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May 25, 2001/Sivan 3, 5761, Vol. 53, No.34
L.A. rabbi challenges veracity of Exodus
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BARRY COHEN
Editor
This desert pathway is similar to a route the Israelites could have taken from Egypt.
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Passover has passed, but Los Angeles Jews are still heatedly discussing whether or not the Exodus actually happened.
The controversy - labeled a "hurricane" by the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - was triggered by Rabbi David Wolpe, spiritual leader of Conservative congregation Sinai Temple, and the author of numerous popular books on Judaism.
In three sermons at the beginning and end of Passover, Wolpe examined current research in biblical archaeology and 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."
Wolpe forcefully defended his position.
"It's a well-known fact that millions of Jews have doubts about the literal veracity of Bible stories. My sermons emphasized that faith is independent of doubt. I wanted the millions of doubting Jews to know that they can still be faithful Jews," Wolpe said in a statement.
"If scholarly books are written that question the literal veracity of Bible stories, it does not help our credibility to pretend that they don't exist. By discussing these books, we maintain the Jewish tradition of sustaining faith by seeking truth," he continued. "Ignoring the books, on the other hand, conveys a message of fear: We are afraid that science will shake our faith. I don't believe it should, and that is why I spoke out."
Dennis Prager, author and national talk show host:
Prager sharply attacked Wolpe's thesis.
"If the Exodus did not occur, there is no Judaism. Judaism stands on two pillars - Creation and Exodus," Prager wrote. "Judaism no more survives the denial of the Exodus than it does the denial of the Creator."
Rabbi William Berk, Temple Chai, Phoenix:
"Let me quote Mordechai Gafni, who said, 'Myth is not less than history. It is more than history,' " says Berk.
"In a nutshell, that says everything for me."
In the Talmud, says Berk, the rabbis argued whether the real miracle was the parting of the Red Sea or the setting free of the slaves.
"The nes gadol (great miracle) is that slaves became free," he says.
What is fascinating to me is a people who clings to its identity as former slaves, he notes. Ancient people whose ancestors were enslaved would try to hide their past; it was embarrassing and humiliating to descend from a slave people. The Israelites would not have claimed to have been enslaved unless it was true, he explains.
Of note is that Berk responded to the controversy sparked by Wolpe's words in a sermon he gave on April 13.
Rabbi Mark Bisman, Har Zion Congregation, Scottsdale:
Slavery and the Exodus can be in the memory of our people without the experience being able to be measured by historical tools of evidence, says Bisman.
He does not read the biblical description of the 10 plagues or the Israelites' standing at Sinai as how it actually happened or as material for historical record.
"The problem is when the biblical record becomes an assumption of what happened," he says. "The descriptions instead are a starting point of conversation."
Why search endlessly for evidence of Noah's ark or the tablets of the Ten Commandments, he asks. "Finding them will not strengthen their meaning," says Bisman. "It all could have happened only in the imagination, but it would still be true and real."
Professor William Dever, department of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona:
Scholars have known for 50 years there is no known evidence that the Exodus occurred, says Dever.
"The problem is with the conquest (of the Promised Land), a military invasion from the outside. ... It can no longer be argued that it took place around 1200 BCE," he says.
Evidence for towns listed in the Torah cannot be found, says Dever. If evidence is found, he says, the towns were not destroyed by military conquest. And if they were destroyed, he notes, some other people, such as the Philistines, laid them to waste.
According to Dever, the scholarly consensus is that the early Israelites were displaced Canaanites, who slowly united and forged a common identity, embellished their past and created a "theology of liberation."
Possibly, a nucleus of people who became the Israelites was enslaved in Egypt, but they escaped and wandered to Canaan, he opines.
"Looking back, of course, it seemed miraculous," he says.
At first, discussions about whether or not historical proof existed for the biblical account of the Exodus were relegated to scholarly circles, says Dever. He notes that Palestinian textbooks are now arguing that the early Canaanites were as much Palestinians as Israelites. Likewise, he notes, some Palestinian archaeologists are exploiting this revisionism.
"It's most unfortunate," he adds.
Dever has recently published "What Do Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know it?" (Eerdmans, $30)
Rabbi Ari Hier, director of the Jewish Studies Institute at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles:
"During this recent Passover, the Jewish community grappled with an 11th plague - Bible revisionism from the pulpit - as evidenced in the Page 1 story of the Los Angeles Times (Friday, April 13, 'Doubting the Story of Exodus')," says Hier.
"(If) Wolpe speaks for the Conservative Movement in general, then this means one thing - its tolerance for the many revisions to ancient Jewish law and tradition flows not from a desire to remain 'in touch' with a constantly evolving world, but from, perhaps, a lack of respect for the accuracy and iron-clad nature of God's own words. ...
"Moreover, there is a deeper problem here. If the Torah is metaphor, then Judaism and its practices are also metaphors; every individual should be trusted to employ any modality he finds comfortable in seeking divinity.
But religion is not the stuff of faith, theories, logic and analysis. God instead declared, 'I am the Lord ... who took you out of the land of Egypt.' ... Over 1 million people witnessed this communique and passed it down for all times."
Rabbi David Rebibo, Beth Joseph Congregation, Phoenix:
"(Wolpe's speech) is a non-event from my perspective," says Rebibo.
Anyone who bases his or her faith on archaeological evidence will be disappointed, he adds.
"I do not base my theology on evidence," says Rebibo. "It is based on my gut, a feeling, a feeling inside my soul, an inner spirituality."
Any question relating to the topic of divine intervention into human history cannot be answered based on evidence of a scientific nature, he explains.
But the more learned he becomes, the more he studies, the more he gains from life's experience, the stronger his theology becomes, Rebibo adds.
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