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“The Lord Brought Us Forth From Egypt”: On the Absence of Moses in the Passover Haggadah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2007

David Henshke
David Henshke
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel
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Abstract

The omission of Moses' name from the entire Haggadah is both well known and puzzling. Why has the main character of the Exodus drama vanished without a trace? Moreover, the mere omission of Israel's supreme prophet does not suffice for the redactor of the Haggadah. At the end of the “fugitive Aramean” exegesis, which is central to the Haggadah as a whole, Moses' involvement in the Exodus is expressly denied. The Haggadah comments on Deuteronomy 26:8: “The Lord brought us forth from Egypt”—not by an angel, not by a seraph, nor by an agent, but the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Not only did no heavenly angel or seraph take part in the Exodus; not even a flesh-and-blood agent was involved. And “agent” in this context can mean only Moses.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 2007 , pp. 61 - 73
Copyright
© 2007 by the Association for Jewish Studies

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