Imu Shalev: I’m Imu Shalev, and this is a Book Like No Other. Last episode, Rabbi Forhman suggested that the Tree of Life returns at the Burning Bush. What’s it doing there? It’s alerting us to the start of a second chance at the relationship that we might have had with God in the garden. You know, if we hadn’t messed up and been exiled. This second chance comes to fruition at Sinai where, in place of the tree, we receive new means for connecting with God — God’s Words, the Torah. But while the means are new, the method for connecting is the same as in Eden. The Tree of Life has to come first. We were supposed to approach Sinai “נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה”. First, just behold the wonders of revelation. Just be with God, listen to his voice, and embrace him as יְ-ק-וָ-ה. Only, just like in Eden, things don’t go exactly as planned. God invites us up Mount Sinai for an unprecedented, holy, “Tree of Life” moment. We get scared and decline the offer. And that brings us up to speed.

That’s as far as Rabbi Fohrman and I got last time, which leaves open a lot of questions. Did we learn our lesson from Eden or not? How does our relationship to Torah continue from here? If Sinai was a “Tree of Life” moment, what about the Tree of Knowledge? It doesn’t seem right that it stays off limits. We clearly gain access to the Torah’s laws and guidance. But if, even at Sinai, we can’t seem to fully embrace the Torah as a Tree of Life, how are we supposed to benefit from it as a Tree of Knowledge without repeating the disaster of the garden, without the אֱלֹקים in us taking over and blocking out יְ-ק-וָ-ה completely? Lucky for us, at the end of last episode, Rabbi Fohrman admitted something: the return of the tree at the Burning Bush is only half the story. We’re not meant to have all the answers yet.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Remember, there’s two trees. I want to suggest that what was one tree in the garden with two faces, a Tree of Life and a Tree of Knowledge, in a way, almost split into two different trees once we re-meet the tree. One of those trees is the Burning Bush, but there’s another part to the story.

Imu: Now, I know what you’re thinking. The tree you always thought was two trees, but Rabbi Forhman and I just spent this whole podcast convincing you is one tree, is actually two trees? If that’s confusing, think about it this way. Inside the garden, where God’s Unity is manifest, the tree is a unity. Outside the garden, in this fragmented world, Rabbi Fohrman is suggesting the tree kind of does split in two. It returns in two parts, in two different stories. The Burning Bush is one of the stories. That’s where we reencounter the Tree of Life, but we’re still missing the Tree of Knowledge, the forbidden fruit.

And so, to really understand revelation and its relationship to Eden, we have to uncover the rest of the story. We have to find those missing fruit. So, how do we do that? Well, the answer is, the exact same way we found the Tree of Life. We need to pick up our magnifying glass and follow the evidence. Remember the key evidence we’ve seen so far for the tree coming back? It’s based on the imagery that the Torah gives us the last time we see the tree, at the end of Genesis, chapter 3. Let’s just review what that would look like. The tree is being guarded by two angels wielding a fiery, revolving sword. And Rabbi Forhman’s theory is, where that imagery returns, there lies the tree. We saw a lot of that imagery at the Burning Bush, and that’s what made Rabbi Fohrman suggest that the tree returns there. But we actually didn’t find everything we were looking for.

Rabbi Forhman: We’ve got the fire, we’ve got the tree in the form of the bush, but we’re missing an angel and we’re missing a sword.

Imu: So, to complete the set, we need to find the missing angel and the sword. And Rabbi Fohrman’s bet is, wherever we find this pair, that’s where we’ll find the second half of our story, and of our tree.

Rabbi Forhman: If you think about the journey of the Exodus, where does the journey from the Exodus culminate? It doesn't culminate at Sinai, it culminates when we get to the land. Right? And, fascinating, when we get to the land who do we meet? Just on the cusp of getting into the land we meet an angel with a sword.

Imu: Oh yeah, Joshua. There's an angel and a sword. But there’s no tree.

Rabbi Fohrman: There's no tree, and there's no fire. In other words, if you blend both stories together, the angel and the sword of Joshua together with the other angel without the sword, but with the fire and the tree, —

Imu: AKA, the imagery we saw at the Burning Bush.

Rabbi Fohrman: — and overlay them on each other, you have two angels, a sword, fire, tree.

Imu: Are you scratching your head? So was I. So, I've been around the block with you, Rabbi Fohrman, multiple times, but never before, when you show me intertextual parallels are you saying, “Oh, this story is connected to this story, but let me borrow a word from this third story, and I'll take another thing from another story.” How are you allowed to overlay two random stories?

Rabbi Fohrman: Because they're not random stories. Let's go into the story of that angel in Joshua 5. 

Imu: Deal. Ok, quick primer on Joshua 5. The people have just crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. And before we get to the angel and the sword, we’re told a little about those very early days in Israel. The first thing that happens is God comes to Joshua commanding that all the males be circumcised. See, the whole time they were in the desert, they hadn’t performed any circumcisions. But there's something a little strange about how these circumcisions are done, something reminiscent of the Burning Bush. And that was Rabbi Fohrman’s first clue that these stories are related.

Rabbi Fohrman: They're circumcised, interestingly, with these charvot tzurim, these swords made out of rock (Joshua 5:2). I mean, who circumcises with a sword? It's almost as if the cherev (sword) is back.

Imu: By the way, "charvot tzurim," so the sword is back but tzur (rock) is also back. Am I wrong here in saying the last tzur was also at the Burning Bush? I remember, right after the Burning Bush, this past year, we worked on a course that you taught on Moshe and Tzipporah at the inn. So there's a circumcision in that story too. Moshe had not yet circumcised his son. And God encounters him and He tries to kill Moses until Tzipporah, his wife, actually I think she takes a tzur, she takes a rock, and she performs the circumcision.

Rabbi Fohrman: She does.

Imu: So there's already, here, a connection. Right next to the Burning Bush story is a circumcision story with a tzur, and here is a circumcision story.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. So it's almost like the Bible is tipping you off and saying, “Do you remember a circumcision story with a rock sword? There's only one other circumcision story with a rock sword and it happened right after a Burning Bush story.” And that was at the beginning of a journey. The very beginning of the journey of the Exodus is the Burning Bush, and right after that there’s this circumcision story and a rock sword. Now, at the very end of the journey, where the journey is basically up and they're at the gates of Jericho, here comes a circumcision with a rock sword.

Imu: So that was one point of connection. But, I doubt you’re surprised to hear, there were more. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Now along with the circumcision with a rock sword, the people, what do they do? They offer a Pesach offering. Oh, well, go back to the Burning Bush. The Burning Bush starts this journey and where does the journey really begin? The journey actually gets underway, physically, with the Pesach offering. And now the journey's ending with our rock swords and our Pesach offering. Let's keep on reading. Verse 10.

Imu: וַיַּחֲנוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּגִּלְגָּל, “Israel camps in a place called Gilgal,” וַיַּעֲשׂוּ אֶת־הַפֶּסַח בְּאַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר יוֹם לַחֹדֶשׁ, “They do the Pesach offering on the 14th day of the month,” בָּעֶרֶב, “in the evening,” בְּעַרְבוֹת יְרִיחוֹ, “in the plains of Jericho.” וַיֹּאכְלוּ מֵעֲבוּר הָאָרֶץ, “They eat from the produce of the land,” מִמׇּחֳרַת הַפֶּסַח, “the day after this Pesach offering,” מַצּוֹת וְקָלוּי, “matzah and parched grain,” בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה, “on that self-same day.” (Joshua 5:10-11) So this is an epic verse. They had never eaten from the produce of the land. God had constantly been promising them.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn't it interesting, Imu, that if we're right about this journey being a journey to this tree, and if we’re right about the first time you encounter the Tree it’s a Tree of Life, but the second time you encounter the tree it’s a Tree of Knowledge, in what way does the Tree of Knowledge express itself? What part of the tree is the “Tree of Knowledge” part of the tree?

Imu: Fruit. It's fruit. What's very interesting — wow, that's weird. So, sorry, do you mind? I'm getting excited. The first time we saw this bush, the mental image of a Burning Bush is, it's just all bark, it's all branches and nothing else. There's no fruit on a bush. So it's a Tree of Life without any fruit. Now, we're almost getting fruit without any tree.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. This is the missing tree, the fruits of the land.

Imu: Fascinating. You can hear how excited I was. I think what really got to me was that the fruit didn’t come back in some symbolic, esoteric way. They were the actual produce of the land. It made the tree’s return feel way more concrete — dare I say, down to earth. Reflecting on this now, though, I can imagine some of you objecting, “Hey, we’re told that they eat grain and matzah. The word pri, fruit, is not actually there in Joshua.” And that’s true. This isn’t a perfect linguistic connection. I think, if you’re new to Rabbi Fohrman’s way of learning, it’s easy to get starstruck by the word play, but what Rabbi Fohrman’s methodology is really about is deep, structural intertextuality, the many ways that the Torah comments on itself to deepen its meaning. Often, these structures are created through shared language, but it can also be through imagery and concepts, as in this case, Joshua.

Granted, if, on day one, Rabbi Fohrman had sat me down and said, “Hey, did you know that the Tree of Knowledge comes back in Joshua? Look, we even eat matzah and grain when we enter Israel,” I probably would have laughed at him. But it’s seeing this act in the context of everything else we’ve seen up until now that gives it its power. And, from where I’m standing, it’s still one of my favorite moments in this adventure. Speaking of which, let’s get back to the action. Rabbi Fohrman was trying to convince me that Joshua was the second half of the Burning Bush story. To be more exact, his argument was that Joshua 5 was the endpoint of a journey that started at the Burning Bush, and I was starting to accept it. Circumcision, korban Pesach (Pesach offering), these were signposts at either end of the journey. A journey that began with one angel and the return of the Tree of Life, and now, was ending with the return of the Tree of Knowledge and another angel that we had yet to meet. So, I was excited to get to that part, but Rabbi Fohrman had one more signpost to show me first.

Rabbi Fohrman: So, let's keep on reading.

Imu: וַיִּשְׁבֹּת הַמָּן מִמׇּחֳרָת, so now they're finally in the land. Therefore, “The mann (manna) ceases to fall the next day,” בְּאׇכְלָם מֵעֲבוּר הָאָרֶץ, “inasmuch as they're now eating that which the land is producing,” וְלֹא־הָיָה עוֹד לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מָן, “and there was no more manna for the Children of Israel,” וַיֹּאכְלוּ מִתְּבוּאַת אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן, “they are now eating from the produce of the Land of Canaan.”

Rabbi Fohrman: So, finally, there's no more manna. 

Imu: The manna started way back. Not quite at the Burning Bush of course, but at the beginning of the Israelites journey through the desert. And now, it was ending. So that was signpost #3 that this journey, too, was ending. And as we were slowing down to appreciate it, I noticed something. 

That's actually kind of funny, the double entendre here. Sorry, I cut you off.

Rabbi Fohrman: Go ahead.

Imu: No, I'm just seeing, וַיִּשְׁבֹּת הַמָּן מִמׇּחֳרָת is such “manna language,” right? The very first laws, the actual laws, that we get are not the Ten Commandments. They're laws that came along with manna

Rabbi Forhman: And what were they?

Imu: Well, the main law, one of the ones that are easiest to remember, is the law of Shabbos. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Which is being, as you say, a double entendre, alluded here with וַיִּשְׁבֹּת הַמָּן. Wouldn't it be a nice, cool joke if the way the mann went out was with the word “Shabbos,” which is the way the mann went in? So what do you mean by that? Explain.

Imu: So, the law that was eventually given with the manna was, they were allowed to collect every day, but the manna did not come out on Shabbos. They were given a break from their free food, right? As if the collecting of free food was so onerous. That was the first introduction of Shabbat, in the legal sense. But what's funny here is that when the manna ceases, the manna itself is taking a Shabbos.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, so you have the “rest,” the language of “rest,” which reminds you of the manna. But there's another law, Imu, which is being referred to here, also with a double entendre of the words. Because what are the next words? וַיִּשְׁבֹּת הַמָּן...

Imu: מִמׇּחֳרָת...(tomorrow)

Rabbi Fohrman: “And the manna took a rest on the following day.” What law of the manna are you reminded of by the word מִמׇּחֳרָת, “on the morrow”?

Imu: Well, that was one of the laws, that you could not leave over any of the manna that you had. You weren't allowed to hoard the manna. 

Rabbi Fohrman: You can't hoard, you can't try to take a little bit and save it for tomorrow. If you did, it would rot. And, Imu, we have two out of the three laws of the manna that refer to this language. But there was the third law, and the third law doesn't seem to be here. What was the third law?

Imu: Yeah, my eyes are already hunting while you're talking about it, but I wonder where it is. Because now I see what you're doing, Rabbi Fohrman, it's cool. The last is, the manna was a certain measure, an omer. Everyone had the exact same, an עֹמֶר לַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת, “an omer for each skull.” (Exodus 16:16) I don't see an omer here in this verse, but I do wonder...

Rabbi Fohrman: But it would be pretty funny, Imu, if only two out of three of the laws got double entendre with this little, sly joke for us. It's got to be there somewhere, the עֹמֶר לַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת. Only one omer per person, only one omer per skull. Take a look at verse 10. Where did the manna stop?

Imu: That's right, that’s where I figured you were going. So, the manna ceased in a place called Gilgal.

Rabbi Fohrman: What a suggestive name.

Imu: Yeah, Gilgal and gulgolet (skull).

Rabbi Fohrman: You've got it. There's that third play-on-words. All three laws of the manna.

Imu: So it wasn’t just the manna itself showing up in Joshua and in Exodus. All three laws associated with the manna were here in the text too. It was like our third signpost had three mini signposts of its own. Interesting, right? Our angel would have to wait. This was worth a closer look. To help unpack the meaning of the manna’s laws, Rabbi Fohrman reminded me of a Shavuot course that he and I had made a few years back, about the significance of the manna. Link, as always, is in the description. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Now, you and I talked about these three laws, and we talked about what the meaning of those laws are. There was something about these laws that was different, fundamentally different than all the other laws. Remember what we said about how they're fundamentally different?

Imu: I think you're referring to the fact that we said that these laws were self-reenforcing. They were impossible to violate.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. You couldn't violate them. What would happen if you tried collecting the manna on the Sabbath?

Imu: There just wasn't any manna. You could go outside, but good luck collecting. It didn't fall.

Rabbi Fohrman: What would happen if you tried to store the manna for tomorrow?

Imu: The Torah says that it would get all wormy and spoiled, so you could not hoard.

Rabbi Fohrman: What would happen if you went out into the fields and you collected much more than an omer for a skull?

Imu: Almost like a comedy sketch. You'd say, “Haha, look how much I gathered.” But once you measured it, it would just turn out to be an omer, no matter what.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. And this isn't a midrash, by the way, that's saying this. This is the text that says it. The text says that's the way it is. It's crazy! So you and I suggested, back then, that these are “training wheel” laws. You couldn't transgress them if you tried. The theory that we suggested was that, it's no wonder that these are the first laws. God is getting us used to law. We had a terrible, traumatic relationship with law, back with the old king in Egypt. We had laws that broke us.

Imu: The laws objectified us for the sake of somebody else.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right.

Imu: Here, God is saying, “I don't need you to build Me any palaces or storehouses for grain. I'm God, I don't really need you. These laws are actually for you.”

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. But they're “training wheel” laws. They're getting you used to the idea of law. “I want you to understand, with these first laws, that these laws are good for you, and you'll only be nourished by the laws.” Why? “Because I've got a whole bunch of other laws coming, and you need to not be traumatized by them.”

Imu: “Get used to these good laws because the bad laws are coming.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, the idea is, extrapolate from these laws that laws are good for you. Well, guess what? Now the manna is going away. “Training wheel” law is going away, and what's coming in its place?

Imu: The land.

Rabbi Fohrman: With real law. The law that you really can transgress, that you can do wonderful things with, or transgress and disregard and do terrible things with. Tov and ra (good and evil) is real now.

Imu: That's fascinating. Wow. So the way you're describing it is, it's almost like the 40 years in the desert was not really all about the keeping of laws. It was about forging a connection with God. God protected us, He nurtured us. But right here, just the span of the few verses, boom, boom, boom. You've got a nation performing a mass circumcision, a nation performing mass Pesach offering, and then you have the nation reaping the first fruits of the land.

Rabbi Fohrman: This is the beginning of this fundamental transformation in our relationship to God's Word. Think about all the time in the desert. We read the Torah, and what is said over? כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם, “When you come into the land, you're going to do this.” (Leviticus 25:2) All the time in the desert, it's not relevant. Why is it relevant? It's relevant because it's Your Word. I love Your Word, I'm enriched by it, but now it's real. You're coming into the land.

Imu: If revelation was a second chance at the garden, the details of God’s Plan B were becoming clearer. Tree of Life first, that’s Sinai, that’s the desert. Tree of Knowledge, eating the fruit, that comes second. That kicks in when we come to the land, as signified by the literal eating of the land’s produce. But Plan B also had something that Plan A didn’t: “Training wheel” laws. Now, in our conversation, Rabbi Fohrman explained “training wheel” laws in context of the Exodus. They were meant to help a traumatized people see that God wasn’t a power-hungry Pharoah. But I can’t help reflecting on them in the context of the garden, as well. Remember, Rabbi Fohrman’s take on Adam and Eve was that they did see God as power-hungry. They misconstrued God’s command not to eat of the fruit as a power play, and they wanted a taste of that power too. But when they took it, it went to their heads. They nearly put the Tree of Life in danger.

So, here we are, centuries later, take two, and what does God do? He still wants us to connect to the Tree of Life first. He still gives us that opportunity at Sinai, but even before that, when we get the manna, it’s like, maybe He already knows we may not be able to handle that. So maybe, this time, He meets us halfway. “You really want those fruit? Fine, I’ll give you a taste, but on My terms. So you understand, these laws aren’t about power, mine or yours.” But if our relationship to the fruit, to knowledge of good and evil, isn’t about the אֱלֹקים-like power that it can give us, what is it about? To answer that question, I need to introduce you to our angel.

So let’s meet that angel. Rabbi Fohrman and I jumped back into the text, starting with verse 13. וַיְהִי בִּהְיוֹת יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בִּירִיחוֹ, right after all these laws, “Joshua is in Jericho,” וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא, “and he lifts his eyes and he sees.” Is this the same language that you have for Moses at the Burning Bush?

Rabbi Fohrman: No, not quite, but it's very similar language. Something, a sight, catches the eye of Joshua, and it's like, “Oh, wow, we remember a person all alone, he sees something marvelous.” Go ahead.

Imu: וְהִנֵּה־אִישׁ עֹמֵד לְנֶגְדּוֹ, “and there is a man that is standing against him,” וְחַרְבּוֹ שְׁלוּפָה בְּיָדוֹ

“and he has a sword that is stretched out in his hand.” There's that sword. וַיֵּלֶךְ יְהוֹשֻׁעַ אֵלָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ הֲלָנוּ אַתָּה אִם־לְצָרֵינוּ, “Are you with us or are you with our enemies?”

Rabbi Fohrman: So here you've got one angel and a sword, and Joshua wants to know whose side are you on. Almost like, “I'm not sure about the sword. Is this against me, is it for me? Is it reversible?”

Imu: Oh, interesting. It's a reversing sword. Cool.

Rabbi Fohrman: Keep on reading.

Imu: וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא, he says, “No, no, no, it's not what you think. I'm not for you or against you.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly.

Imu: כִּי אֲנִי שַׂר צְבָא יְקוָה, “I am the minister of the host of God. עַתָּה בָאתִי, “I have come now.” (Joshua 5:13-14)

Rabbi Fohrman: You know what's interesting about that עַתָּה בָאתִי? If we're really right about this being the final revelation of the tree, think about the last time we saw the tree when we were banished. Go back to that verse. Chapter 3, verse 23, that verse we've been focusing on so much in previous episodes. The verse of the Banishment.

It goes like this: God says, הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע, “Now, Mankind has become like one of Us with this premature knowledge of good and evil.” Like only one of Us, the אֱלֹקים side of God, but he's abandoned the יְ-ק-וָ-ה side of God. וְעַתָּה, “And now,” פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם, “Now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take from the Tree of Life, he has to be banished.” (Genesis 3:22) And now, what if one of the kruvim (cherubs) is back, and the וְעַתָּה is back?

Imu: We’re back at that critical moment, but this time, we’re on our way in, not out.

Rabbi Fohrman: The kruv hands over custody of the tree to the man who was once banished. It's the changing of the guard. It's the kruv saying to the man, “Now you're in charge.”

Imu: Fascinating. Are you suggesting that the פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח, the worry that Man would grab from the Tree of Life through a Tree of Knowledge perspective, that worry has gone away?

Rabbi Fohrman: For better or for worse, Man has now been given custody of the fruits of this tree to do what he will with. Keep on reading, וַיִּפֹּל יְהוֹשֻׁעַ אֶל־פָּנָיו.

Imu: “Joshua falls on his face,” אַרְצָה, “towards the land,” וַיִּשְׁתָּחוּ, “and he bows down,” וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ, “and he says to him,” מָה אֲדֹנִי מְדַבֵּר אֶל־עַבְדּוֹ, “what are you, my master,” this angel of God, “what are you saying to his servant?” Right, and there is that word, עַבְדּוֹ.

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, wow. I hadn't thought of that. Very good. There it is. It's like, “I'm ready to be oved.” That's fascinating, Imu.

Imu: This oved reference goes back to something we talked about last episode. When Adam was put in the garden, he was given the job לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, “to serve and to guard.” (Genesis 2:15) After the exile, the angels take over the guarding part, but no one’s there to serve. Only now, it’s like Joshua is saying, “Hey, we’re back.”

Rabbi Fohrman: אֶל־עַבְדּוֹ, “What do you say to your oved one? Because you were the shomer one, but now I am the oved. I am a servant, just as Moshe was a servant. What do you say to your servant?” So let's see what he says.

Imu: וַיֹּאמֶר שַׂר־צְבָא יְהֹוָה אֶל־יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, “This angel of God says to Joshua,” שַׁל־נַעַלְךָ מֵעַל רַגְלֶךָ,

 “remove your shoe from your feet,” כִּי הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה עֹמֵד עָלָיו, “because the place that you are standing on,” קֹדֶשׁ הוּא, “is holy.” (Joshua 5:14-15) Is that word-for-word what the angel says to Moses at the Burning Bush?

Rabbi Fohrman: That is word-for-word what the angel says to Moses at the Burning Bush, and that is the Torah hitting you over the head and saying, “Don't you see this is a Burning Bush story?”

Imu: Okay, fair. You've convinced me. It really does feel like these stories — the Torah is begging you to read them one with the other, and now you've really filled in the “why.” These are bookends. Back then, there was no land, but now, the laws are now down to earth, literally. They're from heaven to earth. They have practical relevance.

Rabbi Fohrman:  And now it's us to be oved them.

Imu: So there you go. Overlay the Burning Bush story with this encounter in Joshua, and we have our full set. Every detail of the last vision of the tree. But, at this point, I was more than convinced of the connection between these stories, and far more interested in the meaning Rabbi Fohrman was drawing from that connection. Adam and Eve wanted the fruit for the power it could give them. Joshua’s encounter with the angel seems to set the opposite tone. He’s submissive, he bows. He calls himself a servant. He removes his shoes. It’s like he’s standing back at the gate to Eden, back in front of the kruv with the sword. But Joshua is doing everything he can to show that he’s no longer a threat. He could be let back in. It’s like, we finally get to eat from the tree only when we finally understand that our job is to serve it.

But let’s break that lesson down for a minute, because to be oved a garden means to water it, to prune it. What does it mean to be oved a bunch of laws? Does that just mean keeping them? Rabbi Fohrman thought there was more to the metaphor, and to get there, he took a step back to ask a different question. Why was it that, after Adam and Eve were exiled, the angels only took over the job of guarding the garden? Why didn’t they work the land as well? The implication is that there’s something about avodah, working the land, that requires a human touch. But what is that, and what does that teach us about the nature of what avodah is?

Rabbi Fohrman: If I'm God, and if I've got these really handy angel replacements, why don't I just tell them to serve and protect the garden?

Imu:  Right. There's got to be something about angels that makes them unable to serve, and something about mankind that makes them ideal for service.

Rabbi Fohrman: So if we take the spiritual nature of the trees into account now, if we say, these aren't just regular trees, but these are trees that represent God's commands. So all of a sudden, service doesn't just mean tilling the ground anymore, at some level, even though that might have been physically what it was in the garden. But, in some way, that's related to some other kind of service. Why might that other kind of service be something that only man can do and not angels?

Imu: Even just in a biological sense, perhaps avodah is not possible by an angelic being. Man, we have a symbiotic relationship with the plant world. We breathe out carbon dioxide, which is what plants breathe in. Then they breathe out oxygen, which is what we breathe in. I don't know what angels breathe out or in but it seems like —

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. Angles aren’t part of the dynamic. We have this natural dynamic with trees. It's almost like we have this natural dynamic with God's Will as expressed in His commands. They do something for us and we do something for Him. Angels aren't a part of that covenant.

Imu: You keep bringing it back to commands and that makes me think very differently about commands. I'm curious to see where we go with this. It makes me wonder whether commands are not just about obeying, but they're about relationships. Maybe there's some sort of symbiotic relationship where, in the same way that us and plants sustain one another, perhaps there's some sort of relationship between us and God that happens through the commands.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's really kind of interesting, isn't it?

Imu: This idea of a symbiotic relationship through commandments reminded Rabbi Fohrman of the Shema. Not as random as it sounds. The second paragraph of Shema  basically describes what the people in Joshua are actually living. It lays out a deal between us and God in the land. If we keep the commandments, He’ll bring the rain. But the last verse of that paragraph is really strange. Rabbi Fohrman and I had spent some time pondering it last summer, and he was reminded of that now.

Rabbi Fohrman: The verse says that you should do God's mitzvos, לְמַעַן יִרְבּוּ יְמֵיכֶם וִימֵי בְנֵיכֶם עַל הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע יְקוָה לַאֲבֹתֵיכֶם לָתֵת לָהֶם כִּימֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם עַל־הָאָרֶץ, “Do God's mitzvot so that your days be lengthened on the land like the days of sky on the land.” (Deuteronomy 11:21) If you do the little equation, it sounds like you're like “sky”. Your days on the land should be like the days of sky on the land. You equal “sky”.

You and I were pondering this over the summer. We talked about, in what ways are we like the sky? We noted that, in that section of Shema, we talk a lot about rain. Rain is this interesting interaction between the sky and land. You'll be able to last on the land because there's all this rain. Then I suggested that, if you're like sky, it means that you're supposed to do the rain.

Imu: So how do we make it rain?

Rabbi Forhman: We can reach into the sky, so to speak, with reference to God's commands. There are these abstract ideas, these mitzvot. These mitzvot start in the sky, as Moses says, לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא, “They're not in the sky anymore.” (Deuteronomy 30:12) You reached and took them from the sky and heaven. In essence, we're taking these sky ideas, these abstract ideas, and by translating them through bodies into actual action on the earth, we're making a difference in the land. That's kind of what rain does. Rain is this connecting force between the sky and the land. We, too, are making the land, the world, a better place through our serving God through these mitzvos. What's the “serving?” Serving is almost like we're raining on the land.

Imu: Which is an amplification of the service that we did in the garden.

Rabbi Forhman: Well, back in the garden, לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, what happened there? God made it rain, but our job as the oved would have been to irrigate the ground, make sure that they take water from the rivers and water those trees. Isn't it interesting that that sort of gets translated into Shema? To, you know what the ultimate in providing water would be? If you, Man, could make it rain. If you obeyed the commands. It's almost like there's this feedback loop, Imu, between being oved the garden, which is serving the garden. Not just watering it, but helping make it rain by bringing these spiritual ideas down into the ground somehow. It gets to that point that, somehow, that we make the tree luscious. We make the tree vibrant by making it relevant in the world. By actually doing God's commands in the world. So that adds, somehow, to the benefit of the tree.

Then, what we get out of it is, we get to eat its fruits. Well, what are the fruits of this tree? These ideas about good and evil. It's almost like, we eat these fruits, we get these ideas about good and evil, and then God's got these commands in the sky that sort of take those ideas about good and evil and give them shape. We reach into the sky and we take those commands and make it rain. These aren't just static laws that are written in a book, but by doing them, we're changing the world. We're making the world a better place. We're doing what a person should do if they wanted to cultivate a garden: Providing water for a tree.

Imu: Through the help of Shema, Rabbi Fohrman had painted a vivid picture of what it means to be oved, to serve. Just like rain comes from the sky and nourishes the earth and helps its produce grow, we bring God’s commands down from the sky and use them to nourish ourselves and our societies. Helping those societies flourish as centers of justice and goodness, which we all benefit from.

It’s almost like we’re part of a spiritual ecosystem, and that’s what Eden and tending to the fruit is really about. Sitting back, it was amazing to me how we’d gone from Joshua’s small, personal encounter with the angel to this epic picture of the nation making it rain. It’s kind of another way the story here, in Joshua, parallels what we saw in Exodus. First, Moshe encounters YKVH at the bush, then the people as a whole encounter YKVH at Sinai. Well, here too, first Joshua reaccepts the responsibility of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and then, somewhere along the way, this encounter grows from one individual to the nation. And actually, Rabbi Fohrman’s about to show us where he suspects this happens.

Turns out, just like there’s a “Burning Bush” moment in Joshuah, there is a “Sinai” moment in this story too, if we just keep reading. And this, dear listener, brings us to the final stop on our journey. The completion of Revelation 2.0.

Rabbi Fohrman: Remember we talked about, last time, about how we were supposed to go up the mountain?

Imu: By “the mountain”, Rabbi Fohrman means Mount Sinai.

Rabbi Fohrman: The moment we were supposed to go up the mountain was when there was a shofar blast, a blast of the yovel (jubilee)?

Imu: Yes.

Rabbi Fohrman: It turns out that there's another shofar blast, if you keep on reading, as famously we go around Jericho seven times. And then take a look at Verse 5.

Imu: וְהָיָה בִּמְשֹׁךְ  בְּקֶרֶן הַיּוֹבֵל, “It was, or it shall be, in the blowing of the horn of jubilee, of the yovel,” כְּשׇׁמְעֲכֶם אֶת־קוֹל הַשּׁוֹפָר, “when you hear the voice of the shofar,” יָרִיעוּ כׇל־הָעָם תְּרוּעָה גְדוֹלָה, “all the people shall make a great cry,” וְנָפְלָה חוֹמַת הָעִיר, “and the walls of the city shall fall,” תַּחְתֶּיהָ וְעָלוּ הָעָם אִישׁ נֶגְדּוֹ, “and the people should go up.” (Joshua 6:5) Right, so just like at Sinai where there's בִּמְשֹׁךְ הַיֹּבֵל הֵמָּה יַעֲלוּ בָהָר (Exodus 19:13), here there's a בִּמְשֹׁךְ הַיֹּבֵל and people are going to עֲלוּ on the city, which is crazy.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn't it?

Imu: Because that seems to say that the mountain of God, which we're saying is Eden, is now going to become Jericho, somehow.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly.

Imu: That's what the algebra suggests. Fascinating.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, and it's like, this is God's Mountain because this is God's place. Because God said, “Okay, I'm the owner. I'm the owner of Sinai, I'm the owner of Jericho. This is my garden. You're guests in my garden now, which of course is why it's called the shofar of the yovel. Because what's the yovel? The time, every 50 years, where we remember, “You know what? I don't really own this land after all.” There's another owner. There's God. And somehow, we're hearing these resonances, not just in the Burning Bush, but at Sinai, and it's as if there's another revelation of the Torah.

This is not the revelation of the Tree of Life. It's the revelation of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's the revelation of the practical side of Torah. Now you're in the land, and you've been deputized by God as the ones in charge now. So now you gotta figure out what to do, and now, good and evil becomes relevant. Somehow, a man who was banished from the last garden, and the garden has shriveled because he wasn't there to be oved it, has to fix that. He has to come into the garden.

Imu: Amazing, beautiful. It gives a whole new meaning to our purpose in life, Israel's purpose in the land.

Rabbi Fohrman: All right. Imu, it's been wonderful.

Imu: After this whole, long journey, we end up where we started: Back, ostensibly, in the garden, in God’s land. And, amazingly, we’re finally, finally allowed, nay encouraged, to eat of the forbidden fruit. You know, so much ink has been spilled over the sin of eating the fruit, how it was the beginning of the end, the gateway into everything wrong with humanity. But Rabbi Fohrman’s take is just the opposite. In the right time, in the right way, eating the fruit is what we’re all working towards. We just need to behold the beauty of the Tree of Life first.

And that, dear listener, is the story Rabbi Fohrman promised you, the story hidden in the setting of the garden. The story that, somehow, step by step, text by text, had turned into the story of the Israelites. And I think, in many ways, the story of all of us. What it means to be a fragmented and imperfect human being, trying, and failing, and trying again to reach the Divine. There’s really something beautiful about the nuanced and complex relationship we have with God and with Torah that I’d only seen by following this winding path with Rabbi Fohrman through Gan Eden, Sinai, Revelation ,and finally, our entrance into the land. But now that we’d come to the end of this story, my mind was reeling with the possibilities and implications of everything we’d learned. 

What does this all mean for Judaism? What does it mean for me? It was at once very exciting and thrilling and compelling, but also simultaneously really confusing. Because when I look back at the claims we made, they also felt all over the place. Trees turning into texts, fruits turning into commandments. How does any of that even work? And what, really, was I supposed to take from it? And, strangest of all, in some ways, Torah now felt like a b’dieved, a second thought. Plan B, as we’d call it. So, is that a step up from the tree, or a step down? And what does that mean for how I should relate to Torah? Was I supposed to go out and hug a tree? Counterintuitively, the Torah-tree connection was interfering with my love for this document. And, simultaneously, I was captivated by how Torah may even be more tree-like, and how I could help it come to life and blossom. But I wouldn’t find clarity on any of this until I sat down with Rabbi Fohrman for one last conversation.

Next time on A Book Like No Other:  Rabbi Fohrman and I take a step back to reflect on the bewildering relationship we’ve been seeing between the Torah and the tree, and surprise ourselves to discover there's something we’ve been getting wrong this entire time. 

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, a nonprofit media company dedicated to helping people fall in love with Torah. If you like what you're listening to, I’m gonna ask you if you can please consider joining the ranks of our paid members at alephbeta.org. Aleph Beta is a bit of a weird nonprofit. We’re almost entirely crowdfunded by people like you. So I just want to make this plea, that if this Torah meant something to you, it’s up to individuals like you, who actually vote with their contributions, with their small donations, to say, “Hey, I believe in this. I like what you’re doing.” Your contributions go towards teaching and spreading high-quality Torah to as many people as we possibly can. If that mission matters to you, if you want to support it, it means the world to us. Thank you for partnering with us, and enabling us to do this really meaningful work.

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. A Book Like No Other’s senior editor is Tikva Hecht. Adina Blaustein keeps all the parts moving.

I have a question, by the way, what do you make of the fact that it's הַר הָאֱלֹהִים when we're shown what seems to be a Tree of Life (Exodus 3:1) and it says שַׂר צְבָא יְ-ק-וָ-ה when Joshua is supposedly confronting the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Joshua 5:14)?

Rabbi Fohrman: הַר הָאֱלֹקים חֹרֵבָה, you mean? That's very tricky and interesting. I want to argue that the Burning Bush is the moment of switch. It's the moment of revelation of יְ-ק-וָ-ה. So until then, it's הַר הָאֱלֹקים. In other words, in its state of protection, of הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ, all it is הַר הָאֱלֹקים.

Imu: Uh-huh, and that's why man has to stay away.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah.

Imu: And then we're taught about יְ-ק-וָ-ה, we make a relationship with יְ-ק-וָ-ה, and in that sense we are learning to approach it in a נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה state first. And then, that's when the שַׂר צְבָא יְ-ק-וָ-ה comes and says, “Okay, you’re ready. So you're ready, I’m letting you come back.”

Rabbi Fohrman: So the שַׂר יְ-ק-וָ-ה, the same יְ-ק-וָ-ה who banished you because you didn't recognize Him, is willing to bring you back to let you eat from these dangerous fruits.  Because the hope is that you've come to recognize the loving, connected God, and now you can eat the fruits in a way that can be successful.

Imu: Beautiful. I have to tell you, the number of plants in my house have “10-X'd” since doing this course. This was awesome, as usual.

Rabbi Fohrman: Was it cool? Yeah.

Imu: It was so cool.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, it's amazing. See you.