Imu Shalev: I'm Imu Shalev, and this is a very special epilogue to our first season of A Book Like No Other. Now, we ended the last season with a grand story. The one tree has been transplanted in the New Eden as the Israelites entered the land. But, look, you and I know that's not how the story ends, because being in the land — that didn't last very long. Eventually, once again, we go into exile, and not just one exile, right? We're brought back into the land, in the Second Temple period, and again, there's an exile. It's sort of frustrating. Edens and exiles, exiles and new Edens. And knowing that sort of sullied the whole “walk off into the sunset” moment that we had at the end of our series. When God feels far, when the tree is a withered bush, or even less than that, how do we bring the tree back?

That's the question Rabbi Fohrman and I want to tackle in this epilogue. What we decided to do was to look at something really strange in the Torah text itself. So much of the story of the Five Books of Moses is about the expulsion from Eden and the reintroduction to the land, but the Torah itself anticipates the problem we're struggling with. It anticipates the problem of a new exile. And it's pretty wild, but Moshe tells the people, right before they're entering the land, that exile is actually looming in their future. Moshe predicts that the people will, again, find themselves in exile, but then he teaches them the way back. And he does that in “Parshat HaTeshuva,” the Portion of Return, or Repentance.

So what we want to do is take a look at that section with you right now. I think it has a lot to tell us about the cycles of Eden and exile, of the tree and the Torah, and even how it applies not just on a national scale, but in our own personal lives. By the way, Parshat HaTeshuva should not be foreign to us. We actually visited this chapter once before in the series. It's the place where Moshe actually equates the Torah and the tree, where he says that he placed before us chayim and tov — life and good, death and bad. So I think it's pretty elegant that the solution to our problem will be found in the chapter that first told us about how the Torah is one tree.

By the way, this episode is a little bit different. Rabbi Fohrman and I read the chapter together, verse by verse, discovering insights as we went. Old-school chavrusa style. We want you to feel a part of that with us, so I’ll be jumping in less with narrations. Please let us know if you like this style, or if you miss me – I won’t be hurt if you don’t. And if you can, I really encourage you to open up Devarim (Deuteronomy) and read along with us. Either way, I hope you find Moshe’s words as insightful as we did. Let’s jump in. 

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, Imu. So here we are, we're the end of Deuteronomy. Israel's been cast out into exile, basically evoking PTSD from the garden when we were cast out from exile. And we're on our way back into a new garden. And what this is portending is that there will be times in history when this happens. And, somehow, the new garden is always there for us. And the Parshat HaTeshuva is giving us a map, almost, for how that access takes place. So let's see if we can work out the details as we go through it. Why don't you take us through and see what you find?

Imu: Okay, great. So I'm going to read, I’m going to pay careful attention, see what we notice. So here, Deuteronomy 30, verse one. וְהָיָה כִי־יָבֹאוּ עָלֶיךָ כׇּל־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה, “And it will be, when all the things that we just talked about in the past few parshiot, Ki Tavo, the blessings and the curses,” הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, “that I've placed before you.” וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ בְּכׇל־הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר הִדִּיחֲךָ יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ שָׁמָּה, “You should return to your hearts amongst all of the nations in which I have driven you into.” (Devarim 30:1) So it's talking about, when you're in exile, you need to return something to your heart. What exactly are you returning to your heart? I don't know...

Rabbi Forhman: But if you just have to give the simplest possible reading for it, what do you think it means? That when all these things happen to you, i.e. when the curses happened to you, because you're in exile. וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ, “and you shall return to your heart.” How do you understand that?

Imu: I think there are two ways that I want to understand it. I think probably one way, which is not literal, is to “return the commands to your heart, remember the commands.” But I think that probably the more appropriate way of reading this is “you should return to your own heart.” Maybe you've ignored your heart. Maybe your heart has turned to stone, or you've somehow ignored that part of you. And the homing beacon, the way back, is to actually return to your heart.

Rabbi Fohrman: To get in touch with your heart. And that, I think, is the simplest way to really read it. This has nothing to do with God. This has nothing to do with teshuva as you and I understand it. It doesn't say that you'll return to the mitzvos, it doesn't say that you'll return to God. It says that you will return to your heart. Now, it could mean that you will “take heart,” or that you will “take it to heart.” In other words, you'll meditate upon what's happened to you. But the deeper meaning of it, I think, is as you suggested. That in meditating about what's happened to you, you are, in a way, returning to your heart. As if to suggest that one of the consequences of exile has been a kind of alienation within ourselves.

Imu: Okay, next verse. וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ, “And you return until Hashem, your God.” I would take out that word ad. I would say “veshavta el Hashem Elokecha,” but here, it's ad. It's almost like you can return up until God. וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְקֹלוֹ, “and you will hear His voice,” כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר־אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם, “as all I am commanding you today,” אַתָּה וּבָנֶיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ,”you and your children with all your heart and soul.” (Devarim 30:2)

Rabbi Fohrman: What's noticeable is what's not here. As you pointed out, I'm returning until God, which suggests that I'm not all the way there. Almost like, if you learn calculus, the idea of limits. Where you keep on trying to get to that Y axis, but you never quite get to that Y axis, and there's always something infinitesimal that keeps you away. Why the hesitancy? If you're doing teshuva, just go all the way. Return to God, do His commands.  What is holding you back?

Imu:  I think shame might be holding you back. I think fear might be holding you back. It's really hard to do teshuva. It's hard to just, “Oh, I have seen the error of my ways.” I don't know anybody who's ever done that actually, who's said, “Oh, I've seen the error of my ways.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  And especially if you look at that first verse: וְהָיָה כִי־יָבֹאוּ עָלֶיךָ כׇּל־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה, which is really just a euphemism for saying, “when all of these klallot (curses) happen to you.” So then that's like fear and shame squared, multiplied into what we might call trauma. So in the aftermath of trauma, it's like, “Well, I might try to return to God. I don't know if I'm getting there. I might try to do God's mitzvot.” So there are these interesting stages. It's almost like the first stage of trauma. What does trauma do? We might say trauma puts me into a place where my heart and mind are separated from one another.

By the way, I was reading this guy, Bessel van der Kolk, who's this expert on trauma. That is actually how he defines trauma, if I'm not mistaken. The way he puts it is, a separation from the mind from the senses. So your senses are telling you certain things, but your mind doesn't believe it, or doesn't compute it. So there's this alienation of the mind from your heart and the rest of your body. Really, all of therapy for him is this one phrase of וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ, that's it. Therapy is, “How do I become a whole human being again?” What he says is that talk therapy doesn't go very far. He says you know what goes far? Dance. Choreograph dance with people. Getting involved in a community and doing things together as a whole human being, with mind and heart all together. The things that unify our experiences of mind, heart and body. You start bringing together the parts of yourself that were torn away from each other with this trauma. And, somehow, that's going to lead you on this path back to God.

Imu: That's a beautiful concept. I remember listening to that after you mentioned that I should check it out, but applying it here is really remarkable. The argument is that exile is traumatic, and that would make sense. To bring about the purely “knowledge of good and evil” view, the command to do teshuva — you'd imagine that as being entirely cognitive. Go and recognize that you were wrong, recognize who was right, and now keep the commands. But the body keeps the score, so actually that's not necessarily going to be a successful way of doing teshuva and it's certainly not a whole way of doing teshuva. You need to actually first return to your heart. You actually need to get in touch with, perhaps, that trauma. You've got to do something that is not head-based — וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ. And then there's this bridge to וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ, you still are not expected to look God in the eye. וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְקֹלוֹ, again, you're not relating to words yet. You're just relating to voice.

Rabbi Fohrman: And we talked in this podcast about this dichotomy between God's voice and His words. So the same way that you were saying that it's a getting back to a pre-conceptual part of myself, getting back to my heart —what's interesting is that, when I'm coming back to God, I'm also not getting back to a conceptual part of God. I'm getting back to a “heart” part of God. I'm getting back to His voice, I'm not getting back to His words.

Imu: What do you make of the fact that, in this verse, you have two “as-if’s”. You don't return to Hashem, you return עַד יְקוָה, “until God.” And also, I would've wrote veshamata bekolo b'chol asher anochi metzavcha hayom, “hear His voice in all the commands that I'm commanding you.” It doesn't say b'chol, it says k'chol — “as if” or “like.”

Rabbi Forhman: Now what does that mean to you, “as I am commanding to you?” As opposed to what you would have thought it would say, which is...?

Imu: I’m not sure what you mean.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, what if I said to you, “Imu, construct a verse, in Hebrew or English, which has the following elements: Returning to God, listening to His voice, and God’s commands.”

Imu: “You should keep the commands.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Is that what it says?

Imu: No. It’s saying, “you should hear His voice like I am commanding.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, “like I am commanding to you.” So even though we have the rods, “that which I command you today...”

Imu: The verb is missing.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Exactly, because this has nothing to do with God's commands. In other words, if you were traumatized, and because you were traumatized you stopped keeping religion and you didn't observe the Sabbath and didn't do all of that, this level of teshuva is not keeping the mitzvos. Because it doesn't say, “listen to His voice, inasmuch as you do His commands.” It says, “listen to His voice as I've commanded you to do.” In other words, the command here is that, “I specifically don't want you doing My mitzvos now. What I'm really interested in for you is: Just to focus on My voice.” And let me ask you, back in Eden, if this really is getting back to the time in Eden — what does this remind you of, back in Eden?

Imu:  Well, it actually reminds me of them hiding from God's voice. Where God's voice actually is strolling in the garden, and they hear Him and they hide.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Exactly. So that's what God says, “I don't want you to do.” This is Stage 2 of teshuva. Stage 1 is: Get back to your heart, Stage 2 is: Get back to my voice, which is, “Don't worry about what I say, just don't be afraid of My voice.” 

Imu:  I don't know what you make of this, but what this is reminding me of is another time when Israel was bearing klallah, so to speak, and they were in communal trauma in the land of Egypt. If you think about it there, there is no mass teshuva. There's no “and the People of Israel repented and saw the error of their ways.” What actually happened is — it seems to be maybe describing this — their hearts, they kind of end up feeling something at one moment in the Exodus. When things are really bad, they allow themselves to actually even feel their trauma. It's when the king of Egypt dies and they actually don't seem to cry out to God directly.The way the verses describe it is וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל־הָאֱלֹקים. (Exodus 2:23) It's almost like their cries end up reaching God, even though they weren't actually —

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, what you seem to be saying is, is that, in our worst, most traumatic moments, one of two things happen. Either we scream to God, and a scream does not have a cognitive element. Go back to Exodus: וַיִּזְעָקוּ, “They screamed.” It wasn't like they had carefully crafted words which they say, “God, please look down and please...” They screamed, and their voices came up to God. It's much more visceral. And if you listen to God's response — what was God's response to those screams? If you actually go, those are the words right before the Burning Bush. The Torah goes out of its way to suggest how deeply God was affected by those screams. Remember that language?

Imu:  Yeah, I remember. First of all, it's וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹקים אֶת־נַאֲקָתָם, “He hears their cry.” Then, it's not done, there are more verbs. וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹקים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ, “He remembers His relationship and His covenant with the forefathers.” And then there's this enigmatic phrase, וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקים, “God sees,” and we have a whole course on this, the Three Signs Course, which is incredible, where He sees אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, and וַיֵּדַע אֱלֹקים, “and God knows.” (Exodus 2:24-25) We demonstrate, I think fairly convincingly, that he sees their trauma. He sees the ways in which the Egyptians, who tried to cover up their suffering — God actually bears witness to it. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  So if I had to summarize that verse in my own words, I would say the people screamed and God heard with all of Himself, with all the different aspects of Himself. Now go into our verse in Deuteronomy 30, and look how reciprocal it is.

Imu: We’re in verse 3 now, and, just like in Exodus where we have God respond in kind to the emotional outcry of the people, Rabbi Fohrman notices a reciprocal relationship here too. וְשָׁב יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ, “And God will return you from your captivity,” וְרִחֲמֶךָ, “and He'll have compassion over you.” וְשָׁב, again, “returning.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  Who will return?

Imu:  Let's see, וְשָׁב יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ, “God's returning your captivities.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, so now look at the whole picture. It started with what kind of return? Me returning to my heart, followed by me returning until God. And now, God is reciprocating that with His return.

Imu:  So both of these shavs (returnings) are God?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes. We did two shavs in verse 2, and now God is going to do two of His own in verse 3.

Imu:  Got it. וְשָׁב יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ, “and God will return you from your captivity,” וְשָׁב, “and he'll return you,” וְקִבֶּצְךָ מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים, “and He'll gather you from all the nations, that God had previously scattered you to.” (Deuteronomy 30:3) So there's a great undoing and a great returning.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Now, how would you relate, Imu, the kind of return that we do, to the kind of return that God does? Does God's return mirror, in its nature, the kind of return that we do?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Which actually is a function of one's heart.

Imu:  Right.

Rabbi Fohrman:  So God will mirror your return to heart with, almost like, a return to heart of His own, in the sense that He will display a kind of compassion, and compassion is a function of the Divine heart. And the second return?

Imu:  The second return is וְשָׁב וְקִבֶּצְךָ מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים, “He's bringing you back in from all of the nations where He has scattered you.” By Rabbi Fohrman’s logic, this second part of God’s return is supposed to mirror the second part of our return in verse 2 — to return עַד־יְקוָה, “until God,” בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ, “with all your heart and soul.” But I didn’t see the connection. How is that parallel?

Rabbi Fohrman:  To see it, think about the distinction between individuals and community. How should we return as individuals? If trauma separated aspects of yourself, you have to reclaim your heart, you have to reclaim your nefesh (soul), and you have to reclaim all of it. You can't leave any of it behind. You don't have to get all the way to God, but you have to get up to God with all of you. So now, the way God reciprocates that is on a macrocosmic scale. As each individual does that, God will return and unify all the scattered aspects of ourselves, writ large at the community level.

Imu:  Oh, I understand. So, inasmuch as a person is gathering their various pieces inside themselves and returning, God is doing that on the macro level. But where do you see that a person, in their return, is gathering the different parts of them? Is that בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes, because the first thing that happened is, my mind was separated from my heart. And so, you have to cognize what's in your heart, bring your mind back to your heart. That's וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ. But you now have to take heart and mind together, and nefesh, which is some other aspect of yourself, and then you have to bring all of that. Not just all three of those things, but all parts of all three of those things. Not leaving any of your heart behind. בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ, with all of these powers. And the return that you are doing is, unifying aspects of yourself walking towards God. So God says. “You do that, and I'll return you, the nation. The nation is scattered. It has all of its pieces all over the place. I will bring those back.”

Imu:  That's beautiful. There's a lot there to unpack. The first thing it makes me think of is just the double entendre of נַפְשֶׁךָ, which is, your heart is split from your soul, your life force. But that word of nefesh is referred to often as people, to lives. Ve’Shivim nefesh yardu Mitzrayim, there were 70 souls that went down to Egypt.  So God's saying, “If you can gather your individual soul, I can gather the communal souls.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Picking up on that thought, actually, which reminds me of a New York Times daily podcast. So the New York Times did a little series on school board wars. You know, it's a really painful thing to listen to. There was the school board swing vote person who resigned in frustration, and at his moment of greatest frustration he said “This COVID trauma has broken you all, and it has caused such division among people who used to be unified in the interests of trying to do the right things for our kids.” And it's created these two ideological, warring camps who will do anything to bring down the other side in the name of doing the best for our children. But our children are actually suffering because the schools aren't getting the attention they need to do what schools actually do, which is to educate kids. Instead, they just become pawns in this ideological war. And this notion, that one of the terrible tragic effects of trauma, is that trauma can take something that's one and shatter it into many. It can do that at the individual level, when it can take a person and shatter the parts of them, and say, “Brain, you go over there. Heart, you go over there. Body, you go over there. Everybody in their corner and cower.” And, tragically, it can also do that at the communal level. It can take a community and pulverize them. It can put this one over there and that one over there, and everyone is cowering in their little corners. And seeing that we're not on the same team, and we're fighting against each other. And God says, “But if you can see your way towards mending your internal self as individuals, then I'll see My way towards mending your communal self and bringing you the parts of you that are alienated from one another, and put them back together.”

Imu:  I wonder, also — there's an intuition in communal wars that, if I just convince you of my way of looking at it, of my politics or of my religion, then the community can unite. But actually, it seems like God is showing us that concepts don’t unite. You actually can't start with the conceptual level. You need to start on a level of heart, or a level of voice.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's fascinating. That's a great point.

Imu: Which it's non-intuited. I listened to that daily podcast also, and at the school board, they have this town hall structure, and everyone is just trading concepts. Like, “No, this is what I believe,” and, “No, no, this is what I believe.” Where — imagine the school board needed to do communal dance before —

Rabbi Fohrman: No, really, that actually would be the answer, which is, “Everyone shut up, and we're going to turn on the music and literally —”

Imu:  B’lev echad (with one heart).

Rabbi Fohrman:  “— let's move in tandem with one another.” And it's almost like at the deep core of what Bessel van der Kolk was talking about. He's talking about how two things have to happen at once on the macrocosmic level and the microcosmic level. The way you get your heart and mind and body together is to get community together. If I can be connected at the communal level and the community can come back together, I can be connected at the individual level, and my mind and my heart is going to help make the other into a whole human being. 

Now, I want to go back to verse 2 for a quick second, וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ. This verse which puzzled us, this notion of returning until God but not completely the way to God, is paired with, at the end of that verse 2, בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ, “with all your heart and with all your soul.” Now, from your basic knowledge of the Bible, give me a verb that goes with בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ. What would that verb be?

Imu: “To love God.” I'm thinking Shema, וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶךָ. (Deutoronomy 6:5)

Rabbi Fohrman:  “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul.”  So notice that, even though we have the signature words בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ, which take us back to Shema in Deuteronomy, we don't have the antecedent that goes with בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ in verse 2. You don't have love.

Imu: Right, you're not commanded to love.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You're not commanded to love, and at this point, you're not feeling love. So what's interesting is that this teshuva process, strangely, doesn't have love in it.

Imu: You do have shema, though.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You have “listening” to God's voice. You have בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ, but strangely, you don't have “love.” And I wonder, Imu, if one of the reasons for that is because the whole nature of trauma is to be a pulverized self, and love doesn't work that way. You can't love like that.

Imu:  Love's not possible yet.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Love isn't possible when you have an isolated heart. I wonder if that's why at some level you have וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ. What's holding you back? What’s holding you back is, you can't feel love, which is a function of trauma also. I feel numb. 

Imu: What I love, also, about what you're saying is the transition from verse 2 to verse 3. Which is, you're returning up until God and you're using all your capacity of your heart and soul, and then God sort of sees that and says, “All right, you didn't get all the way to Me, but I'm going to still return you, and I can still have compassion on you,” וְשָׁב יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ וְרִחֲמֶךָ. So he's not expecting the love quite yet and he's still motivated to act.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah, and now let's get to verse 6.

Imu: We’re jumping ahead two verses, so, quick summary of 4 and 5: God will bring us back to the land from all corners of the globe, and make us even more prosperous than our forefathers. So, at this point, you're back in the land, and God's doing good to you and making you greater than your forefathers.

Rabbi Fohrman: So you're thinking, “What else do I need? I'm good! Why doesn't it all end here? What am I missing? I'm back in the land. I tried to get back to God, listen to His voice.” But no, something else is going to happen.

Imu:  וּמָל יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ וְאֶת־לְבַב זַרְעֶךָ, “God is going to circumcise your heart and the hearts of your children,” לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ. (Deuteronomy 30:6) So God is circumcising, seemingly, to make it possible to love God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you will live, or thrive, or whatever לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ means, but I'm thinking Tree of Life here. So this actually seems to really resonate with what you just said, which is, it wasn't possible, up until this point, to love God. And God's making love of Him His problem. He's going to somehow — mal, milah is to remove a foreskin, to remove a barrier. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Trauma created these calluses, desensitized my heart, that I couldn't really feel. And so God says, “I get that, I get that. So your job is, get as far as you can. You can unify the aspect of your brain, you can passionately desire to be in a position where you could love Me.” That's all it is, the most desire that you could muster. “I wish I could love, but I just can't and I feel so dead.” So God says, “Okay, that's good. I'm with you, I'll help you there. You've taken your step, I'll take one more step. I'll remove that barrier, and now that energy that you're bringing with all your heart and all your soul can flow into its natural place, which is love.”

Imu: Beautiful. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, and then here this is really interesting, לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ. It doesn't say, “so that you will live.” לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ is “for the sake of your life.” To me, that's really interesting terminology. When I hear those words, “for the sake of your life,” it's, “so that you can have a life back.” I mean, think of not being able to love. I literally don't have a life. It's like —

Imu:  You're living in black and white.

Rabbi Fohrman:  But if you can do this work of bringing your mind and your heart back, and coming to God and saying, with passion, that this is what I want, but I don't know how to get there. God can remove that barrier for you for your life's sake, to enrich your life. And this gets back to this idea that we've been coming back to over and over again in this course, which is this notion of, what did the Tree of Life really mean? Was it supposed to make you eternal, or was that just the supposition that if you could chop down the tree and consume it, maybe you could get eternality out of it? But the actual purpose of the tree was not to make you live forever, but to make you live a mortal life in connection with immortality, because that enriches my life in all sorts of magical, magical ways. And God is saying here that, if I can bring love back into your life, I do it לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ, for the sake of your life. Making your life a meaningful thing, because a life without love is not really so meaningful.

Imu:  Beautiful. The quality, the color, the “lifey”-ness of your life will return.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah.

Imu:  Next verse. וְנָתַן יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֵת כׇּל־הָאָלוֹת הָאֵלֶּה עַל־אֹיְבֶיךָ וְעַל־שֹׂנְאֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר רְדָפוּךָ. “So, God will, sort of, deflect or turn all the curses —”

Rabbi Fohrman: “That you have experienced.”

Imu:  “— that you have previously experienced, onto your enemies and those who hate you, and the ones that have persecuted you.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  “And are currently pursuing you.” (Deuteronomy 30:7)

Imu:  וְאַתָּה תָשׁוּב וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקוֹל יְקוָה, “and you will return.” So, you'd think all that returning is done. You're back in your land. וְאַתָּה תָשׁוּב, “and you will now return,” וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקוֹל יְקוָה, “and you will hear in the voice of God,” which we already supposedly have done, but now, something else is new. וְעָשִׂיתָ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺתָיו, “and now you will do and perform His mitzvos,” אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם, “that which I'm commanding you today.” (Deuteronomy 30:8)

Rabbi Fohrman:  As opposed to, look back in Verse 2. At the beginning of this process, you could listen to the voice of God, but you weren't doing anything. כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר־אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם, “as I've commanded you today.” Now you listen to the voice of God, וְעָשִׂיתָ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺתָיו, “when you actually do the command,” אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם, “that I command you today.” Well, that's a whole different world. Why? Because with love open, then performance and commands are possible.

Imu:  It's really Eitz HaChaim (Tree of Life) first, it's nechmad l’mareh first. And then you can actually do all of the Tree of Knowledge stuff, you can actually do all the mitzvos.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah, exactly. Tree of Knowledge always comes second. How you're going to live in the world, what right and wrong is going to be, is always a function of getting the basics of the emotional construct of your relationship with God right. And teshuva is about resetting those basics, and then God helping you, and then the rest flows. And now, of course, you can have the tree.

Imu:  Do you think God's mirroring that? Like, notice that what He's doing is actually preserving your life. First, He's rescuing you from places where your life might be threatened. Second, He's giving you land, which is a source of life and inheritance. Third, He's giving you chiyus (life). He says that he's going to circumcise your heart לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ. But if you look at what happens next is, after we then — so now that we did the life thing and then God gives us life, now we keep His commands and maybe God will give us fruits. Because, take a look at the very next verse.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes, look at the next verse. What's the word that appears over and over again? Read it.

Imu:  וְהוֹתִירְךָ יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכֹל מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֶךָ, “God is going to make the actions, the works of your hand, great.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  What are those? Keep on reading.

Imu:  בִּפְרִי בִטְנְךָ, so, “the fruits of your womb,” וּבִפְרִי בְהֶמְתְּךָ, “the fruits of your animals,” וּבִפְרִי אַדְמָתְךָ, “and the fruits of the ground,” לְטֹבָה, “for good.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  Oh, does this remind you of anything?

Imu:  Totally. We have לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ and now we have לְטֹבָה here.

Rabbi Fohrman:  And we have pri l’tova, the fruits of tov, the fruits of tov and ra. Almost as if you're eating the fruits of tov, and don't worry so much about the ra. The blessing is, God's going to be feeding you these fruits, and when you eat them, they don't taste like fruits of tov and ra. They taste like fruits of tov and tov.

Imu:  Beautiful.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You returned, and not just listened to His voice, but did His deeds, and now God is providing these fruits for you. Why? Because He's returning. How is He returning? Keep on going. כִּי  יָשׁוּב יְקוָה...

Imu:  לָשׂוּשׂ עָלֶיךָ לְטוֹב,  “to rejoice over you for good,” כַּאֲשֶׁר־שָׂשׂ עַל־אֲבֹתֶיךָ, “the same way that He rejoiced over your forefathers.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)

Rabbi Fohrman:  In other words: So now, you have this new, sparkling way of relating to God called love. And now, God reciprocates that with this new sparkling emotion, kav’yachol (so to speak), in His own world, which is joy. כִּי  יָשׁוּב יְקוָה לָשׂוּשׂ עָלֶיךָ לְטוֹב, “God will rejoice over you in goodness” as He rejoiced over your forefathers. There's an emotional richness which is now reciprocated.

Imu:  Do you see a connection here to the nature of the curses in Eden? When God cursed Adam and Eve, He cursed them בִּפְרִי בִטְנְךָ, He cursed Eve in the fruits of her womb and He cursed Adam בִפְרִי אַדְמָתְךָ, in the fruits of the earth. And He gave them both itzavon, they both had the curses of sadness.

Rabbi Fohrman: In a way, so, all that's going away. The fruits of your womb are coming back and are restored. The fruit of the land are restored, and that's Eve's curse and that's Adam's curse. And when God rejoices over you in goodness, somehow the sadness that you experienced and associated with those things might be gone too. Beautiful.

Imu:  What do you make of the — if I was writing that verse as an inverse to the curses, I would talk about your joy. But what do you make of the fact that the joy here, the joy that's returned, is God's joy? What do you make of that?

Rabbi Fohrman: That's a fascinating question. I was wondering about that and I'll tell you what my immediate intuition, without knowing whether it's correct or not, might be. What this suggests, possibly, is that, going back to the garden — Why is it that you'd be sad?

Imu:  Because you severed yourself from God.

Rabbi Fohrman:  And because you think God is sad. So here, God gave you the ability to be a creator just like Him, to have children, to create organically in the land just like Him. And you'd think that that would be the most joyous thing in the world, exercising your creativity. But now that you're alienated from God and you disobeyed His commands, so God's not going to take away your ability to create. But every time you do, there will be this gnawing sense of shame and this gnawing sense of sadness that, “Here I am, exercising this God-given right to be creative like my Creator, but my Creator's left me and I'm all alone, and He's disappointed in me.” Imagine how sad that is, to sit here in my own room, doing this great gift, and I'm not even connected to God anymore. So what is it that restores my own sense of joy in these things, takes away my sense of sadness, is the understanding that God is taking pride in me, is taking joy in me. And that's what lets me create and enjoy.

I think, by the way, the same thing is true, Imu, in our own children. You know, I'm old enough to be a grandfather now. You're still just having your first round of kids, and I'm a generation ahead of you in a way. But one of the things I think that is really what grandfatherhood is all about is when — you know, you have your kids, but when your kids get married, in essence, you're giving them the blessing that they should have kids now. And what's your job? My job is to be a grandfather that takes joy in watching those kids, and that really gives the kids a tremendous amount of strength, that grandparents are right there behind me and are taking joy in my kids. The kind of chizuk (strengthening) it is that, when you have a new baby and a new kid, and you can show them on FaceTime to your father and mother and see their faces light up with joy. It kind of gives you the strength to change all those diapers, to do all those things, and it doesn't seem so terrible anymore. Because there's this joy that's been bequeathed to me by my own parents, and now I, too, revel in joy with my kids. I feel like they're a partner there with me. My own creators have given me this gift of creativity and are with me the whole way. And maybe that's what's going on here.

Imu: That's fascinating that you're bringing that up. It's emphasizing — you know, we read these pesukim and we’re reading them really closely. But there's something that I may have fuzzed up in my brain because it didn't matter too much to me when I was reading it, and it is the intergenerational themes. You and your kids have to do teshuva, and then God gives me this promise that, when I was reading, I was like, “Okay, fine, I guess. He's going to love you the way He loved your forefathers.” It's like, “Okay, that's a nice promise, I guess.” But this idea of parent and child is all over here.

It almost seems like God is saying there's a special kind of joy, and maybe it's this joy of acceptance or this joy of finding your place in the inter-generational line. Where there's some incomparable joy like the joy of a parent turning to you and finding pride in you and accepting you. It gives you a home, it gives you a place. In some way, maybe there's a psychological exile any time a parent rejects their child. So what God is saying is, at the height of this, “I'm going to rejoice over you. The shame that you experience will be wiped away.” Of course you will be joyful, because to have a place, to have a parent smile at you and take you back in, what could be more joyful than that?

Rabbi Fohrman:  A thousand percent. Let's do the last verse. 

Imu:  כִּי תִשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו הַכְּתוּבָה בְּסֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה כִּי תָשׁוּב אֶל־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ, “This is when you will have heard the voice of God, to keep His commands and His chukim (laws) that are written in this Sefer Torah, and when you return to God with all of your heart and all of your soul.” (Deuteronomy 30:10)

Rabbi Fohrman:  Good. Let me point out two things that I see in this verse. At the end of the verse, כִּי תָשׁוּב אֶל־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ. How is that different than the first time around?

Imu:  Ad and el are totally different. Ad means “up until,” and here, you're actually returning all the way to God.

Rabbi Fohrman: This is what it's like to return all the way to God. This is how you get there.

Imu:  You're finally at a place to go beyond merely hearing His voice, but you can now actually keep the commands and the chukim.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes. If you can do that — in other words, it is a function of mobilizing both trees. I do need to get those emotions right, and God can help me get there, and then I do need to flow into actions and doing His will in the real world. And when I do that, my return to God is complete, כִּי תָשׁוּב אֶל־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ.

בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ has to animate not just my wanting to return to God, but my love of God — that was earlier — and my actions, what I'm doing to respond to God. I need to respond to God with all of my heart and with all of my soul, and when I do, my return to God is complete. So there are sort of three levels in בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ which is being charted here: The desire to love and to return, actual love, and then actual doing needs to come with all of myself to these three places.

Imu:  So, I'm afraid to ask you this question, but what do you make of the fact that — I think often, there's this emphasis in those who are working on themselves spiritually to focus on action, action, action, and kind of hope that the heart will follow. Do you think that that's maybe not the best strategy? Seemingly, here, the correct path for a, quote unquote, ba'al teshuva, is actually really to focus on your heart, and then the actions will flow.

Rabbi Fohrman: You know, that's a very interesting question. I hear the contradiction you're asking about. I'm going to go out on a limb. I'm going to make a distinction that I suspect is true, but I cannot, at this time, prove it to you. And the distinction is, it depends if you're talking about in the big picture or in the little picture. In other words, if I have no relationship with God whatsoever, if I am not even sure He exists in my life, I have no idea what my relationship with Him is, ever. That is something I can't fake. I can't just “do.” If I act without the basics of any kind of love or respect for God, and I act, then what explains my actions, Imu? Why am I doing it? Why would I do all of these commands if I don't have any kind of love or respect for You? There's only one answer. Tyranny. You must be scaring the hell out of me, and that's not kosher. That's what we left in Egypt. God says, “I know you had that kind of king, but I'm not that kind of king.”

“So get your basic emotional structure with Me right. I'll help you. You don't have to figure it all out. You don't have to come to Me in love. You have to come to Me and want to love Me. I understand if you're traumatized, but all I need from you is just to want to love, and I'll do the rest. I'll take away the trauma. I'll do all of that, and then you can act.” I think once you've got that straight, once you are an actor, because the big picture is right, your love and respect is there, then, if there are commandments that you feel a little lazy to do, there are commandments that you don't know exactly what they're going to do for you or you're not quite feeling it one day when you wake up to daven (pray), so then I think there's an idea. Get in the habit of acting in those ways. Do it, and then the implications in the little picture, with all the things that those actions do in terms of changing your identity, will fall into place. You will become the kind of person that the commandments mold you into. So it's almost like a chiasm: Emotions, actions; actions, emotions.

Imu:  Fascinating. That's very cool, and I appreciate that distinction, just as someone who has friends who have gone off the derech (religious path), as it were. I think the distinction actually makes a lot of sense. I think, for some people who were raised with a certain kind of tyrannical Judaism, the ultimate disintegration of that Judaism makes a lot of sense. I've seen these people and been friends with them for decades now, and I notice how their hearts have moved and how open they are to acceptance of Torah that is less tyrannical. They sort of come back around in their own way and found God in their own ways in a nechmad lemareh sort of way, without focus on the obligations first.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, it's so amazing, like how, here is the Parashat Hateshuva and it actually gives you a sophisticated emotional roadmap of how a real person who is struggling could come back, which is mind-boggling. 

Imu: Rabbi Fohrman mentioned he had two points he wanted to make on verse 10. The first was that the switch from ad to el, “returning until God” to “returning to God.” The second had to do with the beginning of verse 10: כִּי תִשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו, “When you will have heard the voice of God, to keep His commandments.”

Rabbi Fohrman: We said, “you're going to return, you're going to do God's mitzvot,” but look at the difference between doing God's commandments in verse 8 and doing them in verse 10. Verse 8: וְאַתָּה תָשׁוּב וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקוֹל יְקוָה וְעָשִׂיתָ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺתָיו, “You will return, you will listen to the voice of God, and you will do all of God's mitzvot.” (Deuteronomy 30:8) Now look at the summary in verse 10. כִּי תִשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו, “You will listen to the voice of God and you will guard all of God's commands.” (Deuteronomy 30:10) What just changed?

Imu:  You're doing shmirah (guarding) now. You were never doing shmirah beforehand.

Rabbi Fohrman:  כִּי תִשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו, “You'll listen to the voice of God to guard God's commands.” Guarding and doing, going back to Eden. There were two ways in which we were supposed to relate to God's commands in the original Eden. And now, in the latter-day Eden, in Israel, there are two ways that we listen to God's commands. We respond to God's commands, too, with the same thing: Avoda, doing the commands, but also guarding the commands. We've talked about this, which is that, in the meantime, we have these angels who were the “guarders” of the tree, the special tree. Why were they the guardians of the tree? Because God was worried that we would misappropriate the thing that we were guarding. We would stretch out our hand to take the very thing that we were guarding, and we would destroy the tree. And when do we know that we've made it? When God trusts us to be the new angels, when God says, “You're the guardians now.”

Imu:  Beautiful. It gives new meaning to the word lishmor mitzvot v'chukim. It's like, are you keeping the laws? It's not so much like you're doing all the laws, you're keeping them. Somehow, there's a relationship with these laws. Somehow, you're the custodian of them, you're the guardian of them. You bring them forth into this world, and you're angelic beings almost in your ability to do so.

Rabbi Fohrman:  So this is Parashat HaTeshuva. This is really Part 1 of chapter 30. This is the lead-up to the verses that I first saw, the ones that suggested that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are the same tree. But what you're seeing is that the antecedent to those verses is a whole theory of teshuva based upon the two facets of this tree: How you relate to the Tree of Life aspect of it, and then how you relate to the Tree of Knowledge aspect of it.

So if you keep on reading, we then have two more sections to the parsha. The next is verses 11 through 14. 11 to 14 is where Moses says, “Don't get intimidated by this thing called the Torah.” כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לֹא־נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא, “These mitzvos that I have told you today are not so far away.” לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא, “It's not in Heaven anymore that you should say, ‘Who would go up to Heaven and then bring it down and do it?’” וְלֹא־מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא, “It's not on the other side of the ocean, that you should say,” מִי יַעֲבׇר־לָנוּ אֶל־עֵבֶר הַיָּם, “‘Who is going to cross the ocean?’” We've already crossed the ocean, we already split a sea. כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד, “Because it's very close to you,” בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ, “It's close to you, and you're able to do it.” (Deuteronomy 11:14)

And therefore, and this is the third and final section, these are the verses when Moshe is basically telling you what the trees were back in the garden. And he's saying, in this new garden, in Israel, the trees are here, too. But the trees don't look like trees anymore. The trees now look like God's word, so now look and you'll see. My theory is that Moshe will begin by presenting a world in which you look at the tree from both angles, and will then isolate the “Tree of Life” angle of the tree, almost as if all of chapter 30 is one large chiasm.

If you think about Parashat Hateshuva, Parashat Hateshuva began by saying, “Okay, so there's this Tree of Life kind of thing, that you need to just listen to God's voice and don't worry about actions. Then, once you're ready, there's also this Tree of Knowledge thing that you're going to have to do, and you're going to have to blend them together so that you have the heart and the mind and the actions. And then, that's when your journey is complete when you have both of them.” Then Moshe is going to come out and deconstruct it for you, and say, “You see, here's this thing: It's called the Torah. It's both of them, but the essence is this Tree of Life thing. It's fundamentally a Tree of Life.” So watch how that goes as you begin to read רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם.

Imu:  רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם, “See, I have placed before you today,” אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב, “the life and the good,” וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע, “and the death and the evil.” (Deuteronomy 30:15) So these trees have sort of mixed together. It's not, “Hey, I place before you et ha’chaim v’et ha’mavet (life and death), et ha’tov v’et ha’ra (good and bad).” It's, “I've given you life and good, and bad and evil.” They're sort of being presented as one.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You can view it as tov, you can view it as chayim. Both of them are true.

Imu:  Good. אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ לָלֶכֶת בִּדְרָכָיו וְלִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו, “I am commanding you today to love God, to go in His derech...”

Rabbi Fohrman:  Notice the blending of the trees. There is this idea of commands, but the command is to love. In a “Tree of Life only” world, there would just be love, there's no command. “I'm not following these dictates, I’m just — what does my heart say?” But once I'm living in a “post-Tree of Knowledge world,” where I've made it through the Parashat Hateshuva, so now I’m in a situation where I can understand that, going forward, there are expectations, and one of them is that my heart should stay in the right place. There is this command to love God, but paradoxically, that's not the way you get into that command. You've got to find your way to love without the command.  Keep on going.

Imu:  וְלִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו, there’s shmirah again, you're keeping His mitvos, וְחֻקֹּתָיו וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו. 

וְחָיִיתָ, “Life,” וְרָבִיתָ, “multiplicity,” וּבֵרַכְךָ יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־אַתָּה בָא־שָׁמָּה לְרִשְׁתָּהּ,  “And God will bless in you the land that you go there to inherit.” וְאִם־יִפְנֶה לְבָבְךָ, “And if your heart turns, or turns away,” וְלֹא תִשְׁמָע, “and you won't hear,” וְנִדַּחְתָּ וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתָ לֵאלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וַעֲבַדְתָּם, “and if you get drawn away and you bow down to other gods and you serve them.” הִגַּדְתִּי לָכֶם הַיּוֹם כִּי אָבֹד תֹּאבֵדוּן, “I am telling you today that you will be surely destroyed.” לֹא־תַאֲרִיכֻן יָמִים עַל־הָאֲדָמָה, “Your days on the earth will not be lengthened,” אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה עֹבֵר אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּן, “that land that you're crossing the Jordan to,” לָבוֹא שָׁמָּה לְרִשְׁתָּהּ, “to inherit.” (Deuteronomy 30:16-18)

Rabbi Fohrman:  If you get seduced into idolatry, it's all going to go south. What you're doing is, you're severing the bonds of the relationship. Then what God is telling you is, “I actually will not sever those bonds, but you'll be back in exile and we'll have to go through this process again. So, interestingly, it's not the end of our relationship, but it will be the end, for a time, of your ability to be together in this intimate place with Me in the land.”

Imu:  It's telling you that exile can come again. הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ, “I am bringing the Heavens and the earth as witness,” הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, “I have placed life and death before you,” הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה, “a blessing and a curse,” וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים, “and you should choose life,” לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Rabbi Fohrman:  Slow down. What is not here, in the verse?

Imu:  There is no Tree of Knowledge. I don't see any good and evil language here.

Rabbi Fohrman: This is just what the tree is. At bottom, it's a Tree of Life. Its fruits may have “Tree of Knowledge” aspect, but let's talk about what the tree is, the same idea as to how you get into teshuva. What is this tree? It is a Tree of Life, וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים. Therefore, choose the life that it offers you. Why?

Imu:  לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ, “To love God,” לִשְׁמֹעַ בְּקֹלוֹ —

Rabbi Fohrman:  What word is missing? לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ, compared to the first time around in verse 16? אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם.

Imu:  There's no command anymore.

Rabbi Fohrman:  There's no command, there's just love. Choose life, to love God.

Imu:  לִשְׁמֹעַ בְּקֹלוֹ, “and to hear His voice,” וּלְדׇבְקָה־בוֹ —

Rabbi Fohrman: Only hear his voice. Is there anything about doing any mitzvos?

Imu: No, you're just clinging to Him.

Rabbi Fohrman: Listening to His voice and clinging to Him. How are you supposed to relate to the Tree of Life?

Imu: Hold onto it.

Rabbi Fohrman: You hold onto God. Why? Look at the next words.

Imu:  כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ. He is the source of your life, He is your life.

Rabbi Fohrman:  He is your life.

Imu:  I added “source.” He is your life, כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ.

Rabbi Fohrman:  It’s not because you should live, because you'll get life. That's not why. It's because He is your life. That's why you do this, and that's the proper relationship to the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is a connection to your source, and therefore, it's an end in and of itself. The real reason why you connect to the Tree of Life is because כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ, because you realize He is your life, וְאֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ, and the length of your days. (Deuteronomy 30:20)

Imu:  In the “nechmad lemareh” way of looking at things, you can sort of appreciate there's a quality distinction here. It's not about actions or what you get. It's that you can appreciate God, or a way of interacting with God and His world, purely as your life. In the same way that you would look at a tree not for what it can do for you, but purely to enjoy the tree. That really does feel like what this last verse is saying, which is, it’s not “if this, then that,” it's not “do this, so that.” It is, “Look, at the end of the day, guys, there's no mitzvah here. Just love God, listen to His voice, cling to Him. He's your life. He's אֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ.” Beautiful.

Rabbi Fohrman:  So if the beginning of the chapter is how to use these ideas to come back to God, the end of the chapter is how to stay in connection with God with these ideas.

Imu:  This is quite stunning. And this is really it. This is the end of the Torah. It's kind of a funny way to end what many people understand is a book of laws. It's sort of, Moshe boils it down and says “Sure, laws. You can listen to the laws, but at the end of the day, it's a Tree of Life.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  It is a Tree of Life, and, should you understand that well enough, you can get to those fruits, and then your experience of it will be complete, and that's true whether we're in the garden or whether in the latter-day garden. But if we can properly transplant the Tree of Life, we can nurture it to the point where we can enjoy those fruits. But the key is not to lose that connection to the Tree of Life, which is its elusive essence.

Imu:  Beautiful. Could I just ask you one more question, side question?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Sure.

Imu:  The chapter talks about shav constantly and it ends with “God is your life,” וְאֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ לָשֶׁבֶת עַל־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע יְקוָה לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ, “and your days will be lengthened to dwell securely on the land that God swore to your fathers.” (Deuteronomy 30:20) What do you make of the connection between shav, returning, and shevet, dwelling securely? Do you think that those ideas have some connection?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I think it's exactly the idea that you and I were just talking about. Verse 20 is appropriating the theme of shav one last time to make its point at the end of what is a grand chiasm. In other words: I will show you in the beginning, starting from the position of exile, how to use the ideas of Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge to come back to God, and shav, in that context, means to come back to God. But in the second part of the chiasm, it’s: I will show you, once you have that relationship established, how you maintain it. Once I've got things working, once I'm in the land and once I have a decent relationship with God, when I sort of have to keep the cylinders going and I'm living a “Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Life” world, every once in awhile I have to sort of dip into this reservoir, almost, of Shabbos and reinvigorate myself with this connection to source and Tree of Life. In order to do what? Lashevet, now, doesn't mean “to return,” but it means just “to exist,” just “to dwell.” And the second half of 30 is, what does it mean to dwell with God? And the first half of 30 is, what does it mean to start from scratch and return to God?

Imu:  Do you think that, if the first half of the chapter is you in the world of fragmentation, and so when you're in a world of duality, a world where it's hard to see these trees as anything but two, that the act of returning, like shav, is something that you do in a world of fragmentation, but what that looks like in a world of unity is lashevet? In a world of oneness, the same thing that “returning” is, ends up being “dwelling?”

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's a very deep idea. I think I'm going to have to meditate on that for a long time.

Imu: I hope we have left you with much to meditate on, as well. And if we have, please share your thoughts with us. There’s a link in the description you can use to leave us a voice note. I would love to know how any and all the ideas we’ve been discussing have made their way into your life. Until our next adventure, thank you for listening. It’s truly been nechmad — a pleasure. 

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This episode was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev. It was edited by Tikva Hecht, with additional edits by Evan Weiner. Audio editing was done by Hillary Guttman. Additional audio editing was done by Veekalp Sharma. A Book Like No Other’s senior editor is Tikva Hecht. Adina Blaustein keeps all the parts moving.