Rabbi David Fohrman: Hey, Imu. So Purim is right around the corner. I've got the Megillah on my mind, one of my favorite books of Tanach. 

Imu Shalev: Rabbi Fohrman is a liar. We have him on tape. Today is August the 30th. Purim is not around the corner. I'll keep up this farce and pretend that I'm interested in the Megillah in August.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, Imu, from the listener's point of view, Purim is indeed around the corner, and from my point of view, I'm always interested in the Megillah. So it kind of works from a certain point of view, as Obi-Wan Kenobi is fond of saying.

Imu: Welcome to A Book Like No Other: Purim Edition.

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 each season on this podcast, I'm joined by my teacher, friend, and generally very honest man, Rabbi David Fohrman to explore a Torah text of his choice.

On the docket for this season? The Book of Esther. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So let me unburden myself to you a little bit, when it comes to the Book of Esther. I wrote a book about Esther called The Queen You Thought You Knew, and, you know, it was a lot of fun writing that book. I've enjoyed watching people's reactions to it, which generally is pretty great, and yet I vividly remember this email that I got a couple years back. Somebody was really mad with my book. 

Imu: Was it my mom?

Rabbi Fohrman: It wasn’t your mom. Your mom is pretty gentle about the book. It was actually somebody who was so upset that they had written a letter to Reb Tzvi Hirsch Weinreb, who was the executive CEO of the OU, demanding that he retract his approbation for my book. 

Imu: Oh, wow. That's pretty harsh. So what problem could they possibly have had with The Queen You Thought You Knew?

Rabbi Fohrman: The problem was that he couldn't figure out where God was in the book. He says, “Fohrman's book does a great job of analyzing all of the political derring-do, and paints Esther as this brilliant tactician, and Mordechai as this brilliant tactician, and if you consider political success high intrigue, then that's really great — but where is God in the book?”

And, you know, I believe to some extent Rabbi Weinreb's response was that, “Your critique isn't really a critique of Fohrman's book. Your critique is a critique of the book of Esther.” Because God's name famously doesn't appear in the Book of Esther, right?

But somehow, the critique of this fellow sort of always stuck in my mind, which is like, when you look back at the Book of Esther, what really is the message of that book? Is the message similar to, you know, Machiavelli's The Prince? Which is that you've got to be pretty clever when you take to the political stage.

To speak in large terms about this, how do we come to grips with this idea that God isn't overtly there in the book? How do we struggle with that? What is the book sort of meant to teach us?

Imu: Yeah. It's really interesting that you're phrasing it that way. It's almost as if, like, if I wanted to study a religious book, there are so many religious books that I can pull off my shelf. And pulling off Esther, it's a great read, a real page turner. “Why did Esther do this? That seemed like a crazy thing for the king to do!” And you forget that actually it's one of the books of Tanach, right? Like, what's the payoff here?

Like, I'm really proud of, you know, my ancestors Mordechai and Esther, but if I'm trying to grow, you know, maybe I'm better off reading one of the other books on my shelf. Maybe I should read some Pirkei Avos (Ethics of the Fathers) or study some Talmud. Why this book? What is the grand spiritual moral of the Book of Esther? 

Rabbi Forhman: And, you know, I know the classic answer to this, right? The classic answer to this is, well, God doesn't appear overtly in this book, but boy, is He behind the scenes. He's pulling all the strings. And I do agree that there is some comfort in that thought, and I do agree that the book can be seen to have meaning from them.

But I still get back to that original question: What are we supposed to learn from this in terms of our lives? In other words, to me, the book then becomes a theological meditation perhaps on, you know, the sort of ways in which God is there behind the scenes.

It's almost like, so maybe I get a peek into God's world. But typically what we look to in Tanach is not getting a peek into God's world. Tanach, generally speaking, is not the story of God. It's the story of God's interaction with us, or better, the story of our interaction with God. It's what we’re supposed to do as we live in connection with God. So what's the book telling me about that? 

So I want to suggest that there's another side to the Megillah that we don't often see, in which there is something moral, something very practical and important that we need to learn to live our lives well. And if we read the story correctly, we should be able to get there. 

Imu: I just want to say it in one more way. Rabbi Fohrman loves to put courses this way, so I'll say it this way. You've been reading the Megillah wrong your entire life. You've never extracted the morals from the Megillah. So if you don't keep listening to this season of A Book Like No Other, you will continue as an ignoramus, completely detached from the spiritual takeaways of the Megillah. So you must listen if you're ever to have a dream of celebrating Purim correctly. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, that definitely sounds like me, Imu. You really channeled me there. I can hear the inner me clapping to that black-and-white notion of reading the book. Well, I'm much more into shades of gray than that, right? I think there's some real nuance here. But I'm going to delight in showing you that nuance, and I don't think we were the first ones to stumble upon it. I think the Rabbis had this up their sleeve as well. 

They've got a whole masechta in the Talmud, Tractate Megillah, that deals with Megillat Esther. And reading behind the scenes of some of the comments they make there, and some of the comments they make in the midrash, I think we can perceive a launchpad towards what the Rabbis’ understandings of the moral foundations of this document really are.

Imu: I was teasing Rabbi Fohrman earlier, but he did seem to be making a big claim. Not only is the Megillah this great political drama, not only is it a sneak peak into God's providence, but it also has some other kind of grand moral and spiritual takeaway that will change how I live today?

I have to say though, when I brought it down to earth, his question did make a lot of sense. I’ve heard people ask, “Where do you find God in the Megillah?” my whole life, but this was a new spin on that classic question. He seemed to be asking not “Where do we find God?” but “Where do we find godliness?”

Where do we find, in the Book of Esther, direction on bringing God and His ideals into our lives through our actions? After all, isn't that how we often try to bring God into the world?

So we had our goal, this grand, moral vision (What? I still get to tease him about it.), but Rabbi Fohrman had also begun to share his gameplan. First stop, those midrashim, those statements of the sages that he mentioned. But let me warn you, at face value, these midrashim won't seem related to Rabbi Fohrman's question at all. They’re just going to seem like a bunch of rabbis making really wild claims about the Book of Esther.

So in this episode, we’re going to go through the three midrashim Rabbi Forhman wants to show me. In the episodes to come, we're going to dive deep into the biblical text itself to see if we can find a deeper impetus for the Sages’ odd claims.

We’re going to follow the Sages' clues to the Megillah, but also another destination in Tanach. It’s a journey that is going to illuminate the Megillah in unexpected ways, and hopefully help to bring out the godliness hidden in the human action of this story. 

Ok, so, let's get to Midrash Number One. This is from Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer and it has to do with a minor character in the Megillah — Charvona. You remember Charvona, right? No? Maybe you remember him from the song…

Rabbi Fohrman: V’gam v’gam Charvona.

Imu: The Sages immortalized Charvona in song because he plays a tiny but important role in the Megillah. After Esther tells Achashverosh that Haman has targeted her people, Charvona, one of the king’s servants, pops up and adds that Haman has also built a gallows on which to hang the king's personal friend Mordechai.

But actually, according to our midrash, Charvona really didn’t need a song to immortalize him, because he was already immortal to begin with.

Rabbi Fohrman: The Sages say that Charvona was, in fact, an angel. Charvona was Eliyahu HaNavi (the Prophet Elijah), basically. Eliyahu is famously the prophet that never dies, that goes up into heaven in a fiery cavalcade. And, in midrashic literature, will sometimes make his presence known on earth. And Charvona is not a real person, the Sages tell us. Charvona is a cloaked Elijah, a cloaked angel.

Imu: Now, the Megillah is as absent of angels and Elijah as it is of God's name, so this midrash really seemed to be coming out of nowhere. Where do you even begin to unpack a midrash like this?

Well, just to get our foot in the door, Rabbi Fohrman wanted to start by looking for what he calls the trigger.

The trigger for a midrash is some kind of small, local problem or anomaly in the text that the Sages seem to be responding to; a literary hole or repeated word, something like that. The trigger alone won't explain every seemingly imaginative leap the Sages go on to take in a given midrash. It's a way to peel back one layer of mystery and begin to see the text through the Sage's eyes.

So was there a trigger for our midrash? Rabbi Fohrman had a hunch that there was, and it had to do with something very odd going on in the text just before Charvona appears.

We flipped open our Tanachs to read the scene together.

Rabbi Fohrman: So here is the scene in which Charvona appears. It is in the Book of Esther, chapter 7. The queen has had this series of banquets where she keeps on telling the king that, “Eventually I'm going to tell you what it is that I want.” The king keeps on saying, “Just tell me!” You know, “Half the kingdom and it's yours!”

And finally, Esther makes her dramatic reveal. She says, you know, “If I found favor in the king's eyes, please give me my life. That's all I want. My life, the life of my nation, because we've been sold off to be destroyed. Could you please help us out?”

And Achashverosh is shocked. He says: מִי הוּא זֶה וְאֵי־זֶה הוּא — Who could that possibly be that wants to destroy you in this way, my fair queen? And Esther says: אִישׁ צַר וְאוֹיֵב הָמָן הָרָע הַזֶּה — It's that terrible Haman over there (Esther 7:5-6). And Haman shrinks away in fear.

Now, Imu, if you didn't know the rest of the Megillah, if you would have to surmise what happens here, what do you think the most likely thing to happen at this point would be?

Imu: The king would be like, “I'm horrified! Let's get rid of this Haman guy. I am so sorry this had to happen to you.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, and that's the end of Haman. Haman is carted away, arrested, never to appear again, to die in a dungeon or to be hanged at the next possible moment, right? That's what you would expect. Strangely, that's not what happens. The king does get really mad, but he doesn't impetuously do away with Haman.

Imu: He goes for a stroll in the garden.

Rabbi Fohrman: A stroll in the garden, right? He decides it's time to take a walk around, see if he can calm down, which is crazy because if there's one thing you know about the king…

Imu: He's the king of impulsivity. He is not like, “I’ve got to calm down now. I’ve been in therapy, it’s time to try out some of my tools.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly! What is that about? It's like, you know, that notion in therapy. Always take five seconds to think something over, never act in haste. That's not Achashverosh, but now is the one time he decides to really give it a whirl. The worst possible news for Esther. This is not the moment you want the king to think things over, right? If he thinks a little too carefully, he may realize that, you know, there's some threads here that don't add up.

Esther has been sort of surreptitiously hinting to the possibility of a romantic dalliance, at least the way Rashi reads it, between her and Haman. She keeps on inviting them to these private banquets. The king can't sleep, thinking about Haman being invited to this private banquet just between her and him. Has this all been a plot? Is she trying to con him? Like, you don't want the king to start really thinking about it, but that's what he does, and it gives Haman crucial time to appeal for his life. So he goes and he literally begs Esther for his life because he sees he's in trouble.

What happens next? The king comes back, and he finds: הָמָן נֹפֵל עַל־הַמִּטָּה אֲשֶׁר אֶסְתֵּר עָלֶיהָ — He sees Haman falling on the couch. And the king says: הֲגַם לִכְבּוֹשׁ אֶת־הַמַּלְכָּה עִמִּי בַּבָּיִת — Now you actually want to seduce, you want to conquer the queen with me right here in this house (Esther 7:8)?

But here's the interesting thing. If you stop right there, the king still does not say, “Off with his head!” It's not like the next verse is, “...and take him away!” There's something holding him back. And it's weird because the king has promised her half the kingdom and it's yours. “I'll do anything,” and he doesn't, right? And it's like, what's going on?

And at that point, enter Charvona, this minor character. וַיֹּאמֶר חַרְבוֹנָה אֶחָד מִן־הַסָּרִיסִים לִפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ — One of the eunuchs, one of the servants of the king, came before the king and said, “By the way, king, just wanted to let you know,” גַּם הִנֵּה־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂה הָמָן לְמׇרְדֳּכַי אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר־טוֹב עַל־הַמֶּלֶךְ — “You know that that guy Mordechai, the one who, you know, saved the king from the assassination plot, who you had riding through the streets and everyone said, ‘All hail Mordecai?’ Turns out that Haman's got this gallows, this tree in his backyard to hang Mordechai on it. It's right there, and it's 50 amot high.”

And at that point, the king says, “A tree to hang Mordechai? That's the last straw! תְּלֻהוּ עָלָיו — Hang Haman on that tree.” And so, Charvona is the guy who delivers the knockout blow.

Imu: So you're saying, what do you really need to have happen here to get rid of Haman? You need Charvona, this minor character, to basically add his final blow to things. And then the king says the two words we've been waiting for him to say the entire time, which is “Hang him.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. 

Imu: And you're saying that this Charvona is none other than Elijah the Prophet.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, I'm not saying it, the Sages are saying it, but now the question is, “Nice theory, Sages. Do you have any evidence? Like, is it just something they know from tradition? Is that something they hope is true? Is that something they theorize is true? Like, when I was growing up in yeshiva, you'd say, “Well, they had a kabbalah. There was some sort of tradition, goes back a long time,” right?

Maybe, right? Maybe. But it's also possible they figured it out. How did they figure this out, that Charvona was, in fact, an angelic force?

Imu: In other words, this midrash really isn't coming out of absolutely nowhere. We can see that now. We can see what triggered it. It's weird how Achshverosh hesitates to punish Haman, and how some random servant, Charvona, is the one who finally convinces him to take action.

It's like the text is begging us to do a double take and say, “Hey, who's this Charvona fellow? Is there more to him than meets the eye?” But then to leap to filling that hole with, “Oh, he must be an angel.” It's a lovely idea, but it does seem like quite a leap.

So are the Sages relying on tradition? On a wish and a hunch? Or are they seeing even more in the text that we're not?

So, hold on to that thought. For now, we're moving on to Midrash Number Two. This one's from the Gemara, Tractate Megillah, page 16a. And it's actually commenting on that same scene we were just talking about, when Esther confronts the king. This time, the Sages are picking up on a tiny detail in that story and running with it. It's actually one of the details we also found odd, how Achashverosh just gets up and goes for a walk.

Rabbi Fohrman: Esther has just pointed out Haman, and the king, rather than saying off with his head, decides it's a good time to go for a walk in the garden. And the Sages, they're telling us what happened during that walk. We know nothing from the Megillah about what happened during the walk. We just know that it happened. He went on a walk. The Sages fill in the walk with something almost comedic. Here's what they say:

They start with the verse that tells us that the king went on a walk. That verse tells us the king was very angry when he got up and went on that walk. הַמֶּלֶךְ קָם בַּחֲמָתוֹ מִמִּשְׁתֵּה הַיַּיִן — The king got up in anger from the feast and bolted out the door to his garden. And then it says: הַמֶּלֶךְ שָׁב מִגִּנַּת הַבִּיתָן — And the king returned from the garden.

So the structure of the verse is the same: הַמֶּלֶךְ קָם…מִמִּשְׁתֵּה הַיַּיִן; הַמֶּלֶךְ שָׁב מִגִּנַּת הַבִּיתָן. And the Sages infer from this that the nature of his return was the same as the nature of his getting up. Just like getting up the king was really angry, so too on his return he was angry. And as you see in the text itself, the king was just as enraged upon his return as he was when he got up, which is counterintuitive. 

Imu: It sounds like the Sages are asking a really smart question which I would not have noticed, which is, he's going on the walk to calm down. So then you'd expect this character, right, if I'm writing a story, you say that the character went on a walk to calm down, and then he returned calmer.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right.

Imu: That doesn't appear to be what happens with Achashverosh. He's not like, “Esther, look, you know, I love you, but Haman and I, we're really tight.”

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. 

Imu: “Like, we’ve been friends for a long time and, you know, I got some clear mind on my walk.” But that's not what happens, right? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. The Sages have just pointed out the obvious truth, which is, from his statement, that he chooses to look upon Haman with such a jaundiced eye. He sees a guy literally pleading with his life, and the only thing he can think of is that he's trying to seduce his wife. He’s obviously somebody who's still pretty enraged.

So the walk didn't help, right? So why didn't the walk help? I mean, he's out in the beautiful trees, he's got 15 minutes to smell the beautiful spring air. So the Sages say, because something happened on the walk that kept him enraged.

Turns out: דַּאֲזַל וְאַשְׁכַּח לְמַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת — He actually encountered some angels. Now, he didn't know they were angels. אִידְּמוֹ לֵיהּ כְּגַבְרֵי — because they appeared as regular people. So he just encountered some people. Little did he realize that they were cloaked angels.

What were the angels doing? Well, he went on a walk to enjoy the trees, right? That's why you go on a walk. What were the angels doing? קָא עָקְרִי לְאִילָנֵי דְּבוּסְתָּנֵי — They're sitting there literally digging up the trees of the king's garden.

He's going there, and there's this whole work crew with their, you know, yellow work tape setting up a construction zone. They've got the big construction equipment, and they're just cutting down one tree after another. He's sitting there trying to enjoy the trees. 

It's like, you know, when you go on the New Jersey Turnpike and you're going a mile an hour because they've closed down five lanes and they've decided that this is a great time for construction. Well, the palace work crew has decided this is the time to completely destroy his garden.

Imu: It sounds worse than that. What I'm picturing is like a Zen garden, you know; quiet, peaceful walk with the fountain in the middle, and people are pulling up all the beautifully cultivated…

Rabbi Fohrman: Cherry trees, and like, there's no zen. There's nothing. There's just jackhammers. There's trees being destroyed, and the king is like: אֲמַר לְהוּ: מַאי עוֹבָדַיְיכוּ — What in the world are you doing here, right? אֲמַרוּ לֵיהּ — And they said, “Oh no, we are absolutely supposed to be here, King. We can show you our work orders,” and they show him their work orders.

And lo and behold, who are they signed by? Haman. פַקְּדִינַן הָמָן — We were commanded to do this by Haman. And that is what kept the king in a rage when he returned. That's what the Sages say.

Now where in the world did they get this story from? It sounds farcical. It sounds like the kind of thing that would be in a yeshiva Purim play. What are they trying to tell us?

Imu: So as with our last midrash, we can identify the trigger in this midrash, too; the narrative hole the sages are trying to fill in. It's curious that we're told Achashverosh goes on this mysterious walk and then comes back from this walk in the exact same mood, like the walk had no effect on him.

But also, like our first midrash, just because we can identify the problem the Sages are responding to doesn't mean we can make heads or tails of the way they solve this problem.

Honestly, it was starting to seem like the Sages just like to throw angels at every literary hole in the Book of Esther. The unknown dude? He's an angel. The mysterious walk? The king met angels. But what about Achashverosh's walk in the text itself is actually screaming out, “This must be the work of celestial gardeners?” 

Alright, last but not least, we're moving on Midrash Number Three. This one's a little different than the last two that we saw. In this case, the Sages aren't going to be riffing off a textual problem in the Book of Esther itself. Instead, they're going to be playing what will probably seem like an odd kind of party game, a game where the Sages ask, “Are the characters from Megillas Esther hinted to in the Five Books of Moses?” At least this one has nothing to do with angels, though it does have to do with a kind of angelic paradise — the Garden of Eden.

But the Rabbis are not concerned about that. They ask about each of the major characters: X min haTorah minayin — where do we find a remez, a hint to the following characters?

So for example, Haman, of course, is the archvillain of the Megillah, the one who wants to single handedly wipe out all the Jews of the realm in one blood-soaked day in the month of Adar. And the Sages ask, Haman min haTorah minayin — Where do we find Haman in the Five Books of Moses? Where do we have a hint to his name? 

And they take us to this verse really early in the Torah. It’s the moment where Adam, having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is hiding behind a tree, naked. God approaches him in the garden and has a question for him: “Adam, where are you? Where'd you go?”

Adam is like, “Well, I was hiding because I was naked.” And God's next point is: מִי הִגִּיד לְךָ כִּי עֵירֹם אָתָּה — One second, who told you you were naked? הֲמִן־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִיךָ לְבִלְתִּי אֲכׇל־מִמֶּנּוּ אָכָלְתָּ — Have you perhaps eaten from that tree that I told you not to eat from?

Now, that word, “Have you perhaps” is הֲמִן. The ה is that sort of rhetorical question, מִן is “from.” “Have you indeed eaten from that tree?” So the Sages say that ה-מ-ן there, הֲמִן, that's Haman.

Imu: To spell this out literally, הֲמִן and Haman share identical letters, ה-מ-ן. That's what the Sages seem to be picking up on. If you just skim the Torah text with your eyes, Haman's name seems to randomly appear in the Garden of Eden story -  only it did seem so random. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Imu, if we were playing Family Feud…you know the rules of Family Feud, right? Survey says, the goal is to give the most likely answer that a survey of 100 people would give an answer to.

So if I would say to you, Imu, give me your top five possibilities for Haman, Minotar, Amin, Ayin, where would you rank הֲמִן־הָעֵץ as a reference to Haman?

Imu: Would get the big “Ehh-Ehh.” Zero people. Did not show up on the board.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. It doesn't sound like Haman. It's vowelized differently. It doesn't seem to obviously connect to Haman. If you had to associate Haman with one character and one character only from the Tree of Knowledge story, which would it be?

Imu: The snake. 

Rabbi Fohrman: The snake, obviously. I mean, Haman is so snake-like, but the snake isn't even involved at that point. It's just a dialogue between Adam and God; no snake. So it's not like we're connecting Haman to the snake. We're connecting Haman to what God said to Adam. What's that about?

Imu: So once again, we can see what's triggering the Sages. There's an obvious textual connection - these two identically spelled words, Haman and הֲמִן. But does the connection go beyond that? Are the Sages seeing something we're not? Are they seeing something that tells them Charvona was an angel? Are they seeing something that tells them Achashverosh ran into a team of angels in disguise on his walk in his garden? And are they seeing something that tells them that Haman, who was certainly no angel, was hinted to way back in that angelic paradise, the Garden of Eden, when God first confronts Adam about eating from the Tree?

Rabbi Fohrman's hunch was, yes. In all of these cases, the Rabbis were seeing something that led them to make these seemingly fantastic and outlandish claims. And not just that, but that in all three cases, they were seeing the same thing.

Rabbi Fohrman: What I want to suggest to you, when we come back and get a chance to learn together again, is that the Sages saw one thing and they pulled on a thread. And as you pulled on that thread, more and more stuff seems to reveal itself. And all of these strange things that they're saying are just different ways of talking about what that thread reveals to us.

And the very first thread that I want to come back to you next time when we reconvene is Haman min haTorah minayin. This notion that Haman appears way back in the very first story of the Torah, it's almost as if the Sages are saying that the very end of the Hebrew Bible - this moment at the end of the exile, the end of the 70 years when the Jews in Persia are subject to this intense genocidal decree - that that moment in history, that moment of the Megillah, somehow connects to the very first moments in biblical history, the moment when God approached Adam and was like, “What were you doing when you were eating from the Tree?”

The Sages, in a way, are bringing together the beginning of the Hebrew Bible with the end of the Hebrew Bible in what I think is a majestic attempt to say, “You want to know what this Book is about? This whole thing, this thousands and thousands-page thing called the Bible, all the way from Genesis through Esther and Ezra and Nechemiah? We're not done with the story of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis. It takes us all the way through.”

We're done with it at the very end; we're done with it in the Book of Esther. Haman min haTorah minayin? And as you begin to pull on that thread. Everything else slowly starts to reveal itself.

Imu: I know I mocked Rabbi Fohrman at the beginning of this episode for making what seemed like grand claims. But now, he really was saying something that felt big. Not only is the Megillah more than a political drama, and not only is it more than a comforting peek into God's hidden hand. Not only is it a book with an even deeper moral and spiritual takeaway lying in wait for us to uncover, but now, Rabbi Fohrman was taking all of that one step further.

If you really want to understand the takeaways of this book, he seemed to be saying, you can't even think about it as an isolated book. The moral Esther is meant to teach us may actually be one of the sweeping morals we're meant to learn from the grand narrative of the entire Bible. 

And all these midrashim, these strange statements of the Sages, they might be hints to help us see the Book of Esther in the context of that grand narrative; to see this book, one of the last books of Tanach in which God is seemingly hidden, as the culmination of events that began way back in the very beginning of Tanach; in the Garden of Eden, when God was anything but hidden, when God first walked among us.

It was indeed a grand promise, but it was still puzzling. What could Esther have to do with Eden? And maybe even more puzzling, how were the Rabbis’ tales of cosmic beings and comedy sketches going to help this whole epic connection come to light?

A Book Like No Other is recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev.
This season was produced by Tikva Hecht and Beth Lesch.
Our audio editor was Hillary Guttman.
A Book Like No Other's managing producer is Adina Blaustein.
Our senior producer is Tikva Hecht.