If the Exodus had never happened …

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 30 January 2022

In 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe made headlines when he stood up in front of his conservative congregation in Los Angeles and said that the exodus from Egypt may not have been a historical reality. Over three sermons during Pesach, Rabbi Wolpe said he had examined the current research in biblical archaeology and had concluded that ‘virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.’

In saying this, Rabbi Wolpe was not attempting to lure his congregants away from Judaism. His aim was not to dissuade them from the view that the idea of the exodus is important. Rather, he sought (perhaps) to comfort – to say that although our modern (postmodern) critical sensibilities are challenged by adherence to a story that is of dubious historical origin, at the same time this historical skepticism need in no way challenge our faith. He said: ‘It’s a well-known fact that millions of Jews have doubts about the literal veracity of Bible stories. My sermons emphasised that faith is independent of doubt. I wanted the millions of doubting Jews to know that they can still be faithful Jews.’ In setting out his ideas, he asked people to be ‘brave’ – it takes more bravery, perhaps, to have faith without the presence of a miracle.

There is a famous discussion in the Babylonian Talmud about the acceptance of Torah. It is not so radical as to say that the Israelite’s acceptance upon themselves of the Torah at Mount Sinai was unhistorical fiction. But it is radical enough to suggest that the Israelites were initially less than willing to put their faith in God.

The discussion stems from a verse in last week’s parashah: Vayatzitzu b’tachtit hahar – ‘and they were stationed b’tachtit the mountain’ – b’tachtit confuses the rabbis as it literally means ‘under’: ‘and they were stationed under the mountain’. Poetically, b’tachtit is usually understood as ‘they were stationed at the foot of the mountain’. But at least one rabbi wants to take it literally (Shabbat 88a):

Rav Avdimi son of Chama, son of Chasa, said: ‘This teaches that the Holy Blessed One held the mountain over them like a pail, and said to them: “If you accept the Torah – good. If not, this will be your grave.”’

The threat that, if they do not accept the laws and statutes of the Torah upon themselves, God will simply bury them literally under the mountain, is in many ways a radical claim, and (as my teacher Rabbi Tony Bayfield points out) it is testament to the radicalness of the Talmud and its editors that such a claim as Rav Avdimi’s is able to stand, over a thousand years before Rabbi David Wolpe questioned the historicity of the Exodus.

The other rabbis are furious with Rav Avdimi’s claim.

Rav Acha son of Ya’akov said: ‘From here is a great declaration of protest against the Torah!’

The implication being that, if the Torah was not accepted willingly, but accepted merely as the alternative to being crushed by the mountain, then the covenant is rendered meaningless. It is also an insult to the Torah, that it suggests that it was of such poor quality that the Israelites were not actually jumping at the chance to embrace it.

But another rabbi has a trump answer to this objection. He says it does not matter; that there was another point in history at which the Jews did embrace the Torah willingly.

Rabba said: ‘Even if it were so, the generation of Ahashverosh accepted [the Torah]. As it is written: ‘The Jews ordained and accepted [upon themselves]’ (Esther 9.27) that which they had already accepted [under duress].’

In the time of the events of the story of Purim, Mordechai and Esther and all the other Jews of Persia accept on themselves the obligations of being Jews, even in the face of persecution. And it is significant that Rabbah choses a later (doubly fictional) moment in which to situation the later acceptance of the Torah. Because the book of Esther contains no mention of God. Although many believe that God works invisibly and hidden in the story of the deliverance from Haman, there is no direct reference to God or to the Jews’ spiritual life in the book of Esther at all. Later versions of the story (such as the Greek Septuagint) added in divine elements to the story, perhaps in an effort to rectify this.

But Rabbah’s point is that later on, even in the absence of miracles that might be thought to prove God’s existence and God’s power, these Jews say yes, we need this tradition to find meaning in our lives. We need this to cleave to and hold onto in a time of existential danger.

In other words, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent God.

And if the exodus never happened, it would have been necessary to invent it.

We live in postmodern times, in which this kind of claim – that we can find meaning in an event, even if it can be proved that it did not happen – are very easily accepted by many.

For others, the historical reality remains an important piece of the jigsaw. The Biblical scholar, Richard Elliott Friedman, is one such voice. In his book, The Exodus: How it Happened and Why it Matters, Friedman uses the textual evidence of the Bible and its various compositional layers, to discern the kernel of truth that he believes shows there was an exodus from Egypt. He does not believe that the exodus happened exactly as it is described in our Torah, and his main objection is about the scale in which the Torah says the Israelites left Egypt.

Friedman uses the metaphor of Cindarella and the slipper. The story of Cindarella is a fairy tale, and there is no reason for us to believe that a pumpkin can turn into a coach or that mice can turn into horses. But the idea of a diamond slipper is not so foreign to us. Thus, we do not throw away everything in the story simply because some of its elements push the limits of our credulity. Slippers exist and, Friedman argues, the exodus happened.

And he disagrees with the claim that we can hold onto the story while rejecting it as a historical event. He says:

We want to know if it happened, or if what people have been believing for millennia is an illusion, an invention. It matters plenty to people if it happened, or not. … Something happened [and] we can recover some of it from real evidence and reasoning.

What happened matters. Understanding how ideas got started and why people hang on to them matters. The exodus of a group of people from Egypt happened. It made a difference. It still makes a difference.

In our parashah this week, we are repeatedly told not to oppress the stranger, for we were strangers in the Land of Egypt. In part these are references by the Torah to its own historicity. The Israelites are commanded certain things not simply because God says so, but because of their own history. They are even told not to oppress the stranger ‘because you know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt’.

Many Jewish leaders who are passionate about pursuing social justice in the present will reference the history of Jewish oppression as a key motivation for wanting to stand up for other oppressed groups. And, as we heard at the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony on Thursday night, Jewish experience in more recent times has also furnished us with that feeling that we know the heart of the oppressed. (Though it is not genetic – these experiences are only familiar to the majority of us through the testimony of those who are brave enough to share it with us. As one generation passes away, it takes a new effort to ensure that the memory of that experience does not die with them.)

But, what if our collective history had not been one of oppression? Would we feel no need to treat other oppressed and marginalised groups with the respect they deserve? Do we need to be able to empathise in order to want to protect the rights of others?

We should not assume, though, that empathy is created simply through shared history. Myth – even with no historical basis – can be just as powerful in providing us with a motivation to act. Even fictional ideals can move us in ways that history can’t. Think of those whose moral compass has been shaped by the values of Star Trek and Harry Potter. That our lives are driven by actions of honour and love is not diminished by the fact that they were learned in a novel or a TV show and not from a historical event.

By reading these words to each other every week, we are teaching ourselves the empathy the Torah demands of us. By telling and hearing the story of the exodus and the giving of the law, we are forced to imagine ourselves in the situation of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt; forced to understand that even if we were not actually slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, then we could have been. As Cantor Tamara reminded us yesterday, modern slavery and human trafficking are growing at an alarming pace. We need reminders that, but for the grace of God, us. That could be us, our family, our friends, who are subject to such abuse. This makes it impossible to simply be bystanders.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent God.

And if the exodus never happened, it would have been necessary to invent it, to teach us these truths.

Like Richard Elliott Friedman, I am a historian of ideas, and before training for the rabbinate, I spent many hours pouring over historical tomes for my PhD in early-modern political thought. I also care very much what happened, and where our ideas come from. However, I would not be prepared to forgo the lessons I have learnt from the Torah simply because the Exodus may not have happened. Rather, it can make us all the more determined to help the exodus into being now – in the time when we ourselves are the difference.

Shabbat Shalom