Retelling the Story: What Was the Biblical Exodus?

Retelling the Story: What Was the Biblical Exodus?

Three Tuesdays: March 14, 21, 28
7:30–8:45 p.m. ET  

An Online Course with Rabbi Robert Harris, PhD, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at JTS

Open the Haggadah at the start of the seder, and you might expect to find a narrative that fulfills the biblical commandment to tell the story of the Exodus. Yet the Haggadah actually says little about what happened or how; the Israelites’ move from slavery to freedom is disjointed and short on detail from the Bible itself (although full of rabbinic midrash); Moses, the central human character of the story, is not mentioned even once. We will explore why the Rabbis chose to tell the story this way in the Haggadah, but, more importantly, we will enter into a close and deep reading of the Torah’s account of the Exodus. We will pay particular attention to how Torah adapts rituals that pre-date the Exodus to tell a new kind of story. Our study of the biblical text will be enriched by commentators, medieval and modern, who can help us respond not only to the question of what the Exodus means for us today when we retell it at the seder table, but also to the question of what it meant in its own ancient Israelite context.

Cost: $90 for three sessions