One Jew's perspective, out of millions - there's a joke we tell about ourselves: if you put ten Jews in a room and ask them about anything religious, you'll get at least eleven opinions. (;->

Being a convert, my religious studies are still fairly recent; being a Reform Jew, I don't hold the belief that Torah (the first five books of what y'all call the Old Testament) was whispered, or thundered, into Moses' ear at Mount Sinai. Pretty much everyone with an open mind recognizes, for instance, that the first part of Genesis is of the same cloth as Mesopotamian mythology in general. Once one gets to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the story becomes specific to the Hebrews, but is still fairly easy to see as a transcribed version of fireside tales of tribal ancestors handed from one generation to the next - l'dor v'dor in Hebrew - the way all oral history is passed along: by rote memorization.

I did not get too deeply into Biblical scholarship of the analytical kind while studying for adoption into the tribe of Israel, but did learn about the main root texts which can be parceled out of the combined work as it stands today. There are two main traditions that were combined (and in some cases just stuck together), some ex post facto commentary inserted... and then there's Deuternomy, convenienly 'discovered' generations later in an obscure part of the First Temple but accepted as more of the Word as revealed to Moses, even though its narration goes past the time of his own death.

Exodus - the book and the event - is obviously the foundation upon which all else rests. Leviticus contains most of the rules, but Exodus metaphorically takes a loose confederaton of pastoral nomadic tribes and forges them into a nation with a past, a purpose, their first national hero, and a destiny.

The central theme of Passover, repeated many times during the Seder, is overarching communal identity: "We were slaves in Egypt; not our remote ancestors, but we ourselves". As a convert without an ethnic Jewish heritage (a topic for another time), the allegory is all the stronger to me. I have no claim to ancestors who wandered the Fertile Crescent (well, we all do, but that was at least a hundred thousand years ago) - nevertheless, for at least as long as it takes to perform the Seder, I was a slave in Egypt until the outstretched hand of God parted the waters to let me and my people go.

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Odd, but not surprising, that Neil Gaiman (as Tom tells us below - make sure you read his post) has caught the essence of the difference between truth and historicity. Exodus is true to the Jews, as we are true to it.

L'chaim v'shalom

E' (Gershom Zakkai benAvram)