What Makes the Exodus True with Joshua Berman

0:00We are part of something eternal, and that's expressed through our involvement with the Jewish people who are eternal, and especially, especially through our children. The Torah is not a photograph, it is a painting. Welcome back to Sapir Conversations, where we discuss the very best ideas for a thriving Jewish future. I'm your host, Rabbi David Wolpy. Some of you may remember, and I certainly remember, 25 years ago, when I caused a bit of a stir, it was passed over 2001, and standing before my congregation at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, I questioned the historical veracity of the Bible's account of the Exodus. Well, it caused a real ruckus in the Jewish world. There were headlines and papers all across the world, especially in Israel and the United States, and the reaction was to say the least very polarizing. Some thinking it was wonderful that academic

1:06study had been brought to the pulpit, and others feeling that I had in some way violated the sacredest of sacred cows, which is that the Torah tells not just a story, but an historically accurate account of everything that is included in it. It was a tumultuous and interesting time, and it has never really gone away. And each year at Passover, the question is renewed. Do we take the historical story of the Exodus seriously or literally? Is it, in fact, an account of everything that happened that seas were split and darkness descended on the land? Or is it a story of a people who were liberated that tells a tale that, as I said to my congregation, composed largely of Iranian Jews, is repeated in some way in every generation? Well, that's why it was so fascinating to me to have on the Orthodox rabbinical scholar, Joshua Burman, who is a

2:11professor of Bible at Barilon University. He received his rabbinic ordination from the Israeli chief rabbinit, and he is an Egyptologist. He's the author of multiple books, but our discussion centered on his most recent book, a new haggata called Echoes of Egypt, which is rich with images of art, monuments, and inscriptions all from ancient Egypt. In a very deep sense, the Exodus, however you interpret it, is the Jewish language of aspiration? Or, as the 19th century poet Ain Rakhina famously put it, since the Exodus, freedom has spoken with a Hebrew accent, and that's why, with this issue of superior devoted to aspiration, we talked about Yitziyat Mitzrayim, our Exodus from Egypt. It is a wide-raging, superior conversation that we hope enriches your Passover Seder this year. Take a listen, and we guarantee you'll walk away with some additional questions, and possibly even some answers of your own.

3:24I am delighted to be here with Rabbi Dr. Joshua Burman, who has written a truly extraordinary haggata. Now, Josh, as you know, of the making of haggatas, as Ecclesiastes didn't say, but almost did, there is no end. Each year produces a great proliferation, and yet your haggata is really both unique and, I think, incredibly important. It's called Echoes of Egypt, and rather than having my describe it to the superior audience, would you please tell us a little bit about why you decided to create this haggata and what makes it different from all other haggatas? How is this haggada different from all other haggadot? I want to say that, but that's the fifth question of the Manishtana. Okay, right. So, first of all, thank you, Rabbi Wolpy, David, for having me here with you as your guest. I want to answer what's behind this haggada in two ways. On the simple level, this is the first haggada that incorporates the findings of biblical scholarship and Egyptology and the nexus between

4:29to illuminate both the story of the Exodus and a whole slew of passages that we have in the Torah. If our sages told us there's this line in the Talmud, in every generation, a person must see themselves as if they came out of Egypt. I think probably the rabbis had in mind that we should appreciate the move from servitude to freedom, but perhaps also, at least my monitor is understood this way. We are meant to meditate on just what the servitude entailed and different aspects of God's salvation. And what better way to do that than to actually learn about ancient Egypt and to see just in very concrete, palpable ways, some of what the servitude was like, much of what is the polemic that the Torah is orchestrating against Egyptian ideals and Egyptian culture generally. So I thought to do this through the incorporation of really large, beautiful photos, but not just as kind of table dressing. Oh, here's a big picture of the pyramid, but photos that actually are

5:31part of the commentary that I have on the Exodus story and on the on the various passages of the haggada. That is, you know, in a kind of very concrete way, I think what anybody would see when they begin to open echoes of Egypt. But in a more abstract, but no less important way, I would say that what I'm really trying to do here is to help bridge a bifurcation that a lot of people feel between their religious and ritual experience and their critical intellectual, academic and historical thinking. For many people, these are kind of like two modes of being, two ways of thinking about the world, of experiencing the world. And it's not always so easy to make that bridge. And I want that bridge to exist. I want people as they are dipping things into their charroset and breaking the matza and doing all the ritual things and kind of meditating on the sater and on the Exodus from Egypt as they have year in and year out to now bridge that with,

6:31look here, you can actually see phrases in the haggada, phrases in the Torah, what their origins were in Egyptian culture, why the Torah is using them. And in this way, it becomes a kind of an overall fusion of an intellectual and spiritual experience together. On the academic side, actually, I'm curious. I mean, I know the work of James Hawtharmor and a couple of other people who have been researching Egypt in Israel, so to speak. But it seems to me we have learned so much less about the Egyptian heritage of Israel than we have about the Semitic, you know, the Hittite, Babylonian, the Syrian heritage of Israel. It's great, first of all, that we are hearing this, it's so central to our history. But I wonder why that is. Why was Egypt the lagging academic runner in this race? Right. Okay. So let me for the sake of our listeners expand this,

7:32scholars, biblical scholars have been identifying the linguistic ties and cultural ties of the world of the Bible with ancient Semitic, Egypt is not a Semitic culture, but ancient Semitic cultures from Babylon and Assyria, North, Eugur, since really the late 19th century. Some scholars, as James Hawthmeyer is one of them that you mentioned, there is a handful, more than a handful, but certainly a much smaller pool of scholars that have done work on the connections between the Bible and ancient Egypt. Hawthmeyer surmises that the reason for this is twofold. Once a field gets a certain momentum going and the momentum was, oh, Bible and Mesopotamian culture, then that becomes the kind of the accepted track in which you go. Secondly, ancient Egyptian is a fiendishly difficult language to master. It's much harder than to learn Akkadian. This is what Hawthmeyer says that these are the reasons. I would hazard to say as well,

8:38Rabbi Wolpy, I've noticed something, well, it's a little depressing over the years. And that is, if you ask scholars, Bible scholars, scholars of the ancient Near East, what is their opinion of the historical accuracy? Was there an exodus event? Forget about, you know, splitting seas, just, you know, were Israelites slaves in Egypt and did they come out of there and go to Canaan? That basic, that basic event. So obviously, as every issue in scholarship, there are various opinions. But in a very uncomfortable way, I have found that the answers that you get from scholars break down in a sadly predictable way. There is generally a very strong correlation between a scholar's view of the historical accuracy of some type of exodus episode and who they vote for for U.S. President. Fascinating. Yes. And therefore, because there are a whole bunch that are skeptical

9:38about whether Israel was ever in Egypt to begin with, therefore, what point is there to even look for connections with ancient Egyptian culture? Never there. Yeah. Since you brought this up, I made myself infamous many years ago for questioning the historicity of the exodus story, but my assumption, and I explained this in lots of other articles and so on, was that there was an event. I questioned the biblical depiction of it. I don't know where that puts me in the voting, but I wonder actually what you think of, and then I'll get off the technical because I really want to get back to the Haggadah and some of the beautiful ways that it illuminates the story that I had never seen. I wonder what you think of, for example, the theory of Richard Elliott Friedman, that it was the Levites who left Egypt. Does that strike you as remotely plausible, not as a believing Jew, but as a historian? Right. So Richard Elliott Friedman has a position. It's shared by other scholars that the presence of Israelites in Egypt was limited to Levites.

10:40This is based primarily on the fact that when you look at the early chapters of the book of Exodus, particularly chapter six, what you see is that the Levites that are mentioned have a stronger propensity to have names that are Egyptian than do the members of the other tribes. That's just, you know, once you know some Egyptian in some Egyptian names, that's just a fact. And then the question is, what does one make of that? So that school of thought says, well, it was really just the Levites. And then where was everybody else? Were they in Canaan? Did the Levites come back? All this becomes very theoretical because there isn't really any evidence other than the name, you know, other than the names that are that are Egyptian. So it really rests on relatively little evidence. I would say this, David, I would say the the Torah has literally dozens. And I've only brought some of them dozens of points where suddenly, once you know the Egyptian background, you can see that the Torah is in conversation with it. Now, to make my point, let me let me give

11:41an illustration of why I think that it's difficult to say that this was just one small part of the Israelite people, the tribe of Levi. Imagine, and I've actually done this, I speak to an audience of Americans and Brits. And I throw out the phrase, the bombs bursting in air and all the Americans smile because they know exactly what I'm referring to because that's our national anthem. And the Brits look at me with a kind of puzzled look. What did what did Berman just say? And bombs, what? They could stay down there, not familiar with the American national anthem, just as I am not familiar with the British national anthem. My point here is that when you are speaking or when you are writing and you invoke an image, a metaphor, a phrase for your audience, you only do so and you certainly know this as a public speaker. You only do so if you assume and know that your audience gets it, you won't use the phrase otherwise because it will fall flat. So I say to myself, here the Torah in dozens of places is invoking Egyptian images and is clearly doing so for rhetorical purposes.

12:45So it assumes that its audience gets it. So the theory that says, well, really it was just, you know, 112, maybe even less of the population, then all of these images and metaphors are going to fall flat. So that's that's well, let me play what some people would say is literally devil's advocate in this case. Israel was a very small country and Egypt was a superpower and the truth is there are lots of tropes in English that you could offer to Americans that Brits would recognize because Britain was the power that controlled America for a long time. So couldn't it be that because Egypt had such a powerful influence on Israel, even people in Israel, not necessarily in Egypt, but in Israel would speak in Egyptian tropes because that was the comment, the lingua franca of the age, so to speak. Okay, that's an excellent question, David. And I'll say this, there are certainly some cultural things that we know for sure passed from Egypt into Canaan.

13:46For example, all of the ancient measures, particularly of length, like you measure the sizes of buildings and you can see, ah, they are exactly the size of six Egyptian amaz. Okay, that's like a further foot in the amazement. So no, ah, well clearly the Canaanites were using the Egyptian measuring system. Okay, however, when we're talking about literary references, this is the important point. No major Egyptian composition has ever been found outside of Egypt. That is to say the language and the types of phrases, like just to take one phrase that I think is a particularly rich one and one that all of our audience will be familiar with. We read in the Haggadah that God took, and this is from Deuteronomy, that God took out the Israelite slaves with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Okay, now that phrase you would think in the Bible could describe any number of miraculous events that the Lord does for Israel, but the reality is that it is a phrase that is

14:48used exclusively with reference to the events of the Exodus. Elsewhere we have the hand of God, but never this full phrase, mighty hand and outstretched arm. When you look at Egyptian inscriptions from the period that most of us surmise, assuming the Israelites were in Egypt, that they were in Egypt, the period of what's called the Egyptian New Kingdom, it's the zenith of of ancient Egyptian civilization, roughly 1500 to 1200 BCE, what you see is that the pharaohs, everything they do in hundreds of inscriptions is referred to as things they did with their mighty hand and outstretched arm. So the pharaoh defeated his enemy, the Libyans, with a mighty hand. The pharaoh was walking along one day, when suddenly at his feet he discovered a diamond the size of his fist and he lifted it with an outstretched arm and on and on and on. So when the Torah uses the phrase mighty hand and outstretched arm, precisely with reference to the events of the

15:52Exodus, what we're doing here is engaging in cultural appropriation. We are stealing the thunder, the royal propaganda of the pharaohs themselves to outfarrow the pharaohs and to wage cultural warfare against them. Now this only works if the people know that phrase and that phrase is not known outside of Egypt anywhere. And so that's why I say the Torah knows too much to say this is just the types of things that would kind of through us Moses cross borders. I am no longer going to think of it only as the Maharals interpretation that God brought us out with a mighty hand and the outstretched arm is to make sure they wouldn't go back, which I always thought was a great way of looking at that phrase. Before I ask about the Jewish story in general though, please share the insight of Panimal Panim, which I read in the Haggata, which is just exquisite and I think people should know this. Okay, okay. Here we go. So some of us might recall that God says to Moses at one

16:53point in the book of Exodus, low your anyha dambachai, man cannot see me and live when Moses requests to see God and God says, well, we just can't do that. You know, man cannot, cannot endure that type of intimate connection with the Almighty. But then strangely, we have in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says that at Mount Sinai, Panim el Panim di bearashami mahem face to face God spoke to you at the mountain. Well, if we can't see God and survive it, what does it mean that we spoke or he spoke to us face to face? Now, when you go back to ancient Egypt, in hundreds of places, you have these images, you see that the pharaohs and the gods are depicted together in many scenes. They are always depicted in precisely the same proportions. Looking at many of these pictures, you cannot immediately tell which of the two figures is the pharaoh and which is the God. They are usually standing remarkably close to one another. The deity has his arms around the waste

17:59of the pharaoh and pulls the pharaoh toward him in a way that can only be described as having erotic overtones. And they look at each other. The eyes are exactly at the same level, nose at the same level, mouth at the same level with a hair breath between them. And the hieroglyphs that surround that speak about, oh, you are the chosen pharaoh, you are beloved to the deity, Ptah, or Horus, or whoever it is, because they had many deities. Then along with what happens now in Deuteronomy, when Moses says face to face God spoke to you at Sinai, this is a rhetorical and a political move. What the Torah is saying is out with the pharaohs. The God of Israel is not interested exclusively in its leaders, not even primarily in its leaders, let alone its kings. The God of Israel wants to have the intimate encounter with the people. It is the people who are beloved. It is the people who are chosen. And this represents this is a theme that I trace throughout the Haggadah of how the Torah, for the first time in history, presents us

19:05with a social blueprint in a way that drains status from the elites, especially kings and priests, and ennobles the common people. That leads very nicely into, I want to throw in a Sapir essay from Darahorn, who says that really this is about the Jewish story of non-conformity. And it lies at the very foundation of freedom I'm reading from her essay. She said, when Jews don't bow to other gods, the point is they don't bow to tyrants. Jewish civilization is an anti-terranical movement, a non-conformist movement, an anti-hierarchical movement based on a story of liberation that taught the world the change is possible. And it seems to me that that Panimel Panim illuminates Darah's point very beautifully. Yep. Yep. What is it in the story of the Exodus? You are most touched by and want people to remember. Like if someone's coming to a Pesosator for the first time, what is it you want them to take away? Well, I'll tell you what I

20:07take away from me is the greatest takeaway from my whole study, the study that I do of other scholars. I stand on giant shoulders in a lot of this material of the points of contact and of polemic between the Torah and the culture of ancient Egypt. And it comes to the most existential question for us as human beings. How do we address and deal with our mortality? Our mortality. So for ancient Egyptians, the answer was simple. Ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife big time. Yes. I mean, all the preparations they did, some of us have seen photographs of the inside of King Tut's burial chamber, which had 5,800 artifacts in it. I mean, a Jew basically takes his talus with him, you know, to the grave. But he had a lot of telacime. He had a lot of objects. Now, when I say that the Egyptians believed in an afterlife, well, we need to understand as they believed in an afterlife, David, the way you and I believe in tomorrow. None of us

21:09know that tomorrow is going to exist, but that's just like we just take it for granted and we've planned it or we've planned tomorrow. Tomorrow is already planned out. And that's how Egyptians thought about it. So it was a certainty. It was so it was just moving from this room to the next room. And that's how so therefore mortality, you know, you can deal with it because there's this very rich afterlife waiting for you. In the Tanach, we do not find much of an afterlife. Barely few scraps of references that one might indicate that there's something after, but it's certainly nothing near the place and role that it had for ancient Egyptians. So how are Israelites meant to relate to to our mortality? So I'll say this that we discovered two remarkable innovations in the Torah relative to what we see in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptians had a calendar and they had holidays, all of their holidays are agricultural. There is no such thing as a historical holiday in ancient Egypt. They recalled cross generations no historical event, no salvation that

22:11this God did for them or that God. They know how to thank the gods when they are victorious in battle, but it's not remembered. There is no notion in ancient Egypt or really anywhere in the ancient world of a national story that the people tell themselves about themselves and about how the deity is involved in their life. Israel has a story that it tells itself about itself and it's the story of its eternal covenant with the Almighty. This is where we are able to overcome our mortality. The more that we are invested in the national project of the Jewish people and it's ongoing covenant with the Almighty, that is eternal. And therefore, whatever happens to me at the end of days or to you at the end of days, we're all going to have a limited amount of time, but we are part of something eternal. And that's expressed through our involvement with the Jewish people of eternal and especially, especially through our children, because they are

23:12the next step in this project. Which is why it makes perfect sense that the Seder ends with, you know, basically appeals to the children to stay up and the songs that are supposed to enchant them because ultimately it's about them. In fact, I'm busily working on an essay that says when people ask like what place should anti-Semitism have in our priorities, I think the Haggadah tells us, which is you say, behold, or bador. Like, it's real, you open the door and you say, shwo hamadcha, but in the end, it's about the children and next year in Jerusalem because the hatred should never subsume as you so beautifully said the story. And I wonder how much do you think that it matters, that people see the Torah as a book of fact as opposed to truth? How invested do you think we should be in the factuality of the Torah's account? So let me give you what might be a surprising answer coming from somebody who is an Orthodox

24:16rabbi, okay, because one would think that perhaps the default setting certainly from an Orthodox point of view is, what do you mean? Of course, our Torah is true and that means that it is factual. And I'm coming to tell you, in the name of Rabbi Cook, Rabbi Abraham Eisen Cook, something a little bit more nuanced than that, okay? Rabbi Cook grappled with this issue, as he did with so many things, he was such a forward-looking, broad-minded person, despite his very traditional appearance. And he writes the following, he says, all stories that we have in the Tanakh and also including therefore in the Torah are designed with one purpose and that is to penetrate the soul, to inspire, to make a person grow, he says. Some stories managed to achieve that just by telling the facts, the facts do all the work that needs to be done. But he said, this is something we know from our experience, sometimes the facts can be a little bit dry, sometimes we can watch a documentary say about the

25:16Shoah that is fully factual, but it's a documentary and it might not necessarily hit home emotionally in the same way that Chandler's List does. But Chandler's List is based around facts, the overall story is a true story, but the characters are a little bit Hollywood-like and, you know, and there's a little bit of embellishment there. Rabbi Cook says, the Torah has no qualms when it feels that the bare-bones facts won't do the work of inspiring growth and inspiration. In the person, the Torah has no qualms with embellishing the story. Rabbi Cook is not committed to a fully factual account of what we have. Put differently the way I would put it, the way someone once really summed it up nicely in a pithy way, the Torah, the Tanakh as a whole, is not a photograph, it is a painting. And no one has ever looked at a Rembrandt and said, no, people don't glow that way. I don't like this. No one glows like it. No, you look at a Rembrandt

26:23and you go, wow, that guy, he really got the soul of a human being. And so I don't necessarily have to find full factuality in every story. Now, then people say, well, how are we to know in any given story? What is fact and what is the embellishment? And I think Rabbi Cook would say, we don't know the answer to that. But what is important is that the story is told this way, because this is the way in which the understanding of that event will be properly transmitted. I think the Rabbi Cook would say that there is a core of some sort for every story that is really true, but there could be all sorts of embellishments, especially about dialogue that are there for the hordatory purpose. Right. I mean, another way of thinking about it is whatever happened, it's always happening. That is the Torah is telling you about things that consistently will happen in the world. The Greeks used to say about Plato that whatever road of life you walk down, you found him on the way back. And you can think of the Torah that way. It's like it will, maybe it hasn't happened

27:24in your life yet. But if you live long enough, you will all of a sudden discover that that story is about you, even though you didn't know it. And so I sign on to the deeper truth. So I guess that the questions of authenticity and faith don't trouble you the same way that they may trouble some of your colleagues. And I wonder if you've found any resistance to an Egyptian-themed Haggata in the more traditional world? Well, David, the Haggata has only been out three weeks. So, you know, we have to give some time for people to push back. I'll tell you, one of my prior works was a book called Anima Amin, I believe, or I am a believer, Biblical criticism, historical truth, and the 13 principles of faith. Or I deal with a lot of these issues, you know, historical accuracy of the Tanakh was there in Exodus, things of that nature. And when that book came out that was in 2020, I was convinced that the world would be split into two. There would be my academic

28:27colleagues who would say, ah, Brahmin is a fundamentalist. And then there would be the religious world would say, ah, Brahmin is an apostate. And I've been particularly surprised over all these years how many emails I've gotten from people who, if you looked at them, you would have them pegged in the Kharati world, sometimes very Kharati world, who are just dying to hear this sort of stuff. There's a lot of openness and there's a lot, there's a lot going on under the stender, you know, the little little stand that people have their Talmud on. I think we have come to an age to a large extent where if you show that you have a deep commitment to Jewish people hood, then people will forgive you a lot of other presumed heresies because they know they're in the same ultimate mission with you. And we don't have that many people. So it's important to support. I hope that's true. Okay. So why is it that you think Pesach has the place it has? I mean, even among those

29:30who are tangentially attached to our tradition, Pesach seems to be the holiday that they still cling to. Yeah, I suspect that the answer to that is sociological. I think the power of the satyr, food, family, it's a winning recipe, food, family, ritual, it's a winning recipe. That's what I think. Wine, also wine. But wine never hurts, but we have wine at, you know, we have wine every Friday. Everyone have wine pretty often. Yeah, it's true, but not for cups necessarily. All right. So I have a series of rapid fire questions. What's one person in the Jewish tradition in Jewish history that you would like to meet? Oh, wow. I would like to meet Rufsadya Gond. An interesting choice. Yes. Yes. So Rufsadya Gond lives, I think, in the 10th century in Babylon. He was one of the most innovative and avant-garde figures we've ever had who pushed the envelope on just a whole range of things. Entire genres. He was the first person to write a commentary

30:35on the Bible. He did that because Muslims were writing commentaries on their Bible. He was the first person to write a systematic theology of Judaism because the Muslims were writing systematic theologies of Islam. He was the first to say that we should speak Hebrew and invoke as many phrases and words as we can from the Bible because that is the height of language. And he did that because that is what the Muslims were doing. My point here is that he was open to, when he saw something that worked outside, even if it was by an ostensibly enemy or a competitive part of the world that he was living in, if he saw it worked, even though it had never been done, it didn't deter him. And in that way, I guess I'd like to think what I'm doing is kind of in that mold. Let's be honest, David. What I do for a living biblical scholarship, many would say traditionally-minded people, that's not something for a good Jewish boy to be doing.

31:39Right, biblical scholarship. But, you know, I like pushing the envelope a little bit and things that I think can contribute to the beauty of our Mesura, our tradition. Let's go for it. And I think that that was the spirit of Ruf Saddiagon. I have to say this theme of transmuting other people's cultural achievements and making them Jewish is a very Jewish theme throughout all of our history. And certainly, Rambam would approve of what you're doing. I mean, he explicitly did that. And, you know, if Rambam does it, you know, as the Talmud says, you're going to hang yourself to it with a toll tree. So I would say you're in good, you're in very good company. When was the last time you changed your mind? Wow. Wow. Ah, about what? The question does not specify, I think it doesn't mean breakfast. Actually, I know a little bit about your background. You weren't always in Orthodox Jews. So maybe that would be a good

32:40story to tell. Right. Right. Right. So I'm, yeah, my background is kind of interesting as I, as I like to say to you, as a Yiddish phrase, I'm Nishtahin and Nishtahir. That is, I'm not your classic, what we call from from birth, you know, born into an observant home. And I do what my parents and grandparents did, you know, kind of the classic chain of tradition. That's not my background, because my parents, we had a kosher home, but not a whole lot more than that. And neither of my parents really received any type of traditional Jewish education. But I'm also not a a Baal Chuva, you know, one who has seen the light, you know, typically in college or through some crisis in their early 20s. My story was that I had the good fortune of entering elementary school not long after the six-day war, which meant that my parents, like so many Jews of that generation, had a huge awakening of Jewish identity. And they realized they wanted their children, myself and my brother, to receive a stronger Jewish background than they had received. And the

33:46way to do that was to send us to Yashiva Day School. And then I went to SAAR Academy in Riverdale and had wonderful teachers, caught the bug, and by the time my Bar Mitzvah was keeping Shabbat and all the rest. But that's a really, it's a great question, you know, change your mind. I often think, I wish in my profession, the way that we would get promoted would be to demonstrate that we have changed our mind about something rather than digging in. Let's say you had one sermon, this is not usually the way we phrase it, but since you're a rabbi, but not a pulpit rabbi, you get to get one sermon to the Jewish people. What are you going to tell us apart from Doomer Mitzvahs, which I think every rabbi, you know, in theory. Very specific, David. What do you want the Jewish people to do? I want you to be outside in the public sphere visibly Jewish. That is the call of the moment, because the anti-semitism that we are exposed to today, that we are subject to, is the anti-semitism of the visible Jew. It isn't, if you have a Jewish name, you're not going to get into

34:48this golf club, or that golf club, don't scars deal. They told me that this is still a problem. But generally, your Jewish name alone is not going to get you into trouble. It's this on your head, a kippah, or a sidewalks, or something, your restaurant is an Israeli cuisine. That's when we get into trouble. And the last thing that we can be doing now is to afford ourselves to give in to those that want to wipe us from the public sphere. And I believe that the importance of this is not only for the sake of God and His Torah, though those things are important. But I believe that when we are publicly Jewish, whether it's the kippah on our head, wherever we can do it, maybe it's not possible. But wherever it is possible, or wherever it is possible to wear your chain with a star of David out, what you achieve by doing that is that you fortify your own self-esteem and self-confidence. And that pays dividends in every aspect of your life. And when you cower, and when you say, I'm not going to wear my kippah out in public, and I'm going to put my chain with the star of David in,

35:52then you are doing yourself a disservice, not just because now you'll be a little bit less Jewish. No, because you will be diminishing your own self-confidence. And that will impinge and have an impact on every encounter that you have in your family life and your professional life. Do it for yourself. Do it for yourself. Be proud. Put on the kippah. Put out the star of David. That is a really beautiful sermon. I have to say, you know, walking around New York with a kippah, I only once so far, I think, have somebody yelled Mamdani at me. All right, I yelled LaGuardia back at him. It's not just that good things happen too. Let me tell just one amazing story. Okay, but what happens when you wear your kippah in public? So prior to the war, I used to take groups to Egypt with Tanakh in hand in the footsteps of the Exodus, kind of walking through the Haggadah in real time in Egypt. Okay, and I wore my kippah openly. One day, this was on a Sunday. You'll see why this was important. I'm in a museum in Cairo,

36:56and I'm admiring a certain thing in the display case, and an Arab fellow comes over to me. He says to me, are you from Israel? He must have seen my kippah. I said, yes, I am. He says to me, I'm from Gaza. I gulped. He said to me, my name is Hisham, and I want to tell you that I hate Hamas, and I want to tell you that I think that we should make peace with you. Oh, and about yesterday, Shabbat Shalom. Wow. I have never been with Shabbat Shalom on Sunday before. Wow. And I have no idea if Hisham is under a big pile of rubble or whatever became of him. I don't know. But when you have your kippah on or your star of David out, you also draw attention that is very positive. I recently got a free cup of coffee in an airport because of my kippah. The lady's song with kippah, she said, take it. Don't pay. Listen, I think anybody who has heard you speak on this podcast will wish that you had your own podcast and their wish comes true. So tell us about your podcast. Oh, thank you, David. Yes. So I've just launched a podcast. It's called The Bible Bar. It's the

38:02podcast of the Bible Department of BariLon University. And the format is that we are moving sequentially through scripture from Genesis one, second week is Genesis two, Genesis three, and we're going to move through all of the Tanakh. And if we keep it up in 20 years, we'll finish the whole thing. And each week I have on another scholar. Sometimes my colleagues from BariLon, sometimes scholars from Jewish and non-Jewish from all over the world, focusing on something in that particular chapter. And I think the idea here is kind of what I try to do in the in the Haggadah to show how biblical scholarship can be interesting and meaningful. Josh, I think anybody who had any doubts about that certainly doesn't after listening to this conversation. I want to thank you so much for being with us for this superior conversation. And I hope everybody has enjoyed it as much as I have. And once again, the Haggadah is called Echoes of Egypt. And the podcast is the

39:03Bible Bar podcast. Thank you so much. And I've been reading you for years. It is a pleasure to finally get to interview you. Yes, good. Thank you so much, David, for having me. And to all of our listeners, best wishes for safety and for security and for a joyous and kosher Passover. I hope you enjoyed this superior conversation with Rabbi Dr. Joshua Burman. For me, it was one of the most interesting conversations that I have had here at the superior conversations podcast. The opportunity to talk to somebody who sees the Exodus and the Torah in general as he put it so eloquently as a painting, not a photograph. In other words, something that is in some ways better than a literal account, something that is deeply inspiring and that occurs in every generation, as I'm sure we feel right now as we sit down to our Passover Seder in a time when Jews once again

40:07are struggling with the issues that our ancestors struggled with. If you haven't yet registered for a hard copy of the superior journal, visit us at superiorjournal.org. That's S-A-P-I-R journal.org and sign up today. Trust me. It makes the perfect afficomint present. Also, please be sure to subscribe to superior conversations on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts and do leave us a review. This episode was produced by Zachary Goldberg and the S-A-P-I-R Institute team, Hanan Weissman, and Yael Warr. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Please make sure to join us for future episodes of superior conversations, wishing you all a K-Share-Ves-A-Meach, a happy Passover.