Passover celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman’s distinctive new Haggadah, Echoes of Egypt: A Haggadah, was inspired by his four trips to the Land of the Nile.
The visually rich Haggadah, published in Jerusalem by Koren Publishers, presents the Exodus narrative through the lens of ancient Egyptian culture. It sheds light on phrases and concepts in the Hebrew Bible, dispels the misconception that the Israelites built the pyramids, and includes museum-quality photographs of artifacts, idols and inscriptions for seder participants of all ages.
Berman, an Orthodox rabbi and professor in the Zalman Shamir Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, playfully described the roots of his fascination with Egypt and his desire to visit the land the Israelites left millennia ago.
“I think anyone who has been raised in America has a little bit of a streak of Indiana Jones and King Tut in him,” he said in a recent interview with JNS. “When you get into the Bible, you see the connection between Egyptian culture and things in the Torah. You begin to get the sense that there are a whole bunch of dots that can begin to connect to larger thematic points that the Torah is making.
“This had always been of great interest to me, and I had always wanted to visit Egypt. But I didn’t want to just go to Egypt and stare at pyramids. I wanted to go with someone who could make the connections.”
The opportunity came in January 2021, when Berman visited Egypt with American Egyptologist and Bible scholar Professor James Hoffmeier and a group of 15 Christian clergy and scholars. The rabbi, who always wears a yarmulke—even in Egypt—said it was reassuring to have “15 Christian bodyguards.”
Visiting Egypt
Accustomed to visiting biblical sites in Israel, Berman immediately noticed a striking contrast with the archaeological remains he encountered in Egypt.
“The experience in Egypt surveying and going through the archaeological sites is unlike anything that we have here.”
He cited the example of touring the Elah Valley, the site of the biblical account of David and Goliath. Berman noted that there is “nothing to see,” whereas “in Egypt, it is all still there on the walls, in full color.”
Reflecting on his first visit, Berman said, “The things I saw were so remarkable. It is a blow-away experience.” He recalled thinking, “Jews have to see this!” After the Abraham Accords made travel to Egypt easier for Israelis, he led two groups there in each of the following two years, 2022 and 2023.
Berman acknowledged that one can gain some sense of the power of the pharaohs, or the labor of ancient slaves, through images in books. “But in coming to Egypt, suddenly what you are looking at shines a bright light on the text that you thought you knew.”
An important insight came to Berman while inside the tomb of Ramesses III in the Valley of the Kings.
“I saw an Egyptian incense censer depicted on the wall, and suddenly a passage in Numbers I had known for years came alive.”
Berman cited the verse read on Chanukah in which the tribal leaders bring an offering—“a vessel called a kaf with 10 units of gold, filled with incense.” He explained that the precise meaning of the term kaf has long been unclear. In modern Hebrew, kaf can mean a spoon or the palm of a hand, and commentators have suggested it may refer to a cup, bowl or shovel.
“We are standing in the cave, and Hoffmeier shows me Ramesses III offering incense to the deities. He is holding an elaborate vessel with a long gold rod. At the end of the gold rod is a sculpted gold hand holding a sculpted gold cup, from which waft out the odors of the incense. The way in which they offer incense is through this vessel.
“This explains the biblical verse. The idea behind it is that the Pharaoh wants to give something to the deity. But you can’t just hand the deity a cup. There is transcendence between God above and the human below. Using the cup demonstrates the desire to be close without violating the distance necessary between the divine and the human realm. It explains the verse and something we use in our own practice—the yad (Torah pointer). We have impurity in our hands but want to be close to the Torah.”
This discovery ultimately served as both the inspiration and the impetus for Berman’s Haggadah. “In that moment, I realized these visual keys to the biblical text needed to be shared.”
Encountering the Exodus
At its core, Echoes of Egypt invites readers to encounter the Exodus story within the world in which it first unfolded. By situating the Haggadah within the cultural landscape of ancient Egypt, the book offers fresh perspectives on familiar passages.
The Haggadah begins with two essays—one on how the Torah departed from ancient political thought, and another on “how the Torah transformed Egyptian propaganda.” It then presents a traditional Koren Haggadah, with text translated by Jessica Sacks and explanatory notes by Berman.
A photograph on page 38 of the storage cities of “Pithom and Ramses” includes Berman’s note: “There is a persistent misconception that our ancestors were the builders of the pyramids.” He explained that “the Egyptians ceased building pyramids around 1600 BCE, long before the era of Israelite slavery.” The image shows “vast mudbrick storage facilities, built on an area equal to 15 American football fields.”
Berman said that because he did not set out to produce a thematic or line-by-line commentary, he “didn’t have to say something about everything.”
He also expressed appreciation for the team at Koren Publishers, who secured permissions for the images and developed the layout, which he described as “extremely tricky,” given the need to present Hebrew and English text alongside images on a single spread “without turning the page—not easy to pull off!”
Berman, the author of numerous books, recently launched a podcast, The Bible Bar, in which he and fellow scholars guide listeners through the Bible one chapter at a time.
