Exodus exposed?:

Temple Sinai’‘s visiting scholar to tackle tricky parts of the Passover story

Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles shocked his congregants four years ago when he delivered a Passover sermon questioning whether the Exodus really happened.

His talk ignited a sequence of events that raised the topic in the public consciousness.

“This is something that scholars and archeologists always said, that there was doubt,” said Richard Elliott Friedman, a leading biblical scholar and author. “But all of a sudden it was visible.”

The Katzin professor of Jewish civilization at U.C.

San Diego, Friedman will be the scholar-in-residence at Oakland’s Reform Temple Sinai from Friday, April 1, through Sunday, April 3. He will deliver four lectures, including one on the topic, “Is the Exodus Historical?”

While Wolpe himself didn’t doubt that it happened, “he reported that many archeologists doubt that it happened, so it wasn’t necessarily his own view,” said Friedman, who is also a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature. Even so, “the shock of doing that on Passover raised a fury at the time.”

A commentary in a new Chumash of the Conservative movement, Etz Chayim, then offered a similar commentary in the back. Then came a best-selling book called “The Bible Unearthed,” that claimed it most probably did not happen.

And then, an Israeli archeologist made a similar claim.

Asked why this topic caused such a furor, Friedman responded, “It’s Moses, it’s the Torah, it’s the starting point of the Ten Commandments. It’s the starting point of the Jewish people.

“Why do you keep these commandments? ‘Because I brought you out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage.’ This is the starting point of Jewish belief. The significance is obvious.”

Though Friedman has been interviewed countless times by everyone from Larry King to The New York Times, he still did not want to divulge too much about what he would say in his Oakland lecture. (Other topics he’ll cover during the weekend include “The Bible and the Politics of the Middle East,” “The Big Bang and the Kabbalah” and “Who Wrote the Bible?”)

Friedman has been interested in the Bible for as long as he can remember. Growing up Conservative in Miami Beach, he told how he used to sit with his rabbi for hours, studying the commentaries of Rashi.

In fact, when he was working on his “Commentary on the Torah,” published a few years ago, and he called his former rabbi to tell him what he was doing, the rabbi responded: “That’s what you said you were going to do as a kid.”

Said Friedman: “I had no recollection of that, but apparently ever since I was a kid, I said I would do it.”

As for “Is the Exodus Historical?” — the question he’ll address at 9 a.m. Torah study on Saturday, April 2, Friedman did say this: “It’s perfectly possible that it happened. People don’t have to worry. I won’t say anything that will mess up anyone’s seder.”

He said that while Wolpe was the first to publicly question whether the Exodus really happened, Bible scholars have been debating it for years. “Anybody who has ever taken a course on the Book of Exodus or the Hebrew Bible or Genesis has discussed whether it’s historical.”

The doubting only really came into vogue in the last few years, Friedman said, mostly in Europe by “revisionists, minimalists — though I have a few names of my own for them — who doubt far more than the Exodus. They deny most of the history of biblical Israel.”

According to Friedman, a healthy dose of skepticism is fine, as it makes people think and question.

But there is a school of thought that says, with that many people wandering in the desert for 40 years, there should have been some archeological evidence left behind.

“We don’t have a tree with ‘Moses loved Tziporah’ on it, what evidence would you want?” he asked.

“I say that’s pretty arrogant and ridiculous. There was a group of people in the wilderness, not a city.”




Richard Elliott Friedman will give four lectures Friday, April 1, through Sunday April 3, at Temple Sinai, 2808 Summit St., Oakland, beginning with 7:30 p.m. Shabbat services. Information: (510) 451-3263.