April 2002 - נִיסָן .. אִיָּר תשס״ב Nisan..Iyyar 5762

Chag Pesach Samayach - Happy Passover! Barbara and I would like to offer our sincerest best wishes to you and yours for a happy, healthy and kosher Passover.

The story of the Passover Haggadah is that of the Exodus from Egypt, which has become the subject of much scholarly writing and discussion of late. My colleague, Rabbi Wolpe, of Los Angeles, caused quite a furor last Passover when he preached a holiday sermon questioning the historical accuracy of the biblical account of the Exodus. Certainly many, perhaps even the medieval commentator Ibn Ezra, have challenged the number of Israelites who escaped Egypt. My teachers taught us that six hundred thousand was not 599,999 + 1. Rather the biblical Hebrew word eleph sometimes means one thousand, and sometimes it means a military unit, perhaps a battalion. Similarly the Hebrew word me'ah sometimes means one hundred, and sometimes it means a military unit, such as a platoon. Six hundred alephim (plural of eleph) could be six hundred battalions or even six platoons of battalions, where a platoon was eight to ten soldiers and battalion was up to a hundred troops. Six platoons would be forty eight to sixty times battalions of one hundred would be approximately five to six thousand men and their families. Still twenty five to forty thousand people in the desert is quite a logistical accomplishment.

Similarly, many have questioned the location of the Yam Suf, sometimes translated the Red Sea or Sea of Reeds, but probably best translated the Suf Sea. Rabbi Oblath, my close friend and colleague received his doctorate the same month that I did last summer. His dissertation tracks all of the locations mentioned in the Exodus story and conclusively argues that all of these place names occur both in the Sinai Desert and Transjordan.

Rabbi Oblath says that either all of these place names have twin locations, or the authors of the Exodus story used the Transjordan place names to tell the story, or the story has been edited to reflect the political separation of the Northern Kingdom Israel from the Southern Kingdom Judah. In any case, the Suf Sea would be the Gulf of Eilat and not in the middle of the Sinai.

And finally, a new book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text, has argued that there is no archaeological proof for the Exodus. Arguing from a lack of archaeological evidence (an academic no-no) these authors conclude that the “Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible.” If Rabbi Oblath is right, then there is no archaeological evidence because Finkelstein and Silberman are looking in the wrong place. And if my teachers at HUC were right, the numbers were not wildly exaggerated but we had mistranslated the terms as if they were numbers. Finally I believe that Finkelstein and Silberman are correct in their introduction: “Much of what is commonly taken from granted as accurate history - … - are, rather, the creative expressions of a powerful religious reform movement … Although these stories may have been based on certain historical kernels…”

The bottom line is that the historical reality is that the Israelites came out of slavery and into freedom. Freedom is true and that is what we celebrate on Passover. The number of plagues does not matter, but when we pour out a little wine to suffer with the Egyptians, this is real. We celebrate the springtime at the Seder, another annual certainty. In the end scholarship and tradition together will enhance our celebration.

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D.

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