The art of retelling ancient stories: A Q&A with Steven Weitzman

What initially fueled your desire to write ‘Disasters of Biblical Proportions’?

The idea came to me all at once in response to a coincidence: the global pandemic shutdown in March 2020 happened a few weeks before Passover, when it is traditional for Jews to recite the story of the 10 plagues as part of their retelling of the story of the Exodus. That Passover night, the 10 plagues story really stood out because it felt like the 10th plague was happening again. There was also a lot of online commentary using the story of the 10 plagues to make sense of COVID. That got me thinking about why we still tell this story 2,500 years after it was composed.

Could you summarize the story of the 10 plagues?

The story of the 10 plagues comes from the Book of Exodus, which tells of how the ancestors of the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. In the story, God warned the Egyptians that if they didn’t let the Israelites go, he would send a series of disasters against them—and the Book of Exodus recounts those disasters one at a time.

The disasters include the Nile River turning from water to blood; a plague of frogs; a plague of lice; a plague of flies; a plague of cattle disease; a plague of boils; a plague of hail; a plague of locusts; a plague of darkness lasting three days; and then finally, the slaying of the firstborn.

What are some examples of how people have reshaped the story of the 10 plagues to help process their own life experiences?

People have used the 10 plagues to tell a wide range of stories in a wide range of media, including ritual, poetry, painting, philosophy, and film. Some have used the story to protest the injustices of the world. Others have turned the 10 plagues, especially the plague of frogs, into humor. Philosophers have used the story to probe the limits of free will. Yet others have drawn on the story to imagine how the world is going to end.

There are untold thousands of retellings of the 10 plagues story, with new versions emerging all the time, and each reveals something about the re-tellers’ particular beliefs and feelings, their desire for freedom, their guilt, their hopes for the future.

What’s most rewarding to you about this book?

I’m fascinated by the interplay of the biblical past with the present, which is the major aspect of the Passover experience: The Jews are called upon during Passover to imagine themselves as if they were among the Israelites leaving Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The Passover ritual itself calls for a kind of imaginative transportation between the present and the biblical past. I am fascinated by how people creatively merge the biblical account with their own experiences and emotions to produce stories that are biblical and personal at the same time.

As we approach Passover, why do you think the story of the 10 plagues continues to resonate today?

One thing that keeps the 10 plagues story perpetually relevant is that there are always new disasters. I think part of the power of the 10 plagues story is that disasters have a message they’re trying to convey to us—and that there’s something we can do in response.

What can readers learn from your book about how people use storytelling to make sense of what’s going on in the world?

This is an ancient story written in a culture that existed over 2,500 years ago, and yet we’re still retelling it about experiences in our own day and age. That itself is evidence of the importance of storytelling for our ability to make sense of and respond to disaster, trauma, and injustice.