Imu Shalev: Welcome to A Book Like No Other.

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. Thank you, Shari and Nathan. 

Hi, I'm Imu Shalev, and I'm really excited for today's episode. And I'm excited because we're going to be starting a brand new chapter in our study of these connections between Revelation and Deception, but we're also starting a new chapter, in a way, for this podcast in general. Like I mentioned at the end of last time, we're trying out a new format, starting today.

The core of this show has always been about sharing the learning sessions between me and Rabbi Fohrman with all of you guys, but in the past we used a pretty strong editorial hand to shape those sessions into a linear journey.

Like, if you think about our last two episodes, they were centered around this burning question of chosenness, and we then carefully crafted (or I should say, our editors carefully crafted) each episode to tell a really clear story about how the parallels Rabbi Fohrman found could provide an answer to that question — and we're really proud of that. It's one way of doing the show, and hopefully you guys like it.

But now we're doing something completely different. We're swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme to see what you think about it. We want to give you a much more authentic, unfiltered taste of what our learning sessions are really like.

So, going forward, we're just going to let the tape roll. No, that's not entirely true, we're still going to cut out Rabbi Fohrman's calls from his grandkids, and my many, many coffee breaks, and every time Rabbi Fohrman's AirPods die. And our editors are still going to do some tightening of our conversation, and I will still be jumping in as your guide here and there.

But the big thing is, expect more of a conversational flavor, way more of the twists and turns that often got left out on the cutting room floor in past seasons. Because there were twists and turns that got left out on the cutting room floor in past seasons. You guys just didn't get to hear them, and they're pretty fun. And my hope is that you find them fun, too.

But whether you do or don't, whether you love it or hate it, please, please let us know. With this new format, we're actually able to produce more seasons a year, and not just, like, one or two more. Like, a lot more. So if that's something you want, it really will make a difference to hear from you. So, you can email us at info@alephbeta.org.

Alright, enough talking about what we will be doing, and let's just get to it.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, Imu, we're back with our third round at this, looking at the story of Revelation in Exodus 19 and 20, and the story of what I affectionately call Goats and Coats, the story of Jacob's deception of his father and his brother in this really wild story in Genesis 27. And, you know, basically what we've seen in our last two sessions together is that the Torah seems to throw together these two stories, which never in a million years would anybody have thrown together, but here it is.

And because it is the last thing you ever would've thought of, it takes a fair amount of evidence to really convince us that that's really what's happening. And in our first session together, we came up with three pieces of evidence, three pieces of evidence that were so strong that it was kind of getting pretty close to meeting that sort of “bet your house” threshold.

What I want to show you now is that it's not just these three pieces of evidence. The evidence is copious for connecting the story of Revelation to Goats and Coats. It's actually about 20 pieces, or 25 parallels, and it's not just 20 or 25 random parallels. I want to show you that the parallels basically proceed in order; which is to say, the beginning of the Revelation story matches up with the beginning of the Deception story in Genesis 27, the middle of the Revelation story matches up to the middle of the Genesis 27 story, and the end of the Revelation story matches up with the end of the Goats and Coats story. It all proceeds in order. It's a remarkable series of connections.

Imu: And just to spell it out, it's remarkable to you because, like, it's not that common that we see intertextual parallels with 25 parallels in order, right? That's like a super-de-duper connection, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, especially in order. It's not something that ever happens, but it's huge. And then the question of course is, why? Like, why would the Torah do such a thing? And here, I want to suggest it wasn't just so the Torah could convince people like you and me that these stories are connected. It's so the Torah could convince people like you and me as to the meaning of why these stories are connected.

Imu: Yeah, this is something actually that took me many years to learn as an important part of your methodology, which is not just to be seduced by the fact that two texts are connected, but each of the parallels themselves seem to point to some kind of meaning. Like, they play off one another. Is that what you're suggesting?

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. In other words, it's like a jigsaw puzzle, right? The same way that when you're putting together a jigsaw puzzle, as you're putting together the 500 pieces, you get a vague idea of what the picture looks like as you begin to put some of the corner pieces in place. But the more you're able to fill in the picture, the more the puzzle pieces come together, the more the picture with all of its nuances and gradations becomes clear. And I think that's what's happening over here.

You and I, in our last session, we speculated that if these parallels are real, there seem to be very significant implications about the nature of what chosenness means. But what I want to suggest to you now is, it's not just chosenness that's the implications of these parallels. There's a grand story that's being told in 25 connections between these pieces, and as we see more and more of the pieces, more and more of the story of how these two episodes are connected will reveal itself. And that's the mystery that I'd like to try to unravel with you over our next sessions.

Imu: That's really exciting. Happy to do that.

Rabbi Fohrman: So Imu, the way I want to do this is the following. What I'm going to do with you is, I'm actually going to read through the Revelation story from beginning to end. And what we're going to do as we read it is chart the connections, in order, to Genesis 27. So what we're basically doing is, we're reading one story, but as we're reading it, we're seeing that story as being footnoted by another story, right? We're looking at the story of Genesis as essentially not only connecting but also offering commentary. 

Imu: Instead of, like, reading Rashi line by line, we're reading Genesis 27 line by line.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, we're reading Genesis 27 line by line. We're saying, what if we looked at Genesis 27 as Rashi? What if we looked at this as our commentary? What is the Torah telling us about Revelation that we wouldn't otherwise have known?

Imu: Cool, I'm with you. Let's go.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, we're going to begin in verse nine in the Revelation story, in Exodus 19. This begins right after what I would say is the prologue of the Revelation story. Before there's actual Revelation, God comes and teases Revelation.

God says, “Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to come down, I'm going to speak,” right? “There's a chance to make a covenant with Me. Ask the people if they're in for this.” And then Moshe does that, and the people have said, “We're great, we're in!” Moshe goes and brings those words back to God, and then the story proceeds. And that's where we're going to pick up our story. Imu, give us verse nine, starting from…well, starting from verse nine.

Imu: Okay. That’s very clear (laughs).

וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ בְּעַב הֶעָנָן — God says to Moshe: Behold, I am coming to you from the thickness of the cloud, בַּעֲבוּר יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ — in order that the nation may overhear when I speak to you, וְגַם־בְּךָ יַאֲמִינוּ לְעוֹלָם — And because of that, they will also believe in you, slash, be loyal to you forever.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, great. Now notice the causative there, right? There's a connection between two clauses of those verses, right? First clause, God comes and tells Moshe, “I'm going to come to you, Moshe, בְּעַב הֶעָנָן — in the thickness of a cloud, in this very thick cloud.”

And then God explains, here's the connector: בַּעֲבוּר. That's that word, בַּעֲבוּר — “in order that,” right? “In order that,” and here's the second part of the verse: יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ — in order that the people should hear when I'm speaking to you.

So, I don't know about you, Imu, but it always struck me as strange what that בַּעֲבוּר was doing there. Like, can you connect those two parts of the sentence? How exactly does God coming in the thickness of a cloud affect the people hearing when I'm speaking to you? Right? Do you understand the problem?

Imu: Yeah. Meaning, the first half of the sentence should have said, “Oh, Moshe, I'm going to speak really loudly so that the people hear from you;” not, “I'm going to speak in the thickness of a cloud so that the people overhear,” right?

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. What does the thickness of the cloud have to do with it? If the point is just that I am going to speak in a way that everyone can overhear, then just say “I'm going to speak in a way that everyone can overhear.” Just say “I'm going to come to you as you said, and I'll speak really loud.” But it's not “I'll speak really loud.”

“I'm going to come in the thickness of a cloud.” Really weird. Like, what's the meaning of that? It turns out that Genesis 27, I think, is going to help us discern the meaning of that. 

So Imu, if I can turn over to Genesis 27 and let me give you a little puzzle here, look at this language in verse 9 again — הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ. Let's break that down into three parts, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ. The הִנֵּה part, the אָנֹכִי part, and the בָּא אֵלֶיךָ part.

Now, I want you to look and see at the beginning of the Deception story. This is the beginning of the whole story of Deception, when Jacob actually finally comes to his father. He's dressed up in Esau's clothes and he's got that fake game, those meals that his mother prepared, and that's going to bring us right to Genesis 27, verse 18. Could you read verse 18 for me? And after you read it, let's see if we can find any of those three elements in verse 18 in Genesis 27. Go ahead.

Imu: Okay, so you want me to read verse 18, starting from verse 18?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, please read verse 18 starting from verse 18.

Imu: We have to be parallel here.

Rabbi Fohrman: Thank you.

Imu: Okay, so here we go: וַיָּבֹא אֶל־אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִי וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֶּנִּי מִי אַתָּה בְּנִי — So he comes to his father and he says, “My father,” and then Yitzchak answers, “Here I am, הִנֶּנִּי. Who are you, my son, מִי אַתָּה בְּנִי?”

So already I see some connections, right? הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי sounds a lot like הִנֶּנִּי, right? הִנֵּה is הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי, “Here I am.” So that's in both places. I see the בָּא אֵלֶיךָ, “I'm coming to you in the thick of the clouds.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And where do you see that?

Imu: וַיָּבֹא אֶל־אָבִיו. Yaakov comes to his father. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. So far, you found two of those three elements. You found the הִנֵּה element in both cases, you found the בָּא אֵלֶיךָ element. What's the only one you're missing?

Imu: Oh, אָנֹכִי.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, read the next verse in Genesis 27. Read verse 19.

Imu: Oh, Rabbi Fohrman is doing his showmanship thing. He'd be like, “Oh, it's not there. I guess we failed. Read the next verse.” וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל־אָבִיו אָנֹכִי — Yaakov says to his father, “Here I am, אָנֹכִי.” Okay, so it was here. You knew.

Rabbi Fohrman: There was. Okay, all three elements, right? הִנֵּה element, אָנֹכִי element, בָּא אֵלֶיךָ element, all together at the very beginning of the Deception story. So the very beginning of the Revelation story is mirroring the very beginning of the Deception story. 

Imu: Hey guys, it's me again, I'm back with an insert just like I promised. So let's just take stock of where we are, because at this point we have our first new connection on the table. We've got three words in Exodus 19:9 matching three words in Genesis 27:18 and 19. And now the question becomes, what do we make of it? 

Rabbi Fohrman often begins his analysis by comparing the characters in our parallel texts, meaning who's saying or doing the matching words in each connection. And in this case, he noticed something intriguing. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Interestingly, the characters have switched, and this leads to a little methodology thing that I've come to treasure here in Aleph Beta Land, a little game we can play that I call Cast of Characters. Which is that, you know, as we've seen when the Torah creates intertextual connections between texts, the Torah will often play mind games with you about how the characters in the text match up, and the meaning of it can often be mind-blowing.

The characters can switch, the characters can invert themselves, they can come together, they can grow apart, right? So if we look in the Exodus story, for example, right, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ. Who, Imu, is coming to whom?

Imu: Father is coming to son. God is coming to the people.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, so we're at the foot of the mountain, we're not going anywhere, right? God's the one on the move. God's coming down from Heaven, right, and coming into our domain, which is Earth. So, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ, and He's going to do that בְּעַב הֶעָנָן. He's going to do that while he's shielded by a cloud. So Imu, who exactly is coming to whom in the Genesis story?

Imu: Yaakov, son, is coming to Father.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Yaakov is on the move, Father is stationary. And where is Yaakov going? Into Father's domain, into Father's tent, right? And that's where וַיָּבֹא אֶל־אָבִיו takes place, and that's where the הִנֶּנִּי takes place, and that's where the אָנֹכִי takes place. So we have a switch in Cast of Characters.

In the Revelation story, Father is on the move and coming into the domain of a son. In the Genesis story, son was on the move and coming into the domain of the father.

Imu: So we're seeing how the Torah is playing with us in the way that it switches characters between Exodus and Genesis. Father steps into the shoes of son, son into the shoes of Father.

But so what? To see the implications of this character switch, Rabbi Fohrman brought our attention to what happens next in the verse in Exodus, after God says our three magic words, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא, telling the people that He's coming to them. Remember, He tells us how He will be coming to them — בְּעַב הֶעָנָן, in a thick cloud.

And while these words, בְּעַב הֶעָנָן, don't have a direct parallel in Genesis, Rabbi Fohrman thought that they were still resonant with the Deception story in a more conceptual sense.

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm going to come to you בְּעַב הֶעָנָן, in a thick cloud. Does that remind you of anything in Genesis 27, verse 18? Now, Yaakov doesn't have a thick cloud…

Imu: But we know that, like, inasmuch as a cloud covers you, Yaakov's covered at this point. He's pretty covered up.

Rabbi Fohrman: Pretty covered up. If a cloud is covering God, if this is a Revelation, right…even think about the word Revelation. How revealed is God if, when God reveals Himself, He's covered in a thick cloud?

Imu: Not revealed. He is inherently obscured. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Inherently obscured, right, at least in one sense, the sense of sight. Does that remind you of anything in Genesis 27?

Imu: Yeah. I mean, Yaakov is obscuring his identity.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yaakov's identity is inherently obscured. So he's covering up, right? He's doing something to cover himself. He's putting on these coats. But something else is happening, which is that Isaac actually lacks the capacity to even see Yaakov even were Yaakov not covering up, because what do we hear at the very beginning of the story? Read Genesis 27, verse 1.

Imu: וַיְהִי כִּי־זָקֵן יִצְחָק — When Isaac was old, וַתִּכְהֶיןָ עֵינָיו מֵרְאֹת — his eyes were covered from seeing.

Rabbi Fohrman: They were dim, they couldn't see. He was blind, right? So you have two things: A) Father is blind, B) Child is covering up. Fascinatingly, those two things are being mirrored here, right? Which is, Imu, let's say God wasn't covering up. Could you see God?

Imu: No, I can't.

Rabbi Fohrman: Why can't you?

Imu: Because God doesn't have a body.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. So it turns out that your sense of sight is completely incapable of apprehending God.

Imu: Oh, interesting. So let me see if I can say it this way. The way you'd put these parallels together, Isaac doesn't have the capacity to see what is there, right? His son Jacob is there, but he doesn't even have the capacity to see it because the light receptors in his eyes that we use to see, they were dimmed and they didn't work. We call that being blind.

So then you'd have to say, as a commentary on Exodus 19, one implication would be that God is there, right? He's just not seeable to us.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. We are, in essence, blind to God.

Imu: So, Uncle Moishy, right? “Hashem is here and there and everywhere,” but you don’t see Him.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, but we're blind to it. You can't use human sight to be able to perceive God. So we're, in essence, blind to God. Nevertheless, despite that, what does God do when he comes to us? He comes to us how? בְּעַב הֶעָנָן. He chooses to cover up, just like Yaakov did.

Imu: That covering-up gives us the ability to see something.

Rabbi Fohrman: It gives us the ability to hear something. בַּעֲבוּר יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ. And this gets to that point that we couldn't understand. What does it mean, “I'm coming to you in a thick cloud so that the people can hear Me?” How does the covering up of sight enhance their ability to hear?

Imu, have you ever been to the Museum of the Blind in Israel?

Imu: I have, actually, in Holon. Yeah.

Rabbi Fohrman: Tell me what that experience is like. What happens when you go into the Museum of the Blind?

Imu: It's extremely disorienting and kind of scary, and then your senses quickly get heightened. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Just so we understand, when you walk into the Museum of the Blind, you can't see a darn thing. They turn off all the lights. It's not even like the smallest ray of light.

Imu: It's like, it's the most dark I've ever seen in my life. It's thick, it's like a thick darkness. You cannot see anything.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, and that's what's so disorienting, because we rely, as humans, so much on our sense of sight. Humans that have the facility of all their senses rely almost most on their sense of sight for navigation in the world. It's the way we navigate our surroundings, and all of a sudden, that is completely taken away from you. And then what happens?

Imu: I don't remember exactly the flow of things. I remember being in a supermarket? I think they take you through a bunch of different, like, real-life scenarios to give you a sense of what it's like for blind people to navigate the everyday world.

Rabbi Fohrman: And what happens to your senses, and your perception of your senses?

Imu: So they heighten. I remember hearing heightening for sure, but I also remember feeling heightening quite a bit. You'd get a sense of how, through walking, how far things are. You use your hands to see if you're going to knock into anything, and I remember it also kind of painting pictures in my mind, even though I couldn't see anything, using the other two senses to create some visual in my head.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn’t that fascinating. There's a kind of synesthesia working there, which is that your senses are compensating for your lack of sight. Isn't it interesting that, in Revelation, it says וְכׇל־הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת־הַקּוֹלֹת (Exodus 20:15)?

Imu: Yeah, that is interesting. That’s really, really cool. 

Rabbi Fohrman: All of the people saw the sounds, the thunderclaps. What do you mean they saw the thunder? You can't see a thunderclap…but you couldn't see anything. God was coming בְּעַב הֶעָנָן, He was coming completely concealed. Your sense of sight was being completely cut off. You couldn't even see if you wanted to, and then God is covering Himself even more with His עַב הֶעָנָן.

And so here are these people desperate to apprehend God, but the sense that they would lean most on to navigate their way in the world, they can't use. Sight is being completely cut off.

So what happens? Sound gets much more sensitive. Their ability to hear gets much more sensitive. That's, I think, what God is saying in verse 9. 

Imu: This verse that had seemed so strange just ten minutes ago now seemed perfectly logical. The less we could see, the better we would hear. Of course!

But it was still kind of confusing to me why God would be going through all this trouble to dull the people's sense of sight and heighten their sense of hearing when they couldn't see God anyway. So Rabbi Fohrman spelled it out a little more for me.

Rabbi Fohrman: Let's just stand back and ask ourselves, Imu, what's the challenge that God has as He's facing revelation? It's like, “Here I am. I'm supposed to reveal Myself to the people. I'm supposed to show up in their world, but I don't have a body to show up with. So this is going to be awkward. When I'm there, they're not even going to see anything. Are they going to think I'm imaginary? It's not even going to work. They're going to try and perceive Me in a way that they can't perceive Me. But the problem is, I have something to say to them, and when human beings are so discombobulated trying to see Me and not finding Me, I don't even know that they'll listen to Me.”

So I have a solution. הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ בְּעַב הֶעָנָן. Moshe, you know what my solution is? I'm going to cover up. I'm going to come in this thick cloud. I'm going to say, look, you can tell yourself the reason I can't see you is because there's a thick cloud. When people see that it's a cloudy day, they're able to relax and not try to see the things in front of them anymore because it's cloudy.”

“So relax, guys. Don't try to see Me. That sense is not going to get you anywhere. It’s a dead end in trying to perceive God. I need to actually cover up that sense proactively so that you can use the one sense that you can perceive Me with, which is sound. בַּעֲבוּר יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ.”

In essence, God is creating a Museum of the Blind for them. It's a strange sort of inversion of what happens in Genesis 27. In Genesis 27, there's this child who can't be seen by a father because Father lacks the capacity to see him, but he's still covering up. That inverts itself into a father who can't be seen because the child lacks the capacity to see, who also chooses to cover up but for the opposite reason.

What was the reason that Jacob covered up? It was to deceive his father, or at least it ended up being deceiving his father even if he wasn't trying. With God, it's the reverse. God is like, “No, I'm trying to make Myself perceivable to you, but the only way I can make Myself perceivable to you is to take your inability to see Me, double down on your inability to see Me, create a large cloud, and then maybe you'll be able to enhance your other senses to be able to perceive Me with sound.”

Imu: It's lovely, a really, really beautiful idea. Before, you presented it as a challenge. The challenge is, you know, God doesn't have a body and you guys are going to be confused when I start talking. You'll be looking around for a voice. I want to prevent that, so everybody close their eyes, right? But this is the opportunity. The opportunity is, I am most perceivable to you by voice, right?

In Genesis, there's the קוֹל of Hashem that is מִתְהַלֵּךְ (Genesis 3:8). Like, this is classically how God reveals himself in Genesis, is this “walking voice,” right? So the most imminent God can be in this world is through voice, and the opportunity here is, like, let's do the most with that voice. So let's close the other senses and dial deep in on listening so that everybody can really hear. Really beautiful.

Going back to Rabbi Fohrman's puzzle analogy, it felt like we found a couple of pieces that were beginning to fill out our picture. Not a whole face, maybe, but maybe like three-fourths of a nose. For one, we'd seen this strange inverse in the characters; how, in Genesis, a son is coming to a father in order to deceive, while in Exodus, Father is coming to son but in order to reveal Himself. Keep that in mind, it's going to continue to be key.

And we were also beginning to see how Genesis, as a commentary on Exodus, was bringing out a surprising theological problem with Revelation. For a God without any physical form, Revelation isn't as easy as it may seem. 

But just as we were ready to move on to our next cluster of parallels, our producer, always lurking behind the scenes, jumped in and pointed out one more puzzle piece.

Rabbi Fohrman: So Imu, our producer Tikvah just noticed something that I can't believe I didn't even notice, which is that the parallels here are not just the הִנֵּה, not just the אָנֹכִי, not just the בָּא אֵלֶיךָ, but it’s also the בַּעֲבוּר.

הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ בְּעַב הֶעָנָן בַּעֲבוּר יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ. Crazily enough, that בַּעֲבוּר also appears right there in Genesis 27. I cannot believe that I didn't see it, but there it is. Imu, do me a favor, read verses 18 and 19 in Genesis 27 one more time. Let's tick off the four connections between these verses, not just the three. Go ahead.

Imu: So it's וַיָּבֹא אֶל־אָבִיו.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's the הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ, that's the “coming to you,” right? In Exodus it is a father coming to a son, here it's a son coming to a father. Go ahead, that's connection number one.

Imu: Good. And so then Isaac responds and he says: וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֶּנִּי — Here I am, הִנֶּנִּי.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Just like God said, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי, “Here am I,” so, too, Jacob to his father is “Here am I, הִנֶּנִּי.” That's connection number two. Keep on going.

Imu: And he asks: מִי אַתָּה בְּנִי — Who are you? So Jacob responds in 19: וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל־אָבִיו — Yaakov says to his father, אָנֹכִי — I am, עֵשָׂו בְּכֹרֶךָ — Eisav, your firstborn.

Rabbi Fohrman: And that corresponds to, in Exodus, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ. There's the אָנֹכִי, “Here I am, coming to you;” and Jacob coming to father uses that same word אָנֹכִי, “I am,” but he misrepresents himself as Eisav whereas God correctly represents Himself as God, even though He's covering Himself up. And then, keep on reading.

Imu: And he says, he claims: עָשִׂיתִי כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבַּרְתָּ אֵלָי — I have done what you have said to me. קוּם־נָא שְׁבָה — Get up and sit, וְאׇכְלָה מִצֵּידִי — and eat from my game, בַּעֲבוּר תְּבָרְכַנִּי נַפְשֶׁךָ — so that your soul may bless me.

Rabbi Fohrman: So there's that בַּעֲבוּר, right? That's the fourth connection. Back in Exodus: וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ, one, two, three. בְּעַב הֶעָנָן בַּעֲבוּר יִשְׁמַע הָעָם בְּדַבְּרִי עִמָּךְ — God says, “I'm going to show up in the cloud so that the people can hear Me,” right? Over here, Jacob says, “I am presenting you this meat, Father, בַּעֲבוּר — so that you can bless me.”

So it's four connections in these verses, and that בַּעֲבוּר is just a stunning capstone to all of this.

Imu: What do you make of the “so that”s, right? Their intentions. Do you see them as the same or as different? Like, God's בַּעֲבוּר, his “so that,” it seems to be around a purpose of Revelation. Like, “I'm doing all this, I'm showing up, I'm obscuring senses so that you can fully comprehend Me, or as fully as you possibly can,” whereas it doesn't sound like Yaakov is saying “I'm doing all this, I'm showing up and coming before you and giving you game which you didn't really command to me. You commanded to someone else and I overheard, and I'm presenting to you so that you can encounter me.”

Rabbi Fohrman: No, it's exactly the opposite. It's so that you can't encounter me and I can get something from you. For Jacob, it's very transactional. Jacob getting this blessing depends upon his father not encountering who he truly is. “Because if you really knew who I really was, you'd never in a million years bless me.”

“So I have to completely cover up. I have to come and put on these goat skins. I have to come with this fake food, and it's all so I can get what I need from you, which is this blessing that is going to come from your soul.”

But the tragedy of all of this, and Imu, I never really thought about this before, but the tragedy of all of this is that even if Jacob got what he wanted here, would he really get what he wants?

Imu: You'd have to objectify what a blessing means in order to say that he gets what he wants. Did he get words directed at his face? Like, if that's what a blessing means to you, then sure, you won. But if what a blessing means to you is that Father saw in me potential, looked me in the eye, said, “I see you for who you really are, and I want more of it in the world,” he doesn't get that.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. And therefore, there's something achingly so sad in these words, בַּעֲבוּר תְּבָרְכַנִּי נַפְשֶׁךָ. What's that word נַפְשֶׁךָ doing there? It's that “your soul” can bless me, not just that you can bless me. So there's this blessing that's just emanating from your soul and I'm just soaking it in.

But am I really soaking it in if you didn't even know who you were blessing? If I was so scared to even reveal myself as who I really was because I thought you'd reject me, and somehow I got you to bless me…right? It's like, that's what he desperately wants. He wants Yaakov's soul to just embrace him and say, “I love you and I see all this potential in you” .And yet what he's doing is at cross purposes with that.

As opposed to that, God is very clear about what His goal is. What God's goal is is actually a genuine encounter.

Imu: Yeah. I mean, when you're putting these together, it shows the vulnerability of both moments, right? You have a son who doesn't believe that Father really would love him, and Father can't see him. And I mean that more the metaphor and less the physical, right? Father doesn't really see me, and if he did, he wouldn't bless me because, right, the evidence is all there. So in order to deserve Father's love, I have to pretend to be someone I'm not. And then I can walk away saying “Dad loves me,” but he doesn't because he loves who I pretended to be.

So that makes me think about the Godly side of things. He's trying to court this nation, it seems like, right? He wants to be loved.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, and think about almost, k’vayachol (so to speak), here You're the Master of the universe, but You're worried about something. “This people I love, they're so physical. They've got these bodies, they have such propensity to worship idols. Why do you think they want to worship idols so much? What is it about idols that they find so compelling? Don't they know it's stupid?”

What's the one thing that idols have going for them?

Imu: They're there. I can encounter them, I can see them, I can touch them.

Rabbi Fohrman: I can touch them, yeah. “So how am I going to show up without a body? Just ‘Mr. Invisible Being’ who can't be seen, can't be felt, can't taste, doesn’t have any of these senses, and they're supposed to relate to Me and connect with Me? It's so different than how they connect with anything.”

“When they relate to their wives, they hug them, they kiss them. When they relate to their friends, they shake their hands. There's none of that with Me. It's going to be so discombobulating. Do you know what? I just better come down in this cloud. I'll just cut off sight. They won't even expect to see Me. Then maybe at least they can encounter Me with the one sense that they could encounter me.”

But there's the same almost vulnerability in God approaching the people that Yaakov must have felt, which is like, “If you really knew who I was, if you really got down to it, would you be able to accept me as I am?”

So these are the first three parallels. Let's move on to the fourth parallel of the story. We're going to continue reading the Exodus story and we're going to see, what else does it echo? And by the way, all these parallels have proceeded in order so far, right? So the next thing that's going to happen in the story is going to remind us of the next thing that happens in the Goats and Coats story. So Imu, let's pick up with verse 10 in the Exodus story. What's the next thing that happens?

Imu: וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה — God says to Moshe, לֵךְ אֶל־הָעָם — Go to the people, וְקִדַּשְׁתָּם הַיּוֹם וּמָחָר — and sanctify them, or get them ready, today and tomorrow, וְכִבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָם — and make sure they do laundry.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, keep on going. Let's get a little laundry list, you'll pardon the pun, of what it is that God wants them to do. The first thing is, do laundry and wash your clothes. What's the next thing? Verse 11.

Imu: וְהָיוּ נְכֹנִים לַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי — They should be prepared, or ready, for the third day, כִּי  בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִשִׁי יֵרֵד יְקוָה לְעֵינֵי כׇל־הָעָם עַל־הַר סִינָי — Because on that third day, God is going to go down the mountain before the eyes of all the people on Har Sinai.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, although not really before their eyes; that's what we were talking about before.

Okay, so the first thing is, wash your clothes; second thing is, we're going to have a three-day waiting period after which Revelation is going to happen. I know that you're very excited about this, I know you're breathless about this, but we're going to put a three-day pause, commercial break, until we actually get to Revelation.

Go to verse 12, what's the next thing that's going to happen?

Imu: וְהִגְבַּלְתָּ אֶת־הָעָם סָבִיב לֵאמֹר — Make sure that you cordon off, encircle or make a fence, around the people, saying, הִשָּׁמְרוּ לָכֶם עֲלוֹת בָּהָר וּנְגֹעַ בְּקָצֵהוּ — guard yourselves, or be very careful, from going up the mountain or even touching its edge. כׇּל־הַנֹּגֵעַ בָּהָר מוֹת יוּמָת —  because if you do touch that edge, you touch the mountain, you will die. So I’d really like you to stay alive.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep. לֹא־תִגַּע בּוֹ יָד — Don’t reach out with your hand and don't touch. Okay, so those three things. Let's get that laundry list straight.

The first thing, do laundry, wash your clothes. The second thing, wait for three days, three-day waiting period. Third thing, cordon off the mountain. No touching the mountain. Anybody who touches the mountain will die.

Do those three things remind you of three things that now happen in the Goats and Coats story? Washing clothes, waiting for a long time, and not touching a mountain, right? 

Imu: I don't remember Jacob's laundry, but okay.

Rabbi Fohrman: So if we read verse 20, we're going to get to one of these things, our next verse, in the Goats and Coats. Go ahead.

Imu: וַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל־בְּנוֹ — What Isaac says to his son is, מַה־זֶּה מִהַרְתָּ לִמְצֹא בְּנִי — what is it that you've so quickly found, my son? 

Rabbi Fohrman: So basically, Isaac is like, “Gee, that was fast. I just dispatched you, Eisav, to hunt that game like 15 minutes ago. And here you are, back with this deer.” So, isn't it interesting…

Imu: Is this an inverse you see? Like, instead of us having our Revelation moment super fast, we're going to chill out. We're going to wait three days.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, because part of the thing that caused the Deception, part of the thing that caused Isaac to be unable to identify Jacob, was the rush of everything. It was all slam-bang. “You just came back so fast. I got discombobulated.”

So God said, “Well, hmm, speed led you astray? So we're going to do this really slowly. It's going to be three days. Let's just relax. Let's chill out. I want to make real sure that you know Who this is. You can process all this.

Imu: It sounds like what God is doing is, He is putting us in the “Yitzchak position” here and making sure that we are not deceived, right? He's not going to take advantage of us in coming really quickly. He's going to give us plenty of time to get used to this idea so that we can properly evaluate what's happening to us.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. “I know you guys. I understand the difficulty. You're trying to relate to a Being that can't be felt, that doesn't have a body, that can't be seen, that can only be heard. I know how disorienting that is. So let's make sure we get it right. Let's make sure you get it right and that you aren't deceived.”

You can't come back later and it's like, oh, that was some sort of sleight of hand. No, we waited and we waited. We knew it was going to happen after three days. And then it was right there for us all to not see, but for us all to hear. 

And then the next thing that happened is, what does Isaac say to his son? וַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל־יַעֲקֹב גְּשָׁה־נָּא וַאֲמֻשְׁךָ — Come and I'm going to touch you. Yitzchak relied on his sense of touch. הַאַתָּה זֶה בְּנִי עֵשָׂו אִם־לֹא — Are you really my son Eisav or not? And touch led him astray.

As part of the anti-Deception ethos of the Revelation narrative: וְהִגְבַּלְתָּ אֶת־הָעָם סָבִיב — Cordon off the mountain, no touching the mountain. It was touch that got Isaac in trouble, touch that led him to Deception. We're going to cordon off the sense of touch. No touching. If you touch the mountain, maybe you would be so interested in having some physicality to think that that was your God, that you would come away from Revelation and you'd say “The mountain was my God. I could at least touch the mountain.” No, no touching.

And finally, there was one other sense that got Yitzchak in trouble, which is: וַיִּגַּשׁ וַיִּשַּׁק־לוֹ, verse 27 — He comes close, וַיָּרַח אֶת־רֵיחַ בְּגָדָיו — He smells his clothes. Yitzchak smells Yaakov's clothes and blesses him and then says something almost comical, Imu. רְאֵה רֵיחַ בְּנִי כְּרֵיחַ שָׂדֶה אֲשֶׁר בֵּרְכוֹ יְקוָה — See, the smell of your clothes is like the smell of a field. What is so nonsensical about that?

Imu: Before we get to the nonsense, I actually think there's something deeply sad. I mean, it sounds like there's this idea of blessing which comes from a father seeing his son or encountering his son, really appreciating his son for who he is, and saying, “Yes, more of this.”

So he's smelling his son Eisav's clothes, because Yaakov's wearing Eisav's clothes, and he's saying, “Yeah, this is what I like about you. You're just this ‘doer.’ You're out in the fields. You're this great hunter. I smell it, I love it. Let's do more of that.” And I think the tragedy or the nonsensical part is that it's not Yaakov at all that he's smelling. He's smelling Eisav. 

Rabbi Fohrman: He’s pretending that he can see something that he can't see, and celebrating the smell as if it's something he can see. That’s what I was talking about.

Imu: Oh, I didn't even notice that.

Rabbi Fohrman: רְאֵה רֵיחַ בְּנִי — See! It's like he's pretending he can see when he can't see. You can't see a smell, but this is how our senses lead us astray. We so prioritize seeing that we're willing to pretend that we see even when we didn't see, even when we just smelled.

Imu: He's experiencing a false synesthesia.

Rabbi Fohrman: He's experiencing a false synesthesia, whereas at Revelation, it was a true synesthesia. But here, he wanted to be so sure it was Eisav, right? And so what would you need to do to rectify that, if the smell of clothes, even that could lead you astray…

Imu: No smelly clothes!

Rabbi Fohrman: No smelly clothes. כִבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָם — You’ve got to wash your clothes. Wash your clothes, no rushing, wait for three days, no touching. Everything that led Isaac astray, get rid of all that stuff.

Imu: You know, I always wondered why the people had to wash their clothes before Sinai, like that would really bother God. But now, it made so much more sense; not just the washing of the clothes, but each detail of the instructions that God gives the people in preparation for Sinai — don't touch, wait three days. They now all seem so carefully, lovingly orchestrated by God to protect the people from any hint of deception.

Every avenue Jacob uses to manipulate his father's senses in order to deceive Isaac, God comes around and replays and redeems. He is our Father choosing not to hide from son. On the contrary, what He seems to want above all is for His children to be able to perceive Him.

But there was just one part of it that I found confusing.

Imu: So one of your methodological tools is to play a game from Sesame Street: “Which One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?” And you're talking about this piece as like, “Oh, here are these senses, right? There's the sense of sight and the sense of touch.” And then you talked about speed, right? So which one of these things is not like the other? Speed is not one of the senses.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, it is interesting, that, for some reason, speed was another thing that discombobulated Isaac. And if you get really psychedelic about it, you would say, Imu, what realm do senses operate in? They help us identify things where?

Imu: In space around you.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, right? So senses can mask the truth of something in space, and speed can mask the truth of something using time.

Imu: Yeah, that's brilliant. To me, what I think is really interesting when you think about how speed doesn't seem to fit, is just that actually taking time to reflect on the input of data that you're getting from your senses is a way of actually encountering the world. Like, actually meditate on listening, meditate on smelling, on hearing, on touching, and saying, “Oh, okay. I am meeting God. Actually it wasn't a flash in the pan thing.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. In other words, the idea is that there's something about sensory input which is visceral, and we make a sort of a non-cognitive judgment about our senses all the time without even thinking about it.

Like, you're walking on the ground and the pavement feels a certain way. You don't think about that but your senses are operating, right? You can touch the leaves of a tree as you pass by and you feel it, but you're not thinking about it, but your senses can operate without thinking. Or you can use time to process what it is that your sensory input is giving you and say, “Gee, what do I make of this?”

And that's what you need to do, and in particular when the world is normal and you're just perceiving things normally. When I'm walking down the road the same way I do any day and I'm feeling the leaves of that tree the same way I do any day, I don't really need to engage my cognitive mind. I can put my sense as an autopilot.

But when it's really important that I use my senses to figure out what's in front of me, and when what's in front of me is unexpected, or even more than unexpected, I might have a bias towards not seeing what's in front of me. Then it's really important to slow down and ask yourself, what are your senses really telling you and can you trust them?

Imu: So what you just said got me to notice something really interesting. It's particularly important to slow down and pay attention when, you know, you might have a bias, you might get it wrong, right? What is the word that God uses to say you should take three days? He doesn't say kach shlosha yamim, right? If you read verse 11…

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, that's interesting. That is interesting. וְהָיוּ נְכֹנִים לַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי. So נְכֹנִים, Imu's pointing out, is actually a double entendre. נְכֹנִים, to be nachon, can be from the word to prepare. “You should prepare yourself for three days,” but it has a double entendre. Nachon can mean “proper” or “correct,” right? 

Imu: So here it's very weird. Like, “be proper for three days, be correct for three days.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, fascinating.

Imu: Make sure you're correct for three days. This is going to be a weird phenomenon.

At the time of recording this, there are all these drones in New Jersey. And I thought I was seeing drones, and then I had a friend come over to my house. We looked at the drones and he showed me, “Imu, these drones happened to be flying directly from Teterboro Airport. What do you make of that Imu?” And I was like, “Oh, I'm an idiot. Those aren't drones. Those are planes, aren't they?”

And he's like, “I don't know, they could be drones. But they seem to really enjoy Teterboro Airport!” And I was like, “Okay.” I took some time. It was on the third day. And I was like, “Okay, these aren't drones.” And that's what's coming out in the news right now, is that all sorts of people are taking footage of drones. They're actually constellations or they're the moon in some cases.

So when there's extraterrestrial phenomena, as it were, you really need to take your time to be nachon. You need to be correct. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Imu, it's funny that you mentioned the drones in New Jersey, which are a thing now at the moment of when we're recording, because really, you know, the unspoken thing in the back of everyone's mind, like, are these things UFOs? Are these extraterrestrial things? News reports are not talking about that. It's just like, “Oh, we don't know what they are. They're not from a foreign actor. They're not from an Iranian ship. They don't seem like they're from the Department of Defense.” Nobody can identify them, and nobody's really talking about that. And what's fascinating is that it really gets into this thing of, what do you want to see here? Personal bias makes a huge difference.

And the drones are a great example, because this question is, is this extraterrestrial phenomenon? Think about what Sinai was. It was actually the Revelation of the ultimate extraterrestrial phenomenon — God, from outside of time and space.

Like, isn't it interesting that you have time and space being dealt with as things that can throw you for a loop? Because Who are you encountering? The One who's from outside of time and space, the One whose Being is not in time and space. The One whose Name is Yud-Hey and Vav-Hey, which means a Being without reference to time; that past, present, and future doesn't mean anything to Him, and it’s past, present, and future all together.

And so, if you get too caught up in time and space, you won't be able to properly perceive what's actually in front of you. And in situations like that, personal bias actually matters.

I want to actually show you, Imu, a little clip. I wonder if we can watch it together. It'll be fun, just for a moment, from the most classic movie, or one of the most classic movies, that actually deals with humanity's first encounter with extraterrestrials: Steven Spielberg's film from the ‘70s, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Imu: Okay, so at this point in our learning session, Rabbi Fohrman and I actually stopped to watch this scene on YouTube. And if you want to do the same, there's a link in the show notes. But since we're a small nonprofit and would like to avoid any copyright infringement, for now I'm going to just describe the action to you. Are you ready? Alright. I'm going to do my best to make it feel like you're watching a movie.

So our scene opens in an air traffic control tower in Indianapolis. Two commercial flights have reported seeing strange lights, and the pilots radio in their confused observations while the controllers watch their monitors, baffled as radar blips indicate maneuvers that no known aircraft could possibly perform.

What the pilots are seeing is literally the definition of an unidentified flying object, a UFO, but here's the interesting part. At the end of the scene, one of the controllers asks the pilots if they would like to report a UFO. And nobody does.

Rabbi Fohrman: To me, what was so striking about that, and I think it was striking to you too, was how here's everybody in the room that all independently saw and experienced something — they saw it visually, they had it on the radar, right? — and it was like, “Okay, do you want to report a UFO?”

No, I don't want to report one of those things. Do you want to report a UFO? No, I don't think I want to report that either. What kind of report do you want to file? I wouldn't even know what kind of report to file. Do you see the challenge here in getting human beings to recognize an actual extraterrestrial phenomenon?

And even to this day, by the way. I mean, you've had in modern times, not in film but in actuality, there have been Navy pilots that have tracked stuff like this. And in congressional testimony they actually played this video. They are unidentified aerial phenomena. No one knows what they are. 

Imu: They had to change it from UFO to UAP because nobody wants to use the word UFO anymore. Did you know that?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. So UAP, which is a fancier way of saying UFO, instead of “flying unidentified aerial phenomenon.” And the idea is that nobody wants to report this because it looks bad and you seem like you're crazy. So there's this bias. We want to believe that the world around us is the only world there is, and nothing could ever intrude from a different realm because to believe otherwise is too discombobulating and people will just think you're crazy.

Imu: Drones over New Jersey. Close encounters. UFOs, UAPs. Not the content you were expecting on a Torah podcast, right? But this leg of our conversation was making these problems inherent in Revelation, these problems that our connections seem to be highlighting, so much more relatable, at least for me.

I mean, I can understand technically the challenge of a non-physical God trying to reveal Himself to physical beings. But I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that God is non-physical. It doesn't blow my mind. I think that's true for a lot of us.

But what this conversation got me thinking was, maybe we shouldn't be so comfortable with it. Maybe familiarity has bred a kind of false comfort. Because God, the possibility of God, and especially that a living human being could actually encounter God, that is actually astonishing to consider — ten times more mind-blowing than any alien Steven Spielberg can come up with or any drone over my house.

So if you take something from these last 10 minutes, I'd say hold on to that feeling of something bizarre, something unknown disrupting your world. That's like a fraction of what it must have felt like for the people at Sinai. 

Coming back to the text, what we had been exploring was how God was preemptively responding to that feeling that the people were bound to have at Sinai; that feeling that they were facing the unknown, that what was happening defied all the sensory knowledge that they've stored up through their entire lives. How were they supposed to deal with that?

And it seems that God was maybe trying to help them deal with it, and maybe even channeling our own history to act as a kind of cautionary tale. Remember Isaac. Isaac demonstrates how our senses, which are supposed to help us access truth, can at times stand in the way of it.

But Rabbi Fohrman's point in showing me Close Encounters was to say that the problem goes even deeper than that. It's not just our senses that lead us astray but our own biases. We saw that with those pilots and air traffic controllers, but Rabbi Fohrman thought it was equally true for Isaac.

To show me what he meant, we turned our attention to Genesis to closely read the text.

Rabbi Fohrman: If you look carefully, it wasn't just the senses that led Father astray. There was something else that deceived Isaac other than his senses — his own biases. Look at verse 22: וַיִּגַּשׁ יַעֲקֹב אֶל־יִצְחָק אָבִיו — And Yaakov came to Yitzchak his father, וַיְמֻשֵּׁהוּ — and he touches him. And when he touches him, Isaac blurts out: וַיֹּאמֶר הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב וְהַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו — The voice is the voice of Jacob and the hands, it's the hands of Eisav.

Now Imu, if you were Isaac at that moment, and here it was, you couldn't see that well, and you're touching him, you're feeling him, and it feels like Eisav but the voice sounds like Yaakov, and you say “I'm confused! הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב — The sound is the sound of Jacob, וְהַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו — and the hands are the hands of Eisav.” What would you do next? 

Imu: I mean, I'd probably call for help and ask someone who has all their senses.

Rabbi Fohrman: “Rivkah, could you please come in here? Who is this guy,” right? “Get me one of my servants. Can you please tell who this is?” Something like that, right? But look at the next words. Read the next words in verse 23. Keep on reading.

Imu: וְלֹא הִכִּירוֹ — He didn't recognize him, כִּי־הָיוּ יָדָיו כִּידֵי עֵשָׂו אָחִיו שְׂעִרֹת — because his hands were hairy like his brother Eisav. And then the crazy word is: וַיְבָרְכֵהוּ — And so he proceeded to bless him. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Hello? Can someone explain that to me?

Imu: Why, as a consequence of confusion, would you then bless? At least it's ambiguous. It just said that he was confused, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: You can't say, “וְלֹא הִכִּירוֹ — And he didn't recognize him,” after he said “הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב — the voice is the voice of Yaakov.” And then he says, “And he didn't recognize him.” Why? Because his hands were like Eisav. Well, one second. Let's take this slow. He said, “The voice is the voice of Yaakov, and the hands are the hands of Eisav.” And then it says you didn't recognize him because the hands were the hands of Eisav? What about the voice? What about the voice? 

Imu: Well the voice told him that it was someone else, told him it was Yaakov. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So what did Yitzchak do?

Imu: He paid attention to one sense and ignored the other.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. Why?

Imu: So yeah, you might argue that he was biased and he, in his paradigm, he never interacted with Yaakov, wasn't expecting a Yaakov. So in this moment, he chose to assimilate that data and say, “Oh, you know, they're brothers after all. Maybe he sounds like Yaakov in this moment. That's cute, but it's Eisav.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And even more than that, why did he like Eisav in the first place? 

Imu: So this goes back to arguments you made in your book on Genesis. But he liked Eisav because he had hairy arms. In other words, he was a man. He was a doer. He was somebody who got things done.

Rabbi Fohrman: He was a doer. and how do you do? You do with your hands. So given a choice between hands and voice, what am I going to prioritize? What am I thinking is super important? It's the hands. “Darn it, if it's the hands of Eisav, I'm blessing this guy.”

Imu: That's really interesting. It's not just that he had a context and a paradigm and wasn't interested in assimilating it. It was a bias towards something that he liked in the first place.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's what he wanted. Ultimately, Yitzchak, who couldn't see, saw what he wanted to see. He wanted to see Eisav, so he saw Eisav. And that, God says, is a cautionary tale, because when you, the child, are seeking a heavenly Father, you should know how easy it is for you to see what you're going to want to see because you too have a bias.

Just like those air traffic controllers, right? You have a bias towards seeing that your world is hermetically sealed. The world of time and space contains everything that there is. And therefore, when you seek to worship something, you're going to seek to worship the most powerful things in time and space.

And so therefore when the truth comes, when there's an extraterrestrial Being from outside of time and space who really is the Master of the universe, you're in danger of not seeing that because you don't want to see that. Your senses will lead you astray like they led Isaac astray, but even more than your senses leading you astray, your mind and your desires will lead you astray the same way they led Isaac astray.

He had all the evidence he needed to say, “This isn't adding up. The voice is the voice of Jacob.” You, too, are going to have all the evidence you need when you search for Father, because you, too, are going to hear My voice. So I'm going to try to help you out. I'm going to do everything I can to shut down your other senses so that you don't get confused by them. I'm going to come in this cloud. You're not going to be able to see. We're not going to have smell. We're not going to have touch. But ultimately, you're going to have to find the power to hone in on that voice and understand that all you heard was voice and not give in to the temptation of idolatry, to make yourself a God that you can feel and see.

Imu: This is really fascinating actually, because like what's going on in Genesis 27? You've got Isaac, who's really prioritizing this value of strength — and we can talk about why that is and you wrote a whole essay about it. We can encourage people to go read it — but what I think we're saying here is that Isaac wasn't open necessarily to being surprised that it's not just strength that's necessary, right? There's another quality, too, that Yaakov seemed to possess, and Rebecca was open to that but Isaac wasn't.

But what's interesting is that if you're not open to being surprised or to being curious in life, then even when that other quality comes knocking on your door, right, it's Yaakov's voice or it's Yaakov's temimusdik, his innocence or his simpleness or whatever you want to translate it.

When that comes knocking on the door, you still aren't perceiving it. And so being open to surprise is important. So to take it to Exodus 19 — and I think this is the point you're making, tell me if I'm wrong — is that the people, up until Revelation, they were prioritizing something when it came to their divine encounters. They're expecting some very powerful, perceivable-with-eyes force in the material world, right?

And that answers actually some really interesting dilemmas, which is that here's God Who's been courting them, Who's sending emissaries, Who did a whole bunch of plagues in Egypt which were miraculous, Who opens a sea for them, leads them out through the sea, rains manna down right in the desert, and what did they say just a few chapters ago?

They say הֲיֵשׁ יְקוָה בְּקִרְבֵּנוּ אִם־אָיִן — Is God amongst us or not (Exodus 17:7)? And I always read הֲיֵשׁ יְקוָה בְּקִרְבֵּנוּ אִם־אָיִן as figurative. Of course God's out there, but does He really love us? Is He with us or maybe He's with someone else and He had war to do with the Egyptians, and He didn't really care about us, and we fled Egypt by happenstance? But He's not, like, with us.

But actually, you might read it literally. “Is God here? Is He one of us? Is He, you know, walking around with us? Or is He not?” Because they're prioritizing the sense of physicality, of being in our world. And here is God, He's going to have to put on this grand show to say, “I'm going to send you some data, and it's not going to be perceivable by this sense that you've prioritized.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And think how frustrating that is for God, because here God's doing everything for them. God is literally feeding them, God is giving them water to drink from the rock, God is giving them manna, food to eat, but they might not recognize Who it was that fed them and gave them water to drink.

Does that remind you of anything in the Genesis 27 story? 

Imu: I mean, son is feeding Father, but Father isn't recognizing who the one feeding him is. It's also really interesting because it's a different way to feed him, right? Like, Isaac asked to be fed before he gives a blessing. He asks the hunter to go and take your tools of the thing that makes you great and come back with victory. And on some level, you have Jacob saying, “There's another way,” right? It may not be as manly, but it is also successful.

Jacob ends up taking the domestication of goats and sheep and he makes himself a very wealthy man. He's not a hunter, but he's a good shepherd. And that also is valid, and Isaac wasn't looking for it, but he does feed him that way. So it is interesting, the parallel you're making of, “Can you recognize the one who is feeding you?”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, even though He comes to you in an unexpected kind of way, can you overcome your confirmation biases to be able to see something unexpected and to rely on the sense that you weren't really planning on relying on? Which brings us, Imu, to the very next parallel between Exodus and Genesis.

We've been going down through the Exodus story and seeing one parallel after another. I even lost count of what we're up to, but we're up to like the sixth or seventh parallel, but that shows up in verse 16.

So, וַיְהִי בַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי — And it happened on that third day. They were waiting and waiting, but finally, on that third day, בִּהְיֹת הַבֹּקֶר וַיְהִי קֹלֹת וּבְרָקִים — There was thunder, there was lightning, there was a storm. And then there was that עָנָן כָּבֵד עַל־הָהָר, there was that cloud that God was descending in, and at that moment: וְקֹל שֹׁפָר חָזָק מְאֹד — There was that very great sound of a shofar, וַיֶּחֱרַד כׇּל־הָעָם אֲשֶׁר בַּמַּחֲנֶה — and that's when the people trembled.

What does trembling remind you of back in Genesis 27? Who trembles and when do they tremble, back in the story of Jacob's deception?

Imu: Isaac trembles when he realizes that the person he just blessed is not Jacob, when Eisav comes in. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Isaac trembles at a great moment of recognition, when he finally perceives the truth about the unexpected person before him. Now that suggests that, if we have trembling here, we have a similar moment of recognition. The people understood. וַיֶּחֱרַד כׇּל־הָעָם אֲשֶׁר בַּמַּחֲנֶה, they made that recognition that there's something here that's unexpected. God is actually in the room.

Imu: If this trembling connection seems familiar, you're not having deja vu. We've talked about it before, way back in episode one. And we also discussed there this insight that, in both stories, trembling seems to mark a profound moment of recognition. But in the context of our present conversation, this insight seemed more nuanced and even richer. Because now, we were seeing that for both Isaac and the people, this moment of recognition is so profound, viscerally profound, because it's the culmination of everything that led up to it. It's the moment when real encounter overrides all biases.

For Isaac, it's the moment when, finally, after projecting and projecting, he faces that it was in fact Yaakov he blessed, unexpected as that may be. And in Exodus, it's the moment when the people come to the climax of a similar, if opposite, journey. God's plan worked. One after another, he shut down their senses, disarmed their biases, and now they're able to perceive the unimaginable: The presence of God, not as they project Him or want Him to be, but as He chooses to disclose Himself to them, as the sound of the shofar.

In both stories, there's an incredible escalation happening just beneath the surface, as son and Father, Father and son, find one another, either willingly or unwillingly. But I would never have seen it if not for these parallels.

And with that, it felt like our puzzle was complete. But boy, was I wrong.

Imu: So I'll give you this. Everything we've seen so far this episode completes a section of our puzzle, just like our exploration of chosenness was, in a way, a self-enclosed section. This isn't your toddler's ten piece puzzle, and there are still plenty of parallels to go and more to the picture to discover.

So as our session was just about coming to a close, Rabbi Fohrman teased me with a couple more parallels that would launch us into new territory. And the focus of these connections would be that shofar, the one true way to encounter God at Sinai.

Now it's strange, isn't it, that God's voice manifests as a shofar. Why a shofar? Well, Rabbi Fohrman thought that our parallels actually had something to say about that because there was actually one parallel that he skipped over right before the trembling. 

Rabbi Fohrman: What precedes that moment of recognition? וְקֹל שֹׁפָר חָזָק מְאֹד — And there was a great sound. God was coming with the sound of a shofar. That was the “voice” that God used.

Well, if we go through our parallels in Genesis 27, we've gone through מַה־זֶּה מִהַרְתָּ לִמְצֹא, the speed at which Jacob came, גְּשָׁה־נָּא וַאֲמֻשְׁךָ — Come close and I'll touch you. And the very next thing we have is when Yitzchak touches him, then Yitzchak says, “Oh my gosh, there's something unexpected. I'm touching you and you feel like Eisav. הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב וְהַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו. The קֹל is the sound of Jacob.

So it sounds like the sound of the shofar is analogous to the sound of Jacob. The sound of Jacob was the voice of a child; the sound of the shofar was the voice of the parent.

Okay, so on the one hand we've got this קֹל שֹׁפָר that seems to echo the voice of Yaakov, but I want to suggest that there's something really mind-blowing that's happening with this shofar sound; really mind-blowing because that word וַיֶּחֱרַד in there, Exodus, which suggests that the people understood the beating of God's voice, it doesn't appear just once — it appears twice. It appears a couple verses later, and I don't think that's coincidental.

Imu, can I ask you to just read that a couple verses later, the second time וַיֶּחֱרַד appears? Give us verse 18 and 19 in the Exodus narrative, if you would. 

Imu: וְהַר סִינַי עָשַׁן כֻּלּוֹ מִפְּנֵי אֲשֶׁר יָרַד עָלָיו יְקוָה בָּאֵשׁ — Mount Sinai was fully in smoke because God had come down on it in fire, וַיַּעַל עֲשָׁנוֹ כְּעֶשֶׁן הַכִּבְשָׁן — its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, וַיֶּחֱרַד כׇּל־הָהָר מְאֹד — and the mountain was greatly trembling. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So there's actually two things that are trembling, right? The people are trembling when they hear the קֹל שֹׁפָר, right? And the mountains also trembling indicates the mountains also recognizing God is here in the world, right? And that indeed it seems to be true.

But the interesting thing about it is, when the mountain trembles, look at the very next verse. What happens right after that mountain trembles? 

Imu: וַיְהִי קוֹל הַשֹּׁפָר הוֹלֵךְ וְחָזֵק מְאֹד — The voice of the shofar is going and getting greatly stronger.

Rabbi Fohrman: Now that was the same shofar that we had from a couple verses ago, right? But it's mentioned twice. 

Imu: Oh, and both times it's mentioned you've got trembling. You've got a shofar in 16 and the people are trembling, and you've got a shofar in 19 right after the mountain’s trembling.

Rabbi Fohrman: And the reason why that's such a big deal is because it suggests something really interesting once you start paralleling this to Genesis 27, because it just so happens that there's two וַיֶּחֱרַד’s in Genesis 27 the same way that there's two וַיֶּחֱרַד’s in Exodus. And not only are there two וַיֶּחֱרַד’s, but one of them is a חֲרָדָה גְּדֹלָה עַד־מְאֹד, right? Read that verse if you would. Genesis 27, verse 33. 

Imu: That's very cool. So, וַיֶּחֱרַד יִצְחָק חֲרָדָה גְּדֹלָה עַד־מְאֹד. You've got, “Isaac trembled a trembling,” or the way it is written in Hebrew is, “And he trembled, Isaac, a trembling, much.” מִי־אֵפוֹא הוּא הַצָּד־צַיִד — Where is the hunter who hunted game? Yeah, so this is when Isaac is aware that Eisav has come in and that the person who fed him “game,” quote unquote, beforehand was Yaakov.

Rabbi Fohrman: And what's Eisav's response to this when he hears that, “Oh my gosh, Father recognizes me but he already gave the blessing to someone else?” Read verse 34.

Imu: Right after Isaac's trembling, you have: כִּשְׁמֹעַ עֵשָׂו אֶת־דִּבְרֵי אָבִיו — When Eisav hears the words of his father and the confirmation that the blessing is going to go to his brother, וַיִּצְעַק צְעָקָה גְּדֹלָה וּמָרָה עַד־מְאֹד. Oh, another מְאֹד, interesting. He cries, he uses his voice to cry a great and bitter cry.

Rabbi Fohrman: So there's a cry עַד־מְאֹד, so isn't that interesting? Here now, in 27:33 and 34, you have Isaac experiencing חֲרָדָה immediately followed by a cry עַד־מְאֹד, that is, getting to great “muchness.” And in Exodus, you have the mountain trembling עַד־מְאֹד, ”very muchness,” followed by a cry that has “muchness.” וַיְהִי קוֹל הַשֹּׁפָר הוֹלֵךְ וְחָזֵק מְאֹד.

Sure sounds a lot, Imu, like that shofar at Sinai didn't just mimic Yaakov's voice. It sounds like it was mimicking Eisav's cry also.

Imu: Okay, so that may have been a little bit dense, but if you weren't following all the ins and outs, the key thing is this: In both Exodus and Genesis, there is trembling — not just one reference to trembling, but two. And it's not just that. In both texts, that trembling is bookended by voices.

So it's a pretty cool pattern, “voice-trembling-trembling voice.” But in Genesis, the first voice in that pattern is Jacob's and the second voice in that pattern is Eisav’s. But in Exodus, the voice before and after the trembling is one and the same — the shofar, God's voice. What do we make of that?

Well, it's almost as if, in some way, for some reason, at Sinai, when God finally reveals himself to the people, he wants that Revelation, His voice, to carry within it the echo of both brothers.

Rabbi Fohrman: Almost as if there were like these two moments of great authenticity in a story with so much deception in Genesis 27. One moment when Eisav just cries bitterly, and there's nothing more authentic than that wordless cry of Eisav that just feels like everything is falling apart for him, and so bitter that here he worked and worked and brought this game and made these delicacies for his father, only to have his father say, “Well, sorry, I gave the blessing to your brother. I'm really sorry he came while you weren't around.” And that evokes that great and bitter cry, and that's one moment of authenticity.

But then there's that moment of authenticity from the brother who is trying to deceive, or at least everything he does ends up deceiving Isaac, except for one thing which is, his voice betrays him. His voice is the voice of Yaakov, no matter what he says. He might be saying: אָנֹכִי עֵשָׂו בְּכֹרֶךָ — I am Eisav of your firstborn (Genesis 27:19), but the voice behind the words is the voice of Yaakov, and Isaac even recognizes it's the voice of Yaakov. It's that great authenticity that, “I know who you are. You're Yaakov.”

Now Isaac may have deceived himself into thinking “Well, it's Eisav” afterwards, but the voice was still the voice of Yaakov. It's a big question mark.

Imu: It’s the only thing that gave Isaac doubt because it's the only part of Jacob that told the truth, whether Jacob wanted it to or not.

Rabbi Fohrman: So here in Exodus, God seems to be picking up on the most authentic thing coming from both brothers: The cry of Eisav and the voice underlying the words of Yaakov that even Isaac understood was the voice of Yaakov. And that's the shofar, the shofar that evokes both children together.

And Imu, isn't it amazing that it evokes both children together when, you know, you and I had talked a little bit before about how Vezot HaBracha seems to be an echo at the end of the Torah, a sort of messianic replay of Sinai, a giving of this blessing in a way that it becomes a blessing for everyone. And listen to what happens with that blessing. It's Moses blessing: יְקוָה מִסִּינַי בָּא — God will come from Sinai, וְזָרַח מִשֵּׂעִיר לָמוֹ — and shine forth from Eisav's mountain, from Seir (Deuteronomy 33:2).

It's as if, when God comes and replays Sinai again, there's the simultaneous replay of Sinai on Mount Seir, on Mount Paran, on Ishmael's mountain. It's like all these dispossessed children are coming together with Yaakov, and God is saying “I love all children.” כִּי־לִי כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ — the world is Mine, and Israel is chosen so that I can connect to the entire world through them so that they can facilitate a connection to the entire world (Exodus 19:5).

And you hear the beginning echoes of this at Sinai, where the shofar sound was an echo back of the original cry of Eisav and voice of Jacob at the same time.

Imu: So I’ve got to tell you, at this moment in our conversation, I got a little חֲרָדָה of my own, also known as the chills. What could better foreshadow this messianic vision of brothers reuniting than God's own voice at Revelation merging the voices of these two brothers?

But while we had catapulted to the end of Torah in Vezot HaBracha, I was really interested to return to Exodus, to what Rabbi Fohrman was saying about authenticity. If these were both moments of authenticity for Eisav and Yaakov, how did that serve as a commentary on God's shofar blast at Sinai?

So I asked Rabbi Fohrman to say just a little bit more about that.

 Rabbi Fohrman: So it's really interesting, Imu, because God is about to use words. The shofar is going to resolve itself into words. First, it's God's wordless cry, the shofar, but soon it's going to be words. It's going to be the cognitive things that God tells us in the Aseret HaDvarim, the ten things that He wants us to know.

But before we even get to those things, there's a certain authenticity in who God's saying it is. Ironically, the first of those things is for God to identify Himself authentically. He's saying: אָנֹכִי — This is Me (Exodus 20:2). But before He even says “This is Me,” He's saying “This is Me” with voice, because voice can't lie. There's a voice imprint, right, that, despite yourself, will tell the truth about you, and you can't really disguise it. Without voice-altering software, your voice is your voice, and everyone knows your voice, and it's immediately recognizable.

And so, even before God declares with words, “This is the definition of Me. אָנֹכִי יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ,” God is giving you a voice imprint that is intuitively “That's God,” right? And it mimics the voice imprint of the two most authentic moments of voice in the original Genesis 27 story, the cry of Eisav and the voice of Yaakov that betrays himself no matter what his words say.

Imu: That's gorgeous, that's really gorgeous. Especially, I think, like, when most of us think of the voice of a shofar, it sounds trumpet-y or maybe you think it's because of its power, but what you're saying is, actually the voice of a shofar is the thing that God chooses to reveal Himself rather than fireworks or a car alarm because a shofar is a cry, and the cry was this utterly authentic truth moment.

Actually, it makes me think that it was almost a deeply vulnerable and authentic moment for both brothers, right? It was the thing that betrayed Yaakov when Yaakov tried to hide himself. But I also wonder, given how much we've talked a bit about Eisav's manly nature, right, Eisav the Doer, Eisav the Hunter, Eisav the Hairy who's crying with his dad. Would you expect Eisav to cry with his Dad? The manly hunter? But that's what his voice does. His voice actually betrays his inner authentic vulnerability, too. Both of these brothers are sort of maybe, almost against their will, their voices are showing who they are.

Rabbi Fohrman: Actually a remarkable observation. You're pointing out something which is, I think, very, very deep; that both Eisav and Yaakov have this terribly vulnerable moment, each in their own way. Eisav, you know, Father loves him because he's Mr. Manly, the guy who's always going to be stone cold, and just powerful, and just able to do things in the world. And here is Eisav frustrated. He does everything right, but it just doesn't matter. He's the doer, but he can't get what he wants just because he's the doer. And he's so vulnerable, and he just lets out…

Like, a man is not supposed to cry. And here is Eisav, the manliest man of all, whose name means “doer.” And all he is is reduced to a puddle of tears…bitter, bitter tears. It's so poignant, right? And he's so vulnerable.

And Yaakov also is vulnerable, right? There's all this deception swirling about him, and whether he meant it with malice aforethought or whether his mom just put him out there and the deception just kind of happened despite himself, but one way or the other, as he says, standing there quaking in front of his father, thinking, “Will my father find me out? Will my father find me out?”

Can you imagine, Imu, the pit in your stomach that you must have had if you were Yaakov standing in front of a father who would really give it to you if he knew you were deceiving him? You're in too deep now, and you just said you were Eisav and all of that, and then your father says, “One second…the hands are the hands of Eisav, but the voice is the voice of Yaakov.” The second he says that, the pit in your stomach, the vulnerability that you have.

I mean, we know that he goes ahead and blesses him because he thinks he's Eisav, but in that moment, what if he turned around and said, “Who are you? Get the heck out of here! I never want to see you again.” It's the most vulnerable moment for both brothers, this moment that Exodus picks up on.

Imu, what does that say to you that God is saying with his own voice? Is there some vulnerability on the part of God that God is coming to us, our children, and saying, “I might be the most powerful Doer in the world. I made the universe. I am the ‘manliest man’ of all gods you can imagine, but in a certain deep kind of way there's a vulnerability that I have too. Listen to this voice.” 

Imu: And it's a cry. 

Rabbi Fohrman: And it's a cry. What vulnerability do I have? I wonder if the vulnerability…that's a really good question, Imu. Let's take some time to think about that till the next time we get together. What vulnerability could God have, the greatest Doer in the world? Why would God's voice take the form of the cry? What's the only thing that could make God vulnerable?

Imu: I'm happy to think about it before our next episode. I just want to get a heter (permission) from my rabbi to contemplate God's vulnerability. I'm okay to do that.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, that's the crazy theological question. How could God, the most powerful Being in the world, someone we believe is omnipotent, also be vulnerable in that omnipotence?

Imu: In what way could God have anything to risk here? Yeah, beautiful. Excited to continue.

Rabbi Fohrman: Talk to you next time.

Imu: So after this conversation, I was elated from everything we'd seen, but I was also genuinely uncomfortable. Talking about God somehow as vulnerable, even if of course metaphorical, felt like wading into theologically dangerous territory. So I just want you to know that if you're squirming in your seats, I get it. That's kind of what I was doing at this point in the session. And more importantly, I want you to know that we're going to deal with that problem next time as we continue plotting our way through these parallels right into the Ten Commandments.

So depending on what kind of person you are, scared of heresy or intrigued about the Ten Commandments, or maybe both, you'll really want to join us. See you next time, guys. Thank you for listening.

This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev.

It was produced by Robby Charnoff.

Our audio engineer is Hillary Guttman.

A Book Like No Other’s managing producer is Adina Blaustein, and our senior producer is Tikva Hecht.

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. Thank you, Shari and Nathan.

And thank you all for listening.