IS THE PASSOVER STORY MORE THAN MERE MYTH?

Over fifteen years ago, I wrote a short Seder supplement for a blog I used to maintain. The piece quietly took on a life of its own, so I included it in the Haggadah I compiled. Later, it was featured in our movement’s liturgy book, Here Is Our Light, and emailed to all members of the Society for Humanistic Judaism.

I understand why, of all the things I’ve written, it became so widely shared: it directly addresses the historicity of the Exodus. In it, I argued that while the Torah’s (and the Haggadah’s) version of the story is clearly fictional, that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless—or entirely without historical roots.

I sketched out a couple of complementary scholarly theories. The one that I found especially intriguing was little known at the time I wrote about it. It proposes that a smaller version of an actual exodus from Egypt actually took place, involving a single tribe: the Levites. The idea is actually quite plausible. Unlike the other Israelite tribes, the Levites had no land of their own. They were set apart as religious functionaries, as bearers of ritual memory. And notably, many Levite names—Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, and others—are Egyptian in origin.

In my supplement I asked: Could they have been the ones who came out of Egypt? Could they have carried that memory with them into Israelite culture, transforming it into a national myth of liberation?

Since writing that supplement, that very theory has been expanded into a powerful and deeply researched book: The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters by Richard Elliott Friedman.

Friedman, a biblical scholar known for his work on the documentary hypothesis of biblical authorship (Who Wrote the Bible?) argues that the Exodus did happen—but not on the scale of the biblical account. Instead of hundreds of thousands, a much smaller group of people—likely Levites—left Egypt and later joined an already forming Israelite confederation in Canaan. (This is where the other major theory of Israelite origins complements Friedman’s argument.)

The textual, linguistic, and archaeological evidence that Friedman assembles is wide-ranging and impressive. In addition to the Egyptian names, he notes that, based on archaeological findings, the deity Yahweh—usually pronounced “Adonai” in Jewish tradition—appears to have originated in Midian, the homeland of Moses’ wife and in-laws. By contrast, other discoveries confirm that El was a significant god in the Canaanite pantheon, and his name appears in early Israelite names, even in Yisra-El itself! Friedman argues that as the Levite Yahweh-worshippers merged with the Canaanite population, so too did their deities. In the end, Israelite religion emerged from a blending of southern Yahweh traditions with Canaanite El worship.

In the second half of his book, Friedman talks about why this matters. According to him, these Levites didn’t just bring a story of escape. They offered a moral vision in which the Exodus became the foundation for the Torah’s extraordinary concern for the stranger, the slave, and the vulnerable. In this way, they transformed their memory of oppression and wandering into a call for compassion.

Friedman doesn’t write as a religious apologist or a debunker. He walks a third path—one that takes the evidence seriously and honors the power of tradition. For Humanistic Jews, this is especially meaningful. We are committed to truth, and we are committed to heritage. The Exodus shows how the two can meet.

If you’re looking to ground your Passover in something deeper than denial or nostalgia, this book offers a rare and beautiful bridge between past and present. It’s not just about whether the Exodus happened. It’s about why we still tell the story.

You can find Friedman's book at THIS LINK.

And you can download my supplement at THIS LINK.

Happy Passover!