Rabbi David Fohrman: Hey Imu, nice to have you back. I guess this will be our final episode on the Mekallel, but the way things have been going, you never know. 

Imu Shalev: That's true. And to our listeners who think that time has elapsed, it hasn't. We are recording in one marathon long session. Rabbi Fohrman will not let me leave. 

Rabbi Fohrman: I have placed Imu in jail.

Imu: An Eden-like jail, an Eden-like prison. 

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right.

Imu: Hi, I'm Imu Shalev and this is A Book Like No Other.

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

The reason we were in this Eden-like jail, continuing to record without a break from our last episode, is because Rabbi Fohrman was excited to show me something he'd noticed when he returned to take a second look at our texts. 

Remember last episode, we looked at two things Tikva and I had noticed: The connection between the Mekallel and Gan Eden and the juxtapositioning of the Mekallel story with Yovel. And through those noticings, we'd discovered that Yovel seemed to be God's way of teaching future generations the value of compassion beyond the law, so that we might avoid alienating people like the Mekallel in the first place.

It seemed like a redemptive path out of the darkness and harshness that saturated the Mekallel story. But what if that doesn’t work? What if someone like the Mekallel is cast out and the downward spiral is set in motion? Is there a way out from there?

What Rabbi Fohrman noticed was a possible answer to this question, and that answer came from taking a closer look at none other than Moshe, the one character in this story who our reading last episode had not yet redeemed.

Rabbi Fohrman: In asking for what could have been done differently, what's the path out, Moshe himself points the way towards a path out. And for that, I want to go back to something we talked about in, kind of, those earlier discussions we had about Moshe's earlier life in Egypt, and to look at that more carefully.

Imu: Remember back in Episode 2, we looked at a number of connections between the Mekallel and Moshe's coming of age story in Exodus, chapter 2. Rabbi Fohrman was bringing us back to that chapter in the text and in Moshe's life. Don't worry if you don't remember all the details. Rabbi Fohrman actually did my job and recapped the most important parts.

Rabbi Fohrman: So we talked before about how Moshe finds himself taken in by the daughter of Pharaoh and he's brought up as a prince in the palace. And yet, there's an expiration date on that wonderful life that Moshe has in the palace. There's going to come a time where it just can't be anymore. Maybe as a function of Moshe's brit milah (circumcision), he's going to understand that he's different. It's only a matter of time. 

And the text suggests that, at some point: וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו — He goes out (Exodus 2:11). And those chilling words, וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו, that he goes out, is the beginning of him finding no place in the world. And we talked about those copious echoes between the story of the Mekallel and the story of Moshe. And those words, וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו, which signify the expiration date for his happy life in the palace are the words that begin the parallels of the Mekallel in the Book of Vayikra: וַיֵּצֵא בֶּן־אִשָּׁה יִשְׂרְאֵלִית וְהוּא בֶּן־אִישׁ מִצְרִי.

Moshe is the original child of “the מִצְרִי”, the child of the daughter of Pharaoh who goes out. And what happens when he goes out, like later on when the Mekallel will go out? He goes out to his brothers. He goes out into Israel and he sees something. And what is it that he sees? 

The first thing he sees is וַיַּרְא אִישׁ מִצְרִי מַכֶּה אִישׁ־עִבְרִי מֵאֶחָיו. He sees this אִישׁ מִצְרִי that's striking, that's hurting this אִישׁ־עִבְרִי.

So here you have Moshe finding this Egyptian man beating up on a slave. And all the time that he would've been an Egyptian prince in the palace, he would've looked out upon an Egyptian taskmaster beating up an Israelite. He would've said, “Well, they're slaves. They deserve it. They're not really human anyway. That's the way things are.” But now, all of a sudden, he sees it differently, and he sees this as terrible and wrong. 

And here, I want to get back to those two values, which we were talking about at the end of last session. One of those values is judgment, justice. So if I asked you, what value is animating Moshe when Moshe strikes the Egyptian taskmaster and kills him? What moral value would that be?

Imu: It's justice. He's a vigilante, an avenger.

Rabbi Fohrman: As you correctly say, he's a vigilante, right? He's doing what's right, what's just. So what happens next? Immediately after this first fight, the next day, וַיֵּצֵא בַּיּוֹם הַשֵּׁנִי. He goes out again and he sees two Hebrews that are fighting with one another. And the two Hebrews are fighting with one another, and one is an aggressor and the Torah says so. וַיֹּאמֶר לָרָשָׁע — He says to the evildoer, לָמָּה תַכֶּה רֵעֶךָ — why are you hurting your fellow? Right? Now, at that point, again, what value is he championing?

Imu: It seems, again, like it would be justice. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. Moshe’s standing up for justice again.

But then he gets called on that, and the aggressor turns around and says: מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ — Who made you the judge and the jury around here? Who said you can execute vigilante justice? And it's this cold assessment, right, that, all right, you know, you're arguing for justice, but who says that you're the policeman? Who says that you're empowered to demand justice?

That helps him understand something; helps him understand that, you know, he doesn't really have a place. He no longer is Mr. Egyptian Prince around here who can just pull rank on people. He left that irrevocably when he killed that Egyptian. He turned that badge in, and now who is he? You know, you might say he's one of these Israelites, but the Israelites sure don't think so. He's not one of them who can judge them from the inside. He's really someone who has no place.

So here's this moment where Moshe finds himself in the shoes of the Mekallel, almost a man without a place. And what happens? What happens is, as Pharaoh hears and wants to kill Moses, is that Moses runs away. 

Imu: So, so far so good, right? Nothing really new. And of course, after Moshe runs away, that's when he goes to Midian and gets taken in by Yitro. At this point, that's what I thought Rabbi Fohrman was bringing our attention back to; how Yitro disrupts Moshe's potential downward spiral into becoming even more like the Mekallel in the worst ways.

But Rabbi Fohrman actually wanted to take a closer look at what happens right before Yitro steps in. And surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, this little episode also begins with a kind of fight. This is still Exodus chapter 2, now we're at verse 16.

Rabbi Fohrman: וּלְכֹהֵן מִדְיָן שֶׁבַע בָּנוֹת — Yitro had seven daughters, and they were shepherdess. And they went and they came to the troughs and: וַיָּבֹאוּ הָרֹעִים — But these aggressive shepherds came, וַיְגָרְשׁוּם — and they chased away the daughters of Yitro, וַיָּקׇם מֹשֶׁה וַיּוֹשִׁעָן — and Moshe came and saved them. And if I asked you again what value is he championing when he saves them, the answer would be…? 

Imu: Justice. There's an oppressor; there's an oppressed. Moses gets in between the two of them, saves them.

Rabbi Fohrman: That’s right, and once again, that's an act of justice.

But now let me ask you something. The Torah adds a little coda to this, something which doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. Which is, after Moshe saves the daughters of Yitro: וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת־צֹאנָם — He gives to the sheep water to drink.

He gives the sheep water to drink. Why do you have to say that? I mean, if you would weigh, Imu, on the scale of heroism, if you have your Superman cape on and you were judging how heroic is Moshe, right? So Act One, there's all these shepherds. They're very aggressive. They're driving away these shepherdesses. One lone man comes along and single-handedly disbands this group of aggressive shepherds, saving the girls. On a scale from zero to 10, right, how heroic is that? 

Imu: Yeah, it's pretty heroic. Probably a 9. You know, there's nothing more romantic than getting in there, saving the girls, and beating up the bad guys. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Right? That's pretty heroic. And now Moshe gives water for the sheep to drink. Well, how heroic is that? I mean, in isolation, that Moshe would just come along and see these girls there and give them water, a drink, right? Scale from 1 to 10? 

Imu: On the heroism scale? Pretty low. It's a one. He's the butler. 

Rabbi Fohrman: He's the butler, right? He's the waiter. I mean, you know, find someone else to give the water to drink, right?

But notice that, when the girls bring him into Dad, right, listen to what they say: אִישׁ מִצְרִי — Here's this Egyptian man, הִצִּילָנוּ מִיַּד הָרֹעִים — he saved us from those aggressive shepherds. וְגַם־דָּלֹה דָלָה לָנוּ וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת־הַצֹּאן — And not only that, he gave the sheep to drink.

If you connect the dots, Moshe has been standing for justice, justice, justice; but when he gives the water to the sheep to drink, what value is that? It ain't justice.

Imu: Yeah. That is pretty wild, actually, that this is even in the text. Especially, like, when they're telling their father the story, right? I would be like, “Oh my gosh! Like, a superhero came! An avenger came, beat up the bad guys!” But that's not what they say. “A superhero came and beat up the bad guys, and by the way, he also watered the sheep.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And what does it show you about Moshe, that he watered the sheep? If you think about it, it is really the capstone to the romance. There is something romantic about watering the sheep after being the big hero.

When Clark Kent saves Lois from some aggressor, that shows his strength. That shows his power. It shows that he's superhuman. After all, it's a Superman movie. That's a superhero. But what does it show you when the superhero gives the sheep to drink? It doesn't show you that they're superhuman. What does it show you about them? 

Imu: Maybe that they're human. 

Rabbi Fohrman: That they're human. To be compassionate is to be human. The human side of the superhero. That's what really makes them compelling. 

Imu: This reminds me of, like, the word for “giving water” to the sheep. You know what that word is? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת־הַצֹּאן.

Imu: Yeah, there's a double entendre there. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. The same word for “kiss.” Almost as if he's giving them a kiss and showing love to them, right, by watering their sheep. The chaste kiss. He's kissing them without touching them. And of course, the daughters come home and they're smitten by this man. 

Imu: Because it's an act of service, and therefore maybe even an act of intimacy. Whereas, like, beating up the bad guy may be romantic, but it's not quite intimate. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Almost as if there's power versus softness. A kiss is the ultimate soft touch, whereas hitting, striking, killing someone, threatening violence is the ultimate hard touch. And Moshe takes hard touch and juxtaposes it with soft touch. Soft touch is the kissing-slash-giving the water to drink, and hard touch is the threatened violence that, “I'll kill you, like I've killed these other people if I have to, in order to save the victim from the aggressor.”

Imu: Sometimes insight comes from a web of parallels spanning three books of Tanach. And sometimes, it comes from paying a little extra attention to three words. וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת־צֹאנָם — And he watered their sheep. 

What our discussion around this detail really highlighted for me is that these two values, justice and compassion, that we keep dancing around aren't just about outcomes. They can color a person's total way of being in a given moment. When Moshe stands up for justice, he's asserting his own power; his ability to act violently, albeit for a good cause. When he acts with compassion, he's finding softness within himself, showing his own humanity. 

This is something we've touched on before. In Episode Three, we talked about how the drive for justice is intertwined with the drive for control. Last episode, we talked about how compassion nurtures human connection. In a way, it's like we've been creating these psychological profiles of Justice Man and Compassion Man.

But nowhere has the contrast been so sharp and so simple as here with Moshe. When Moshe waters the sheep, he seems to transform into a new person, and that's exactly what Rabbi Fohrman was trying to get at. Maybe this was Moshe's way out.

Rabbi Fohrman: And so what I want to suggest is that, in a way, what happens in Moshe's life is that Moshe has a way out, at the moment that he feels like life has hemmed him in, that he doesn't have a place in the world. The Egyptian world won't accept him and the Israelite world won't accept him, and he runs away. He's living, at that point, in a world where he is not accepted by a single value. And the value which is not accepting him is the value of Mishpat, the value of justice. He can't fairly say that, “I should be treated like a prince anymore.” He's no longer part of the Egyptian court. He traded that in when he killed the Egyptian. 

And he can't fairly say that, “I should be part of the Israelite nation and grow up among them.” מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ — Who made you the judge and the jury around here? And suddenly, he's cast out with no place to be. He, like the Mekallel in the world of justice, has no place to be. 

But his way out is, as he runs away, in his own life, he finds a way to bring another value into his life. After expressing justice one more time and saving the daughters of Yitro from destruction, he does something which is just pure compassion for them. And in that pure compassion, they see something in him that makes him so utterly compelling that they go back to their father and they say, “Here's this guy that not only saved us, but gave our sheep water to drink.” And Yitro is like, “You know what? Let's take him in.” 

Now, if you interviewed Yitro and you say, “Yitro, why are you taking him in? What value are you expressing by taking a man?” It's not justice. 

Imu: I think justice is, maybe, you give him a gift or you thank him. But letting you dwell with me? Like, to actually live with me? That's recognition of this guy's potential. “I want him to dwell with me.” That's compassion.

And that's what it seems like you're pointing out with Yitro’s interaction with Moshe is, “You've exercised not only power, but you've exercised compassion. And so you have a place with us, you have a place in my home. You can dwell with us.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. Not because it's the fair thing to do, but because compassion demands that, and Yitro gives into that after Moshe gives into that.

Imu: So the compassion that changed Moshe's life started with Moshe himself. At his lowest, rather than curse God for creating an unkind world, Moshe does what he can to make this world a kinder place, and finds that he gets treated with kindness in return.

It got me wondering, what if the Mekallel had done the same? I think it's naive to assume that kindness will always be met with kindness, and that if the Mekallel had responded differently, the tribe of Dan would have just welcomed him in with open arms. 

But, again, thinking about these values as whole worldviews, when Moshe waters those sheep, it's like he exits the world of justice and enters that of compassion. And if the Mekallel could have done that, well, maybe it would have helped to abate his own rage and moral indignation.

I think that's what Rabbi Fohrman means by this being a way out. The Mekallel seems to meet his hardship with hard touch. He seems to buy into the belief that he doesn't have a place in this world and then curses God for that injustice. But if somehow, and I'm not saying this is an easy thing to do, but if somehow he could have shifted gears and focused on being compassionate towards someone else, maybe that could have helped him step into a different world; one where, despite what anyone else says, he has value by nature of his own humanity and his ability to care for others. 

But now, even more than before, I had to wonder. If Moshe knew all this from his own experience, why didn't he share it with the Mekallel? He could have been a mentor for the poor guy. He could have really helped him find a way out. 

This was our old question, back with a vengeance. But before we could get to it, Rabbi Fohrman had more to show me about the significance of Moshe's behavior just in the context of Moshe's own life. After all, every act we'd seen of Moshe's up until now was grounded in justice. So where did this impulse for compassion come from? 

Rabbi Fohrman: If you think about it, when's the first time Moshe saw those two values balanced? The value of someone putting themselves at risk to save someone from an aggressor, no matter what it was, together with just some simple, caring, incredibly intimate act of compassion. That balance goes back very, very deep into his own life. 

Imu: Are you suggesting his adopted mother?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, the daughter of Pharaoh. The daughter of Pharaoh sees something, sees this child in the bulrushes of the Nile, and she dispatches her maid servant to save that child.

If you had to interview her at that moment, if you were an enterprising reporter, you could stop her and you could say, “What value is motivating? Why do you want to save that child?” What would she tell you? 

Imu: Compassion. Pure compassion. I don't think it's power.

Rabbi Fohrman: Maybe.

Imu: You think it's justice? 

Rabbi Fohrman: I think it’s justice. 

Imu: You think so? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. Who is she the daughter of? 

Imu: Of Pharaoh. 

Rabbi Fohrman: She's rebelling against him, against his entire value system. Chazal (the Sages) say that the daughter of Pharaoh ended up marrying someone. Do you know who she married? The Book of Chronicles tells us she married a guy by the name of “Mered;” “Rebel.” And who was he? Kaleiv (Caleb) that Chazal says was מָּרַד בַּעֲצַת מְרַגְּלִים, rebelled against the Meraglim (the Spies) (Talmud Bavli Megillah 13a).

Chazal say it was appropriate that she married Kaleiv because Kaleiv rebelled against the Meraglim, and she was a rebel too. She rebelled against her father. “My father is going to come along and turn morality on its head, say, ‘There's a national security crisis. We should kill all these Israelites.’” Who's going to stand up to you? No one's going to stand up to you. Everyone's going to be scared of you. There's going to be some sort of herd mentality. Everyone's going to get together. They're going to throw the children in the Nile. Who's going to stand up to you? Who's the only one who could stand up to a king like that? 

Imu: Somebody who, I mean, somebody who's… 

Rabbi Fohrman: His own teenage daughter, who's biologically inclined to rebel against Dad.

Imu: So I could see Rabbi Fohrman's argument. Maybe when the daughter of Pharaoh first decides to save baby Moshe, it's really about standing up to her father. But it was hard to believe that she didn't feel any compassion for this sweet, vulnerable little baby. Of course, that she did also feel compassion was exactly Rabbi Fohrman's point. 

Rabbi Fohrman: She didn't stop with that heroic act, that act of justice, that reactive rebellion against her father's value system of saving the Hebrew child from death by the waves. She did something else. Keep on reading.

וְהִנֵּה־נַעַר בֹּכֶה — She sees this child crying. At this point, she's already saved the child from the waves. וַתַּחְמֹל עָלָיו — A wave of pure compassion washes over her. The child's been out in the sun. He's dehydrated. He wants to nurse. That's the immediate need.

Then Miriam shows up and says, “Should I find you someone who can nurse the child?” And she says, “Yes, go.” And Miriam finds a nursemaid, and ultimately the daughter of Pharaoh does two things. She saves the child from destruction and then she gives the child to drink. 

Isn't it it interesting that Moshe saves Tzipporah from destruction and then gives these sheep to drink? Almost as if he's mimicking his own experience as an infant without even knowing it. He's championing the rights of the downtrodden to not be downtrodden; to not be destroyed just because someone powerful can destroy them; and that's justice.

But he's also championed something else, something gentle. Just a kiss. The most intimate act of all, the most intimate act that he was given. That he was nursed after he was saved from the waves. 

Imu: So this balance between justice and compassion colored Moshe’s earliest formative experiences. It was what he knew as a baby. And when he was lost in Midian, it was what he came back to, how he found his footing as a grown man. But there was even more to it than that because, as Rabbi Fohrman is about to show us, this pattern continued as Moshe evolved again from a single individual into the leader of a nation.

Rabbi Fohrman: Taking this forward, you know, if Moshe's experience with finding a wife echoes with his own experience as a child, it doesn't just echo with his past; it foreshadows his future also. Because there's going to come a time when Moshe has to save folks from destruction. But Moshe also has to give them to drink; Moshe, partnering with God. And of course, when does Moshe save us from destruction? Ultimately, when he rescues us from Egypt, along with God, the final moment of that is the Sea of Reeds. The moment that he saves Israel from the waves. God's the Great Superhero. 

You know, look at the Ten Commandments. Look at The Prince of Egypt. All of those stories end with the climactic moment of the Sea of Reeds. They don't end with the next story. That gets left on the cutting room floor, but the next story is Marah. The next story is this little coda, this little compassionate thing which is, the people came and they were thirsty and there's bitter waters. And God finds a way to sweeten those waters and tells Moshe, “Throw the stick in the water. Sweeten the waters.” And together with that, gives us to drink.

God wasn't saving them from an aggressor. God was just loving them and taking care of them because that's what they needed at that moment. 

Imu: I never noticed before how much this motif shows up in Moshe's life. It's not just how small acts of compassion keep following more heroic acts of justice. In each case, the compassionate act is giving a person or an animal something to drink. That metaphoric kiss. One story alone could be an outlier, but all together…?

Moshe's ability to match justice with compassion seemed core to who he was, and by extension to the Israelites formation as a nation. And this, Rabbi Fohrman thought, spoke to how core these two values are to Torah in general.

Rabbi Fohrman: These two values, I think, are the two great values that the Torah over and over comes back to. It's values that go back to Abraham's world. God says, “I need Abraham to father a nation that will be devoted to two values, to be shomrim (guardians) of two values. And those values are called Mishpat, but also Tzedek; Tzedek and Mishpat; Mishpat, justice.

But Tzedek is something else. It's a compassion that's something that's beyond just the letter of the law. It's not because you deserve it. It's not because fairness demands it. It's because it's what love demands. And love demands something more than the letter of the law sometimes demands. 

Imu: This is right before God destroys Sodom, in Genesis 18, and we're told that God decides to share his plan with Abraham because Abraham is going to be the father of a great nation, a nation with a special purpose. וְשָׁמְרוּ דֶּרֶךְ יְקוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט — They will guard the path of God, doing Tzedaka and Mishpat, usually translated as “charity and justice.” 

But Rabbi Fohrman's interpretation of the word Tzedaka is that it refers to this kind of compassion we'd been discussing, this companion value to justice that urges us to go beyond the law. Now, honestly, proving to you that this is the meaning of Tzedek could be a whole season on its own, and hopefully one day it will be. But whether you're on board with this interpretation or reserving judgment, what I'm sure is clear is how foundational to Torah Rabbi Fohrman considers these two values to be.

What might be less clear is why that matters so much to him. I mean, in a way, it's pretty basic right. Of course we need to balance justice with compassion. Being nice is a nice thing to be. But there was something about the Torah's devotion to justice and compassion that fascinated Rabbi Fohrman beyond the obvious, and he took a breath at this point to try to put into words what that was.

Rabbi Fohrman: You know, Imu, the last time we were talking about this off-camera, I give you the analogy from the world of calculus. You know, I was watching this lecture by I forget who, this Yale professor who was sort of explaining calculus, which I never did very well in back in school, partly because I didn't understand the whole purpose of the thing.

Like, what was the purpose of calculus? It's all these DXs and dYs, but what's the whole point of the thing? And he was explaining the point of calculus, which I thought was so revelatory. And the point of calculus is to deal with something which is not easily dealt with in the world, which are curves.

Curves can't be expressed easily mathematically. You can't find the area of a curve. You can't find the area of a circle in any intuitive way. You can find the area of a triangle in an intuitive way, and the area of a rectangle. All you have to do is take the two sides, multiply them by each other, and you understand what the square area is. But how are you supposed to find the area of a circle, this thing which is just curved? It seems impossible.

So calculus comes along and says, I'll help you out with curves. What do you do with a curve? You pretend it's a triangle. You pretend it's a rectangle. You can't take it and divide it up. You say, hmm, you know, can you imagine taking this slice of the curve and then filling it with a whole bunch of triangles? Well, if you fill it with small enough triangles and small enough rectangles, you could add up the area of all of those and you would be able to approximate the area of that curved space. Well, you could approximate it, but ultimately, to really get to the curve, you'd have to fill in the spaces that's left in that curve between all of those triangles and all of those squares.

It's almost like when God gives us Mishpat, when God gives us justice. Justice is a blunt instrument. It's rectangles. It's sharper than the sides of life really are. And that's one tool that we can use to live the tool of law. But there is another tool to really make the curve. 

There's an infinity about life, and we fill in that infinity with another value; with a value we call Tzedek, something that goes beyond the letter of the law. And in so doing, we become God-like; we become infinite; we become like the curve, and that is Tzedek. And God says, “You have to keep the laws. You’ve got to be a triangle. You’ve got to fill up the curve with squares. Otherwise, you're never going to get anywhere next to the area of this curve.”

But fill in the space in between, right, and together that brings you to life. And that other indefinable part is the right thing to do, even though it's not fair or it's not just. But compassion demands it. 

Imu: We talked earlier about how compassion brings out the human in us, but what I heard Rabbi Fohrman saying is that compassion also brings us closer to the Divine. And when you look at it this way, the ordinary push and pull of justice and compassion in our lives becomes mesmerizing. Every opportunity to go beyond the order and structure of moral law becomes like this opening, this invitation to go beyond the order and structure of this world towards a transcendent one.

And maybe this is another layer of what Moshe realized when he watered those sheep; that he could orient himself solely towards justice and try to force God into a rectangle, or he could orient himself towards justice and compassion together and do his best to serve a more ineffable God, the God of the immeasurable curve.

But, ok, this was all very profound and lovely. I really thought it was beautiful, and I hope you do, too. But what about the Mekallel?

Rabbi Fohrman: The tragedy of the story of the Mekallel is that Moshe, at one key moment in his life, failed to bring those two values together. Or, as Chazal saw it, the court of Moshe sits in court in a case that really needed to be adjudicated somewhere else. As if to say, you know, someone once said, if somebody comes to you and says, “Can I make Kiddush on a glass of milk?” Right? What's the right answer to the question, “Can I make Kiddush on a glass of milk?” 

Imu: “Why aren't you able to get your hands on some wine? Are you not able to afford wines?” 

Rabbi Fohrman: That's correct. The answer isn't whether you can make Kiddush on a glass of milk. The answer is, you put your arm around the guy and you help him because obviously he's in a position where, what are you doing that you can't afford enough wine for Kiddush?

And there's a whole other question that's opened, other than the technical halachic question whether you can make Kiddush on a glass of milk. It was that that Chazal seemed to be faulting Moshe for; that the man whose job it was to meld Mishpat and Tzedek together, who found his own way out of the Mekallel’s dilemma of having no place by opening his own heart to a world beyond Mishpat and having that reciprocated in Yitro; there was a moment when he failed to do that with another person in his own position in life, and that becomes the bitter saga of the Mekallel.

But in terms of redemption, in terms of the way out, Moses's own life shows the way out, shows a way out. And a way out is the ability to see life through a lens which blends justice with another value.

Imu: That’s beautiful. I don't know that you actually solved the problem. I actually think you deepened it.

That was my first reaction, the obvious one. I mean, of course the problem had deepened. Every step of our conversation had made blending justice and compassion more central to who Moshe was and to his leadership, not to mention to Torah and to connecting to God. Somehow Moshe forgets all that when it comes to the Mekallel? How could he do that? 

But here's the funny thing. Rather than press Rabbi Fohrman on this question, this question that had been building steam all season, I took us down a different path. I guess I got excited by this larger picture that we were painting of Moshe's life. And it struck me that the same way Moshe's early life resonates with the Mekallel, so does his death.

While you were talking, it started to make sense to me, the story of Moshe losing his own place and not getting to go into the land. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, you're right. Isn't that fascinating, right? When does he again become like the Mekallel that he has no place, right? Condemned to die in the desert, like the Mekallel who really has no place in the world. And so God says to him that, you know, “The people are going to go into the land, but where are you going to go?” Isn't it fascinating that God says, “Atah lo ta’avor — You won't pass into the land, but you should go onto top of a mountain, and you know what the name of the mountain is? הַר הָעֲבָרִים, the Mountain of Passage (Numbers 27:12).” As if, “The people are going to pass horizontally into the land, but where are you going to pass? You're going to pass vertically into My land. I'm going to take you into My Gan Eden.” 

Imu: It's almost like he gets the same fate as the Mekallel, right? 

Rabbi Fohrman: He does. It's exactly the same fate. He loses his place in the world and instead is taken into Gan Eden, instead of the earthly Gan Eden. The people are going to go into the earthly Gan Eden land, and he's going to go into the heavenly Gan Eden, which is why it's הַר הָעֲבָרִים. It's such a mean thing for God to say הַר הָעֲבָרִים. He's pleading, “Let me pass over into the land!” And God is, like, taunting him?

God's not taunting him. He's saying, “You know what? It looks like such a terrible thing, death. There’s another side to death. You'll come and be with Me. You'll be with Me in My Place.” He's literally the Mekallel once more.

Imu: Despite Rabbi Fohrman's framing, to me there was still something tragic about Moshe's death. I've always had a hard time with the fact that God doesn't allow Moshe to go into the Land of Israel with the people, but now even more so. Moshe's isolation and displacement at the end of his life seemed to echo back to the darkest moments of his infancy and young adulthood.

Even if God was waiting for Moshe on the other side, it made me wonder how Moshe got here. Reflecting on this with Rabbi Fohrman, he noticed how the support system which Moshe built in his early life seems to fall away in his later life.

Rabbi Fohrman: Who was really there for him? Who was there for him as a little baby? The daughter of Pharaoh was there for him, and his sister was there for him, Miriam. And then, later on in his life, Yitro is there for him. But what happens? He loses Yitro. Yitro says, you know, “I’ve got to go. I'm leaving. I'm going home.” And that was the first thing that he lost.

Imu: In Exodus, chapter 18, Yitro visits the people in the desert, but ultimately goes back to his own land. Yitro seems to pop up once again in Numbers, chapter 10. We're told there about a conversation between Moshe and his Midianite father-in-law, though the man's name is Chovav, not Yitro. But according to Chazal, it's the same person. Chovav, or Yitro, tells Moshe that he is going to return to his people, and Moshe pleads with him: אַל־נָא תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָנוּ — Please do not leave us. This is the last recorded conversation we have between Moshe and Yitro; Yitro saying he must leave and Moshe pleading, “Please, don't.” So that's Moshe's first loss, but it isn't his last.

Rabbi Fohrman: And then he loses Tzipporah, this wife that he got from Yitro, seemingly through Miriam's speech about her. And then he loses Miriam.

Imu: In Numbers 12, we're told that Miriam and Aharon gossip about Moshe's involvement with a Cushite woman, but according to Chazal, what they are actually discussing is Moshe's separation from his wife Tzipporah, Yitro's daughter; the wife who seemingly fell in love with Moshe back when he watered the sheep.

And then, jump to Numbers 20, Miriam dies. The sister who watched over Moshe, who first thought when he cried that he might need something to drink. 

Yitro, Tzipporah, Miriam. One by one, Moshe loses these connections, but I never noticed before how they all add up to one of the most infamous moments in Moshe's life.

Right after Miriam dies, the people are once again without water, so they complain bitterly; as if they've forgotten everything God and Moshe did for them; as if Moshe just wants them to die of thirst in the desert. So God tells Moshe to command this rock to give the people water.

But Moshe, of course, doesn't speak to the rock. He hits it.

Rabbi Fohrman: He hits the rock. And God says, “You can't go into the land anymore.” 

Imu: But by the way, he hits the rock; you talked about how you save the people, but then you give them water, right? There's this metaphor, constantly giving them water. And here is this story. It's almost like you're making me understand this story in ways I have never understood it before. Which is, once again, you need to show compassion to these people. Kiss the people, right? Don't just give them water. Kiss them. And what does he do?

Rabbi Fohrman: He hits, right, and he says, “You don't deserve the water. You’re rebels,” right? “You don't deserve it. In the world of justice, you guys get water? Are you crazy? How can you be screaming against God and think you're going to get water?”

God is like, “Relax. They can get water.” There's a way of going beyond what they deserve, and Moshe doesn't see that, and uses hiss power to strike the rock. 

Imu: It's very interesting. 

Rabbi Fohrman: It is really fascinating.

Imu: I was blown away that the water motif was back. It was so heartbreaking that the same act which saved Moshe from isolation as a youth led to him being isolated again at his death. And it really was the exact same act. It's not like Moshe refuses to give the people water. He does give them water. In terms of the outcome, the compassionate thing is done. But it's like, even when Moshe does this compassionate act, he can't find it within himself to do it in a truly compassionate way.

That's what was really chilling. As if Moshe had completely lost that inner well of compassion, the compassion that had once been his way out, just like he lost the people who first showed compassion to him.

Anyways, that was our first thought. Honestly, this whole discussion about Moshe's death and losing his loved ones and hitting the rock; these were connections neither one of us had seen before. So we were just doing our best to put the pieces together. And then I noticed one more thing.

The place, by the way, where he hits the rock; you know what that place is called?

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, wow. Fascinating. Oh, isn't that chilling? קָדֵשׁ, “Holiness (Numbers 20:1).” Of course. Because holiness is the place where the two values come together.

Imu: Rabbi Fohrman is referring back to last episode. You may remember, he argued, based on the Ramban, that kedusha, holiness is achieved through the convergence of justice and compassion beyond justice. The fact that this story of Moshe hitting the rock takes place at a location called קָדֵשׁ, “Holiness,” it felt like a nod to this idea.

In fact, the story does more than just nod to it. When God tells Moshe his punishment, He adds a very strange explanation that actually puzzled me for many, many years. But now, it started to finally make sense.

Rabbi Fohrman: יַעַן לֹא־הֶאֱמַנְתֶּם בִּי לְהַקְדִּישֵׁנִי — Because you didn't allow My holiness to shine in the coming together of those two values (Numbers 20:12). You championed one at the expense of the other.

So you're living in the world of Mishpat. And think about it; in a world of Mishpat, Moshe really doesn't have a place. He's the Egyptian who's not really an Israelite, and a strict world of justice would say you have no place. Which maybe is a rationale for, “Well, you have to die in the desert, because if you're going to be the man of Mishpat, Mishpat would say you have no place. So I'll bring you into My place in Heaven, but you have no place in this world if this world is dominated by Mishpat.” Fascinating. 

It really is true, on some level, maybe, Moshe really is a proto-version of the Mekallel, and has this almost momentary weakness in confronting the Mekallel; a weakness that causes the bonds that allow Tzedek and Mishpat to come together to sort of dissolve in his own life, and he becomes the champion of Mishpat to the exclusion of Tzedek. And it haunts him, and it haunts him with the loss of Yitro, haunts him with the loss of Miriam. Until there's nothing left but he himself in the desert, who's beckoned into a heavenly Gan Eden.

Imu: And with that, our journey felt complete. We closed our Tanachs and turned off our mics. It wasn't until re-listening to the tape afterwards that I realized we never actually answered that question; you know, why Moshe treats the Mekallel so poorly. Did you catch that? Even at the end there, Rabbi Fohrman just calls it a “moment of weakness.”

For everything we saw this season in Leviticus, Exodus, Genesis, Numbers, Judges; for all the insight we gained into blasphemy and idolatry; the purpose of Yovel; the relationship between justice and compassion; none of it really explains why Moshe made that terrible mistake.

But in retrospect, that's one of my favorite things about this season. Because in place of an explanation or a justification for Moshe's actions, what we came to was his story.

It's a story of struggle; Moshe's struggle to find his place in the world and to find balance in his values.

It's a story of triumph. Moshe does find his way out for much of his life, and in doing so, accomplishes remarkable, remarkable things. I mean, he's Moshe.

But it's also a story of defeat. Somehow, for whatever reason, Moshe does make the wrong choice with the Mekallel.

And it’s a story of tragedy. As Moshe loses the most important connections in his life, his core impulse for justice seems to overtake him and he makes the wrong choice again, with even more dire consequences.

It's not exactly a happy ending or a perfect story, but it is a human one. And that, I think, is what makes this the right ending for our season. 

You know, in Episode One, I asked Rabbi Fohrman why the Torah teaches the laws of blasphemy through a story. Why not just tell us the law directly? But now I think I understand. It's maybe because telling a story, like giving someone water to drink, is a way of going beyond the law.

Neither I nor Rabbi Fohrman can really tell you why Moshe was cold to the Mekallel; just like we couldn't tell you why the Mekallel didn't find his own way out of his rage, like Moshe did. We didn't find answers to these questions, but sitting for so long with the stories of these two men, what we did find was compassion for both of them. Talk about going meta, but it's true.

If our journey taught me one thing, it's that the lens through which we approach Torah, very much like the lens through which we approach each other, will often determine what we find. I hope that, like me, in this story, you found something that brings you a little closer to the curve.

And that's our season. From me, Rabbi Fohrman, and all of us here on the team at Book Like No Other, thank you so much for listening and learning along with us.

Credits

A Book Like No Other is recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev.

Our producer is Tikva Hecht.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Audio editing for this episode was done by Hillary Guttman.

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

And thank you all for listening.