Tomb Painting of Osiris and the Eye of Ra in the Tomb of Pashedu[Missing Credit]
When the Haggadah says God delivers the Israelites with a “mighty hand and an outstretched arm”, it might be a conscious allusion to similar phrases in royal inscriptions from ancient Egypt. There is an actual image of a Pharaoh with his right arm raised in readiness to smite captives. The Haggadah is linguistically turning the tables on the Pharaohs, Berman suggests. Another act of inversion comes the telling of the splitting of the Red Sea, which he believes echoes an account of an Egyptian victory where some of the (Hittite) enemy drown.
While some Orthodox circles regard university research into the ancient world as a threat to faith that is best avoided, Berman takes a different approach, believing that it can enhance our understanding of the ancient world and the society in which the Torah was given. His recently launched podcast The Bible Bar is another example of trying to make scholarly insights into the Hebrew Bible available to wider audiences.
“I’m doing nothing less than Maimonides did,” he told the JC. “In the Guide to the Perplexed, Maimonides has a long section where he seeks to identify the reasoning behind each of the biblical commandments.” The medieval philosopher explained some aspects of the sacrificial system by reference to ancient idolatory practices, showing how the Torah adapted them to make them “a little bit more elevated, more refined, more monotheistic.
“In fact, Maimonides writes that he wishes he had known more about the ancient world because the more that he would know about the ancient world, the better he would understand the Torah.”
Maimonides would have been “frothing at the mouth” at the resources scholars have at their fingertips today, he believes.
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Discomfort with the idea of using external sources to help explicate the Torah is a modern phenomenon, he says: for centuries, Maimonides was “never attacked” for this.
Rabbi Berman said sometimes the question will be put to him: “Is not the Torah eternal and if it is eternal, then how can it be that there are insights that you can only have if you were alive in 1250 BCE or if you have a doctorate in Egyptology?”.
Maimonides and others would have responded as follows, he said: “The Torah is eternal in that its ideas, taken as a whole, are eternal, or that it manages to speak to different people in different ages from different passages. It is not that every jot and tittle will strike as resonant a chord with each and every person in each and every generation. That’s not possible. That’s not because of a limitation of the Almighty, it’s a limitation of us. We are born in place and time.”
As to whether there is anything controversial about showing images of Egyptian deities in an Haggadah, he says “the answer is that deities that are no longer being worshipped are not a threat”. In the same way that the ruins of temples where idols once stood, which are now tourist sites, no longer represent an active place of worship.
While long fascinated with Egypt, he did not get to visit the country until January 2021 when he found a window between Covid lockdowns to join a party of Christian clerics led by the American Egyptologist James Hoffmeier. “I didn’t want to go and just be a tourist. I wanted to go with someone who knew how to make sense of all this from a biblical perspective,” he said.
“He was making all these connections and I was astonished how many passages in scripture came alive for me.”
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The “jaw-dropping” experience inspired him to start running his own “In the footsteps of the Exodus” tours to Egypt. When after October 7, these were no longer possible, “it was clear if you can’t bring Jews to Egypt, you have to bring Egypt to the Jews. And hence this Haggadah.”
Recommending it, Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, said: “Rabbi Berman forensically contrasts the cultures of Israel and Egypt to show how the Torah responds to Egyptology in majestic and meaningful ways.
"His scholarship and passion shine through this wonderful work. In his hands, the Haggadah becomes a beacon of Jewish identity, expressing religious values in new and exciting ways. You’ll never leave Egypt in the same way again.”
Echoes of Egypt; A Haggada, Joshua Berman, Koren is out now
