimensions of the portable tabernacle the Israelites built in the wilderness are identical to the portable throne tent of Ramses II.
Or when the son of Ramses II wrote back in 1206 BCE, just after the Exodus that “the nomadic people Israel, their seed is no more.”
And new evidence is surfacing, including the recent discovery of what is thought to be the earliest proto-alphabetic Hebrew text, circa 1200 BCE — using two Torah-based names of G-d. Found on Mount Ebal in the Land of Israel, the lead tablet bears the list of curses from Deuteronomy 11:29.
Combing the historical and archaeological record for clues, Rabbi Berman often regards his conclusions as confounding biblical critics. He sees no conflict between scholarship and faith.
“Josh is unique chiefly because he’s a first-rate biblical scholar who’s gaining a reputation as a respected Egyptologist, but who also thinks outside the box, something that’s refreshing in academia,” says Jeffrey Woolf, who teaches Talmud and Jewish history at Bar Ilan.
“The academic world is predicated on skepticism, but Josh is willing to break through the paradigm and give traditional historical records credence. That,” adds Woolf, “is why he’s subject to criticism. He refuses to go with the herd.”
The rabbi’s thinking was heavily impacted by an Egyptian tour he took last year with a noted Egyptologist, James K. Hoffmeier.
Raised in Egypt by missionary parents, Hoffmeier fell in love with its history.
“My question is and always has been: What can we learn through the study of ancient Egypt that can deepen our understanding of the Bible?” says Hoffmeier, a longtime professor of Bible and archaeology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who over the years has led archaeological digs in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.
“Looking through the archeological lens, there’s plenty showing that the Exodus is completely plausible,” he says. “The problem is that, if someone makes the assumption that only that which can be historically proven is believable, their scientific worldview dismisses everything else.”
As persons of faith, the two men “share a grounding in the Bible’s authenticity that G-d acts in history, including the Exodus from Egypt,” says Hoffmeier.
“Why celebrate Passover? Because you believe the Exodus took place. Why not mistreat the stranger? Because you were once strangers in Egypt. The more we know about history, the stronger our faith.”
Says the rabbi:“At the end of the day, to be religious is to pursue truth, to bridge spiritual and intellectual integrity. Only when we’re willing to take a deep dive on both scores can we see the larger picture.”
Still, it’s not always easy to reconcile faith and the historical record. For Nechama Moskowitz of Chicago, “the trip opened my brain to something outside the scope of what I grew up with.”
Every objection Moskowitz raised was answered with respect, she says.
Harold Berman’s takeaway: “The long view, to see the Torah as rooted in our ancestors’ world and not our own 21st-century sensibilities, but also to see it as eternal, for every generation to live by, that’s the gift the rabbi and this trip gave us.”
“We all view the world through our own little fishbowl, so it’s exciting when you take something they think they know . . . and show them a new dimension that they never saw before,” says the rabbi, who is planning two more tours for next winter.
“There’s nothing as inspiring as a total immersion in the unexpected — hearing our story as we literally walk in our ancestors’ footsteps.”
So at the seder, what’s the answer for when the child asks the fifth question: “Why did I see on the internet there was no such thing as the Exodus?”
Says Rabbi Berman: “Now, with everything we’re learning, as Jews around the world gather on the night of Passover to celebrate the liberation from Egyptian oppression, they can speak the words of the Haggadah, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,’ with confidence and integrity. After 3,300 years, you can’t ask for more than that.”
