Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. Rev Groom it.
It's an honor to have you on. But we're big fans of your book.
Ben. See if you can hold up his book
Genesis. I we highly recommend this book
by Genesis. And off camera, you were just
telling us how you are actually going to be publishing a book on
Shamot. So yeah.
So tell, tell us a little bit about that.
Tell us about yourself before we get started with the questions.
OK, so first of all, you mentioned the book on SHMOT.
It's going to press like within the next couple of weeks.
You know, people ask me how long it, how long it took me to
write. So it's a hard question.
You know, from the time I actually started writing, it was
a couple of years, but the ideas percolate for many decades
before. Before you sit down to write,
tell me a little bit about myself.
You know, I'll, I taught in the states in, in high schools or
for a number of years, I in the New York area and, and then they
made all the 23 years ago. I, you know, I'm just going to
add one thing. When I was teaching in, in the
Shiva high school, basically in those days, I taught anything
that had Hebrew letters. But that's what they want to
teach mission, you're teaching Mishnah, you're teaching Gemara,
you're teaching Halacha, you're teaching Tanakh.
You did. But if it had Hebrew letters,
Phila, you're teaching it. And after about after about 8
years of doing that, I realized that I wanted to get really good
at something 'cause I had to get a little bit of this and a
little bit of that and a little bit of this.
And I decided that that I wanted to concentrate on on Tanakh.
And that's why I'm here today. So you know, when I, when I
left, when I left the States, I came here to Israel.
I work in a center at Berlin University for Jewish education.
It's called the Lukstein Center for Jewish Education.
We work with Jewish schools and teachers all over the English
speaking world. Actually now even we're working
a little bit in France and in Germany and, and in Russia.
Interesting. Russia and Ukraine in, in, in
both of those. It's very interesting,
interesting kind of work. And up until this year, I I
taught for 20 years at Yeshivat Erezatsvi here in Ushalayim.
It's a post high school yeshiva. This year I stepped back and.
Amazing. That's, that's right, I I've had
the real honor and luxury of being able to teach what I love.
Amazing. And, and choosing, how did you
get to choosing like focusing on on Tanakh?
I mean, we don't see that so often.
It's it's amazing. But you know, nowadays,
obviously people are focused on many other things and we always
like Bensi and I are always like attracted to those who are, you
know, putting out work on Tanakh.
That's it's really like the mage, the people.
So how did you get drawn to that?
Like basically as someone teaching in the yeshiva high
schools, I taught in Frisch and I taught them Hafter and I spent
nine years at TABC in Teaneck. And what I felt was I, I wanted
to become a Jewish educator because I wanted to be able to
reach teens. And I really sensed that Tanakh
was a natural place where teens could connect back with their,
with, with their Jewish sources and they could, by reading
Tanakh, they could see themselves in the, in those
texts. I so I, so I, I thought that
that would be the best for me, the best tool that I could use
in order to be able to bring kids to want to learn.
That was really good, yeah. Yeah, I was going to say that,
you know, it's, it's baffling to me because we always before we
get to the questions, but we always, you know, notice that
people when they read the parsha, they hear the rabbit
give a speech and she'll you always hear people say like, oh,
I, I feel so connected to this week's parsha.
Like, isn't it amazing how it's reflecting what's happening now
in our lives? You always hear that, but then
like for some reason, we, we look back at our, you know,
yeshiva education, we just stopped learning it really on a
deep level at a very young age. And like, it was almost like
high school was an afterthought. So it's I, I, I'm hoping there's
and I'm, I'm seeing it, but I'm, I'm advocating for a resurgence
in, in learning in Tanakh. So that, that's a very welcome
thing that you're doing. So thank you for that.
OK, so we're going to get into the introduction of your book,
which you frame Genesis as a narrative of God's search for a
meaningful relationship with humanity through an
establishment of a covenant. How does the Torah portray the
biblical patriarchs Avran, Mitzak, and Yakov and Yosef as
engaged in this process? And how does the recurring use
of the word tol doth contribute to this overarching covenantal
theme? OK.
So you're asking it that That's a very big question and I'm
going to only going to answer half of it.
The look Seifer Brasheat begins with Hashem creating the world
and and people, right? He's interested in people,
right? And he tried, he really tried.
And the story in the beginning of Seifer Brasheat basically is
the story how Hashem tried but but was unsuccessful or maybe
only only so limited success at after 20 generations of that.
And I'm not making this up. Meaning if this goes back to to
the beginning of, you know, the the of the Perak of Perk, a vote
by the 10 generations, right? And then the next 10
generations. Some of these ideas were first
formulated, at least first to me, by Martin Buber.
But the the the basic idea that Shem wants to have a
relationship with people, it it became clear that having a
relationship with all humanity was was not going to work right.
So we had one failed attempt. It ended with the Mabul.
We had the second failed attempt.
It ended with the story that people call Migdal Bavelle.
Eventually Ashram says, OK, you know what, let me find one guy
because that that's what he did. What you know, was before about
one. Let me find one guy, one family.
I said guy is going to turn into a family.
That family is going to be the family that through which I am
going to communicate my message to the rest of humanity and hope
that that family can become the the bridge between me says God
and the rest of humanity. That's Avraham Venevahuvah
Komish pahota Adama. Avraham is supposed to be the
source. That's how Avraham is going to
be the source of, of bracha for all of all of mankind, right?
He's going to bring God's word to them.
He's going to bring them closer to God there.
I mean, Rashim that talk about about being, you know, people
closer, closer to, to, to Hashem.
So, so Hashem chose Avraham and then and then there's there's a
a winnowing process. So Alram has two kids, only one
of them for all sorts of reasons, but only one of them
turns out to be fit in Hashem's eyes to carry on the covenant.
The breed Yitzhak has two kids. Interesting question as to why
Asaph was not included for very different reasons than Ishmael I
I actually think it was it was a self selecting choice.
I actually think that Asaph chose himself out, but that if
you we, we can talk if if you want to, we can talk about that
in the meaning he was not rejected.
Asaph was not rejected. He rejected himself and as a
result of his self rejection. So, so Hashem says, OK, we'll go
with that. And then on to Yaakov.
The part that this is the part where it gets where it gets
tricky because there's very little that the avote have to do
in order to be become part of this breed.
All they need to do is to agree, and that agreement is expressed
through breed milah. Aside from that, they're
passive. Hashem gives the breed to
Avraham, He doesn't have to do anything.
He then gives the breed to Yitzhak.
He thought doesn't have to do anything.
He gives the breed to Yaakov. Yaakov doesn't have to do
anything. They're all passive the first
time you get to anybody playing an active role.
But a seriously active role is Har Sinai, which by the way, is
in my next book. It's coming out and you know,
hopefully very, very soon it's going to press almost
immediately. But so Har Sinai and and that's
the big deal about. And he's still standing there
with Har Sinai and saying, yes, because it's the first time in
human history that Hashem has a brief that's actually bilateral
with a greed voluntarily. And they have an active role to
play in that. Avram, Yitzhak and Yaakov are
passive participants. OK, So the part that I'm not, I
thought what active role did Avram play?
So that's I don't think he played an active role in in that
particular piece in terms of in terms of the word tol do.
So this is something really interesting.
I you know, one one of my one of the books that sits right next
to me all the time is a concordance.
Concordance is is a great book. If you're not familiar with it,
it tells you we're every single occurrence of every word in
Tanakas. And I had this hunch about the
word tol dolt and I looked it up in the concordance and that and
the hunch paid off. The word toldot as in ayla
toldot, these are the toldot. And I'm not even going to define
what that means right now 'cause it's a whole complicated thing.
But that phrase Ayla toldot is that is that safer toldot
appears 13 times in all of Tanakh.
Eleven of those are in safer brace sheet.
OK, that that says I need to be explained right.
And, and the word tol dolt, I'll, I'll give you this what I
think is the simplest definition.
Tol dolt means what came out of this, right?
Like the phrase MI EDA Mae LED yo, what's what, what, what will
the day give birth to? What was the end result of this?
So we start the very beginning of safer bruh, Rashid parekh
Beit pasu dalid zeh safer tol dolt no Ayla tol dolt
Hashimayevaritz right now it can't be children because
Shamayevaris didn't get married and give birth to children,
right? So it must mean something else.
What was the net result of, of, of, of the creation of
Shamayevaritz? And when you take a look at it,
Safer Brace is basically a book that's comprised of 11
collections of Toldot and each one of them ends right before
the next one. And when you look at it that
way, you can look at each book of Toldot and say, oh, So what
was the net result of the creation of Shamayevaritz?
The net result was right. It's actually after the story of
Kine and Hebel. The net result was some people
mess up that there's a possibility for Chuva, and it
ends with it ends with Shait us who called the kroba shame
Hashem. That's when people started
calling out in God's name, which means that the net result of the
creation of Shanghainva Aritz was that there is potential for
people to mess up. There's the possibility for
Chuva and people have the capacity on their own to find
God. That's that's that's the net
result of the first, the first brick of Toldot.
The second book of Toldot, right, is Toldot.
Is that safer Toldot Adam right? Beginning of parakae of safer
brace sheet, right? That's a much shorter one.
And that one basically ends with the preamble to the Mabul OK,
which is a like the first book of told of us with a very
positive feeling. The second one leaves us the
very negative feeling where Hashem basically regrets
creating the world, creating humans, right?
With one exception, the Noah Masakhane Beni Hashem, there's
possibility over here, but it's really limited, right?
Meaning humans have the capacity, but there's something
that's missing there. And when you go through all of
safer Gray sheath and you look at it just from those, just from
the the perspective of the Tol Doat, you realize that Hashem
starts off thinking about all of humanity, then limits it to Noah
and his kids, then limits it to Tarah and his kids.
Interesting, right? There's a total of Tarak and
before that there's a total of shame, right?
There's a total of Noah, total of shame, total of Tarak.
There's no total of Avram, which I think is fascinating and
anybody wants to they can look at a book they can and then they
can they can learn more about that.
And then we get to total of Yitzhak Yildo to Ishmael, the
other way around, Ishmael 1st and Yitzhak then you have and
and that basically takes us through the entire book of
breisheet. It starts with Hashem creating a
world humanity. He wants a relationship with
humanity and eventually gets narrowed down.
He realizes that that's not going to work with all humanity.
He has to work with one individual who's going to become
a family. And eventually it's Yaakov's
family that that create the core of of the people that Hashem is
going to use as his as his partners to spread his word to
the rest of humanity. And one of the one of the unique
things about your book is, is that when it comes to the vote
and really any character, you don't hide.
You didn't hide. It's the wrong word.
You are not shy in viewing the text as, let's say, Avraham
having certain challenges that need to be overcome, right?
You don't, you don't in a sense put them on a pedestal.
You actually really zoom in on the flaws of certain characters
of Rami Takiakov. Everyone, almost everybody has
this deficiency, which in a sense needs to needs to be
improved upon and reach. It's like redemption arc in a
sense, right? So so even though the covenant
was given, I took that to mean that the vote and the characters
that need to characters is a bad word.
But I'm just using that the the characters that need to live
they receive the covenant also have to live up to it and and
and grow in order to to assume that.
So I, I look, I I, I start with a few basic assumptions.
One of them, one of them is I assume that Hashem says what he
means. He doesn't play games.
Hashem tells us he, he like he wrote the Torah.
So, so he, he wanted it written that way, right, right.
He's trying to tell us something and I'm not the first to, you
know, to read the you look at the wrong ban or, or, or others,
you know, they're, they're not afraid to look at the Torah to
say this is what the the words actually say, right?
And I think the there's great power in that.
I'm not looking for flaws. I'm looking to to understand
what Hashem is trying to say. Hashem is the one who tells us
the flaws. You don't need grommet to do
that. Hashem tells us what the flaws
were. What what I'm looking for is my
assumption is, and one of my assumption is that great
characters are not born great, they become great.
Nobody is born inherently great. Everybody has to become
something. You got to work for it.
Look, even take for example, Avraham, when we first meet him,
his name is Avram. He's not Avraham takes all of
which is 14 years, right? Hashem Meesa when he's 75, the
end of leche, he's 99 right? 14 years.
He's talking to Hashem and his name hasn't changed yet from
Avraham to Avraham. Why not?
Well, because he hasn't developed into Avraham yet.
Hashem is not ready yet to, to to graduate him to the next
stage. So he has to become that the
greatness of of of all the great characters in Tanakh is that
they made themselves who they are.
They made themselves great and every single one of them had
challenges, right. I mean people who use the word
flaws, I say challenges. They all have to they have to
overcome those challenges. Their greatness is how they deal
with their challenges. You know, there's, there's,
there's that face famous Pasuk Titane and met Liakov Hassan the
Abraham. So Titane, please Hashem, give
it's fila, give Yaakov the mida avemet he had to work for.
It didn't come easy. That was something he was
seriously challenged with. I mean, you take a look at the
stories of Yaakov when we first meet him, he's seriously
challenged by by the mida avemet.
It takes him a long time to finally embrace that.
And when he finally does embrace it, Hashem says, OK, now you're
ready to beat Israel, right? So Avraham is the same thing
Avraham is. You have to, you have to embrace
your challenge and learn to move past it.
So Avraham's greatness was that he, he understood his challenge
and he grew past it. So I, I think to me it's just
truth because that's what the Torah is saying.
That's number one. Number two, it it doesn't, I
don't think it diminishes the status of the avote.
I think it actually elevates the status of the Avote.
Look at what they overcame in order to become who they are.
And 3rd, it actually makes them characters that we can aspire to
because they had challenges. They overcame well, who amongst
us does not have challenges? Nobody.
Who? Who amongst us doesn't have
things that that that holds them back?
And I think part of the profound message of the Torah in
presenting all of the all of these characters, everybody
without exception, you know, Avram Yitzhak, Yaakov Yosef
Moshe Aaron Tavich, I mean, every one of them has challenges
they need to overcome. The Torah points that out to us.
It wants to let us know these can be your role models.
If they're born perfect, they can't be role models for
anybody. Yeah.
And I think. What's also amazing, just if I
may add to that, is that we don't have one central figure
that we look at as like, oh, this is the hero.
I think that we every, it's a kind of like a, you know,
there's, it's like a whole family of people we can learn
from and everybody has their strengths and weaknesses.
And, and it's that to me is like, those are true heroes
because I can, I can understand the humanness of these people
and how they're, how they have to overcome this.
And then it inspires me to try to, you know, see like, hey, if
they can do it, I can do it. You know, it's sometimes if
you're if, if the hero is too supernatural or perfect, it, it
kind of makes you think like you're a different species and
like you can't even overcome your own problem.
So I think that's very significant.
And also I love how the the total aspect of that you were
talking about before, how you translated that as as a like a
legacy. Legacy, I think fits perfectly
like you mentioned it it in the first told don't mention it
wouldn't make sense to be called offspring.
So that was a very interesting point And Ben, see if you could
take so. You outline a unique threefold
understanding of history in Genesis.
Can you describe their approach and how it informs your
interpretation of the patriarch of the of the narratives of that
vote? Yeah.
This is the part that I thought would get me into a lot of
trouble. And again, it it comes from
reading from reading the text. I break history down and all
three parts are are evident in say Fabreciate basically takes
us from through the first stage, the second stage and and and
begins the third stage. The the first stage I call
prehistory. It talks about literally the
things that happened before history was possible, before
people were writing anything that that's the definition of
prehistory. It and the prehistorical section
of of the Torah to me includes the sections in which the world
doesn't look at all like the world that we know, right?
Gunneden Gunneden doesn't look at all like the world that we
know. Life spans of people, people
living 900 plus years doesn't look anything like the world
that we know. Like 900 plus years means
they're almost gods like a 1000 years because was considered in
the ancient world. If you live the fact the gods
lived 1000 years and more, right?
So and and nobody goes to 1000, right?
It's all they're all under 1000, right?
The point being is that it's it's describing prehistory.
It's a world that stopped existing.
The Mabul. The Mabul erased everything.
So there's no history, It's all prehistory, right?
So the Mobuli erased everything. The story of McDonald Bevel
basically erased everything that came beforehand.
They completely reshaped the entire world as we know it.
And it's probably one story afterwards.
I think the destruction of Sodom is also one of these, you know,
one of these stories that I would consider like a
prehistorical story. The, the section of the Torah
that's prehistory is not necessarily meant to be taken at
face value. You're not supposed to.
I, I, I don't think the ages there are so that we can create
a timeline and figure out exactly how old the world is.
The ages are all symbolic. It all means something.
The fact that they all live in those first 10 generations, 900
plus years, with a few exceptions, right?
So let's take some of the exceptions.
You have a guy called Lemech who lives 777 years.
That's not an accidental #770 it's like 7 sevens.
There's something about it. And Lemech was the 7th
generation, right? That Lemech was right.
You have somebody else called Hanoch.
He lives for 365 years. Exactly a year it's a.
Year of years, right? Those are symbolic numbers,
right? So Hanoch is meant to be a
symbolic character. Lemic has a symbolic character
and all of it, all the characters in the in the in the
world of prehistory. So were there individuals who
existed? Sure, I'm sure there were.
I'm sure. But it does make a difference,
right? The story is there, especially
in parachat. Brief sheet in parachat.
No, all the stuff that you have there is not to teach us what
happened, but is there to give us almost a biography.
Who's God? What's man?
What does it mean to be human and what are the limitations of
being human? What's the definition of being
human? What's the nature of
relationship between Hashem and people?
You make in your introduction, you make a point which really
hit me when you wrote it, in that you see that the Torah
doesn't even refer to those times similar as it would for
instance, by the snake talking. It's considered as if nothing's
happening, like it's a. It's a normal event, unlike the.
The donkey, the talking when the donkey.
'S talking when we're back into, you know, actual history, right?
It says, and God opened the, the, the that one's mouth
because it's, it's an irregular event.
It's pointing that out, yet with the snake, it's talking and
it's, and it's just, it's, I've assumed it's a casual, you know,
when, when you put that in there, I really thought about
it. I'm like, wow, that is a really
important. If a person really thinks about
that, it really frames things for you.
It's almost like the Torah is framing it for you, right?
Just read what's there. It's, it's, it's telling you
without telling you. You know what I mean?
I just wanted to add that point you made 'cause I think it
really you, you backed up your point with that very well.
OK, so. So that, so that's the
prehistory. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna
jump from the prehistory right to history, right, where
people's lifespans are just about the same as we have now.
Where the events are, are events that are for the most part
natural events except where Hashem intervenes.
And like you just said, Ben C and he tells us that he's
intervening, right? Like the Makotin Mitzrayim.
So I believe the Makotin Mitzrayim are at this part of
the historical portion of of Tanakh.
I think the historical portion of Tanakh actually begins with
Yosef. His life really follows.
It's a, it's a natural path. There's dividing guidance in
there. We know over the divine
guidance. Yosef's challenge, by the way,
is he has to discover the divine guidance.
Everybody else around him sees it except himself.
Takes him a while to figure that out, right?
But Yosef, I think, is the first really historical figure that we
have. And then you know everything
that comes afterwards and when Hashem intervenes, when there
are Makoto Mitzrayim is Kriyat Yamsuf.
Those are supernatural. And Hashem is not ashamed to say
the supernatural and not ashamed to say I did something
supernatural right and and right and, and, and those are the, the
signs that Hashem is, is, is intervening in the, in the
affairs of, of humanity. So you have the historical
portion of portion of Tanakh, which is most of Tanakh starting
at the end of safer breath sheet and going onwards, you have what
I call the prehistorical portion of Tanak where the world doesn't
look anything at all like like we know.
And what's interesting is that in those first 10 generations,
people live 900 plus years, except for those two exceptions.
And then after the Mabul, there's a transitionary period.
Instead of living almost 1000 years, people living almost 500
years, time spans are halved. And after the story of Bevelle,
right, the big doll bevel about what people say or the city of
Bevelle, may I like to say it, life spans are halved again.
OK, so they go from from almost 1000 to almost 500 to 200 in the
range of 200. That's the way it is for a few
generations and then, right. So it is clearly a transitionary
period and and the Torah is trying to let us know that we're
transitioning from prehistory into what I call protohistory.
If you ask me to define protohistory, it's really hard.
It's something between the prehistorical section of Tanakh,
which I don't feel compelled by any stretch of the imagination
to take, to take literally, have to read it literally in order to
understand it. I can't just take the words and
say they mean something to no, I read it literally, so I so I
understand it. But the messages are universal
messages of in in the prehistory prehistorical period.
When we move out of the prehistorical period, we move
into what I called protohistory. I would be hard pressed to find
exactly what that means. It's something between
prehistory and and history. It's where the events look and
sound very much like the world that we know.
The one difference is the lifespans are basically double.
People live to 170 years. OK, our lifespans are 85 years.
We live to 150 years, right? So it the the lifespans are are
basically double and that's that that to me says the message is
this looks almost like your world almost right.
And the characters of that proto history are the prototypes.
So it's not just proto history, but they're all, everyone of
them is a prototype. And we call them the avote.
Yeah, both in the EMA Holt are the prototypes.
The prototypes are what the Torah describes to us in the
section of the homage. That's proto history.
So they're not just individuals, but they're also, they're also
the prototypes for, for really the foundations of who we are,
who we are as individuals and who we are as a people.
The. Ramban I think also goes with
that, right? The Ramban also characterizes
them as prototypes 100%. I I look that and and that I
think is the definition of what it means to be one of the Avote
Yosef has never never called one of the Avote Yosef is not a
prototype. He's an individual.
And you see that also he lives to 110.
He doesn't live like, like his father or his grandfather,
right? 110 is already really, really
close to the, to the world that we know.
So I that's why I say Yosef is the first really historical
character into. The it's very interesting
because you know, at the you know, the during the Mabul, I
mean there's this pronouncement that people won't live till
after 120 years and we see continue people are living
beyond that until Yosef. So it's very, very interesting
point that you. Make.
Yeah. So now just shifting gears.
How do you deal with biblical criticism in your book while
remaining rooted in traditional frameworks?
How do you balance critical analysis with the reverence for
the text? And how do you differentiate
between Shot and Josh in your approach?
That, that, that, that that's a lot of questions.
I'm worried about that. That's OK, That's OK.
So let let me look when it comes to biblical criticism.
So there are a lot of different kinds of biblical criticism.
And you know, I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a great scholar of
biblical criticism, but I do read some of some of their
stuff. I think the questions that they
ask are usually extraordinary questions.
Not always. Sometimes they're really poor
questions because they're just not reading the text well.
But I think often the questions are really good and they force,
they force me to think the questions force me to think the
the answers that the biblical critics offer usually leave me
saying that's not possible and not possible.
Because if you say that, then the Torah becomes meaningless.
It just robs the Torah of any of its meaning.
And I find a lot of it to be highly speculative.
They're theories. They're, they're all theories.
And I find, I just find the, the, the approach is really
highly speculative, often not grounded.
So I'm familiar with the biblical criticism.
It doesn't interest me as much as it helps to inform me of what
I should be looking at in the text, what are the questions to
be asking? And for that, I think, I think
it's been, it's been very helpful.
So that's not really something I spend a lot of a lot of time on.
But critical analysis, well, we do critical analysis in every
other thing that we do. And truth is, you know, you look
at all that we've shown you, all that we've shown you did
critical analysis of the text. They.
Read it really carefully. That's what critical analysis
is. They read it really carefully.
They look for patterns, they look for things, they look for
anomalies for things, if for things that stand out and things
that jump out. You know some of them are
looking for for grammatical things, some of them are looking
for patterns of words. Hazal did that in the midrashim.
You know the take take the the all the stories of Yaakov.
So you know I can write 2 chapters on it.
Hazal will say it in one midrash.
They'll have they'll have a single midrash that talks about
the the phrase Hakirli. Well, hakir na hakir na Yakov is
the first one to say hakir na right or or meaning in the story
of him taking the brachot right for Lohiki Roach and that that
Yiska didn't recognize him and that that Lohiki ro comes back
to haunt Yakov afterwards. Let me drop some comments on
this. I didn't make this up, right?
It comes to haunt to me afterwards, right?
It haunts to me afterwards with the switching of Rachel and
Laya. I haunts to me afterwards when
they sell, when the brothers sell Yosef and they bring the
Katunet to Yaakov. Hakuna Hakunet Binuka, right,
comes up with a story of you who then Tamar, right?
Hakuna the Miyako right? So though that that's critical
reading, that's critical analysis.
You're you're looking and you're looking carefully.
What, what, what choices did Hashem use in writing this and
why did he make those choices? Was he trying to communicate
through those choices? That's critical reading.
That's critical analysis that biblical criticism is reading
critically. Everybody who learns Gemara
reads learns to read critically. Everybody learns Rashi learns to
read critically. Why shouldn't we be be learning
how to read critically in Humash also?
I'm not, and again, I'm not talking about the academic
biblical criticism. I'm talking about just reading,
reading the Tarah the way it is so, so and, and, and, and that
reading critically is the way you show reference for the text,
because if you don't read it critically, then you're saying
that the words don't make a difference.
They're not important. When you read it critically,
you're actually saying this is a work that's so important that
you have to pay attention to every word, every phrase, right?
And what what it's doing there and, and what are the patterns?
The patterns aren't accidental. What are the structures in this
safer than that accidental. The structures teach us a
tremendous amount. All of that is part of critical
reading, and you learn so much from that.
I would not do the same thing with a novel that I pick up.
And you know, it that that's something I always maybe it's
just me, but you know, like people giving like, you know,
warts and like nice to our Torres, which I'm not, I'm not
criticizing it like it's not not a bad thing.
But what I see is like almost like the text becomes just like
a, like a canvas just to throw in project some ideas, you know,
and this taking the text seriously is is a lost ark
which. Recently.
Has started to to pick up more steam and we see it being done
more and more. But you know, my, my memories
growing up was always that I always felt almost like it's
almost like that It doesn't like you said it literally the way
you said it like it's almost like it doesn't matter what it
says, you know what I mean? We just take the an idea or a
vort or a drusha or a midrash. You know, even midrash needs to
be critically analyzed like you mentioned, right?
It's not, it's not just, you know, you know, so one of the
most refreshing things about your book and a lot of the
authors of Ghosh is that like you said, they take the text
seriously. And now you really are grappling
with the text. And, and like, I think like you
say that that that that encourages more reverence
because because you're actually you're, you're, you're zooming
in on what the Torah is saying and you're not just zooming in
on a projected idea. You.
See the complexity of it all and how, how it's, it's not just by
accident. There's, there's a lot.
It's just structured in a way that it's clearly sophisticated
and pointing at being intertextual and all that.
So yeah, it's an excellent point.
May I? One second, go back to the
previous question. I just wanted to clarify
something for myself if that's regarding the history, so the
proto history, I just want to clarify.
So when you're saying that's not history, like in the terms of
yourself, I'm just trying to make sure you don't mean
necessarily that Avramitsakanyakov didn't exist
at all or that these stories didn't exist at all, but that
the way the Torah is bringing out these stories, there is
elements that are being put in that are not necessarily meant
to be historical. But pointing, like you said, the
ages, right? Or are you saying that the
entire in in your estimation is the entire all the stories
universal without any historical backing tip?
So, you know, I, I I hesitate being too precise, not because
I'm scared too, but because I'm not sure exactly how to define
this. Fair enough.
And that's that's why I hesitate.
Do I believe that there was a character called Abraham?
Absolutely. OK Yeah.
If you try pinning me down to say, OK, do I believe that
Abraham lived exactly that many years?
And so, you know, could it have been Abraham?
Could it have been could there have been Abraham?
And I, I, I don't know. Yeah, it it's.
And that's why I, I don't like to define it because I really
don't know. I.
Know that it's. I know that it's not in the
prehistory, and I know that it's not I I I, I sense.
I shouldn't say I know, but I sense that it's not part of the
historical portion of Tanakh. And yet the I believe the
characters lived. I, I, the stories.
I I, the stories that happened to them are true and yet, and
yet. There's something about it in
the way the homage presents it, even if only their ages, but
there's something about it that says that these characters are
larger than life and not just individuals.
I I. Totally see that actually, if
even we've talked about this before with the Rambam
explaining like every time angels are mentioned in the
story, it's it's a nivoir. I mean, the Torah says also
talks about dreams. You know, that's how prophets
receive prophecy. But we get introduced to Avraham
through a vision, right? He's he's, he's meeting these
angels. And then throughout there's
appearance of an Angel in Saddam and Akada and all these things.
So it's almost telling us that this is not, this isn't there's.
More than Angel, right? Right.
There's. More that's going on.
It's not just this, you know, pointing towards.
There's a, there's a mysterious to, to all of it in a sense.
There's a, there's a mysterious overtone to everything.
So what? So and, and that's, that's fair.
So, so we, it's almost like we, we sense that they exist, but we
also sense that there's that the tour is, is, is is telling us
more than just that, that it's one beyond than just a
historical retelling. And like you said, there's a,
you know, universal aspect that's being, in a sense,
inserted into these characters, into these stories and into
their lives. I just wanted to clarify that I
thought it was important. Sorry if I OK.
No problem. We.
Hope you have more time.
But we we wanted to get into the Garden of Eden as a covenant
narrative, that the Garden of Eden's story is often seen as a
foundation, as foundational to human divine relationships.
How do you interpret this narrative in light of the
covenantal theme? So you know, one, one of the
things they argue is that is that there's actually a
covenant, there's a breed in the Torah that predates any of the
breed totes that are actually listed.
The first breed in the Torah is the breed with Noah.
That's the first one that's explicit.
And yet when you take a look, you know the verb that the Torah
always uses for establishing a breed is this wrote breed to cut
the Hakim breed means to uphold it.
So if you take a look at the in the beginning of Parashat Noah,
Hashem tells Noah what's going to happen.
He says Bahaki moti ET briti ETA I will uphold my my breed
through you, right. This is before the Mabul after
the Mabul. He establishes a breed with with
Noah, but but beforehand he says I will uphold the breed through
you. That suggests that there's a
breed which is implied that predates Nawakh.
That breed, I think is inherent in creation.
The breed is that Hashem creates a human and and the human has
the capacity for good because the human has Selim and leukem,
but the human also has a capacity for not good because of
Celame leukem. And the breed that Hashem that
sort of implied is that Hashem is going to create this human
and let that human survive even if the human doesn't do with his
celame leukem what Hashem wants him to do.
That's, that's the implied covenant, right?
Because normally, you know, I, I have a deal with somebody and
here's a, here's $100. I want you to invest it for me.
And if you blow it, then our relationship is over, right?
But here Ashem says, I'm going to give you this celame leukem.
And even if you blow it, I'm not giving up on you that.
And that's the implied breed in which is I think, implied in the
very nature of creation with this comes out in a slightly
different in a slightly different way in the story of
Gun Aiden. I when I read the story of Gun
Aiden it, there are there are parts of it that seem seem too
difficult to read at face value, not just about a talking snake,
but when you look at at the way the story is structured, Hashem
and and this is basically the story of bait and peri gimmel of
of Brisheet. Hashem creates a garden and then
puts the crazy human to put into the garden.
OK, And in this garden are two trees.
What's that all about? This is a human who right now
does not have the capacity to choose between Tov and Rob.
And he gives the human an instruction and says, OK, don't
eat from that tree. And you know what happens?
Nothing. You know in in in the story that
the Afghan Aiden, there is no sense of time.
Time is all over pericolephant sacred breachit.
You have you have days, right? You have Daisy.
Forget about what those days mean, but there are days.
There's Yom and Leila and there are days.
There's a sense of time in the second in, in in bait, bait and
parakumo. There's zero sense of time,
which means that I'm just it is possible that that first human
Adam, the man, he's a he doesn't have a name yet.
He's just the man, he's the human, but he doesn't get a name
until much later where he's called Adam.
And that's a, that's the, you know, at the end of the story,
but he's just the man and he's in there in the garden and it's
a perfect world and nothing happens.
Maybe it was like that for a million years nothing happened.
Why? Because Hashem said don't eat
from that tree. So of course he didn't eat from
the tree. He doesn't have the capacity to
betray that. I said don't.
OK, it's off limits, that's all. If you read this story that way
and you understand that humans are basically immortal right
before they leave Ghanaid, then humans are basically immortal,
right? The Aidsaheim they can eat from,
it's not a problem because they're immortal anyway, right?
But it's the 8th Tovara, which is problematic right there.
There's a lot more to this, but I'm just sort of, you know,
trying, trying to give you a like a, a short version.
If you take a look at the way this story is written, at some
point, Hashem says, Oh, this isn't good low tof.
It's the first low tof. All of Bresci Pericola is Ketov.
All of a sudden he creates the human, puts him into the garden
and everything's perfect. And Ashem says low tov.
Well, of course it's low tov because the human isn't really
fully human yet. The rest of the story of
Ghanaian is how Hasheman gets the human to become human, as
human as as we know it right at this point, that human is more
more like an Angel than he is like a human.
He does exactly as he's told that that's the, to me, the
definition of what Amalah is, is a shaliak.
That's what that word malach means doesn't mean a heavenly
being. It means a Shaliak.
He has a mission. He follows through on the
mission and that's it. He can't do anything outside of
that mission. So that's low toe because Hashem
has basically created a flesh and blood version of a malach,
which is worthless. It's like me running a computer
program that says Gromit, you're amazing and I program it in to
flash every 3 seconds. As long as my electricity
doesn't go down, I'm amazing. But it's worthless to have a
computer program tell me that I'm amazing.
That's meaningless. And remember, Hashem wants to
have a relationship with people. That means for what becomes
meaningful is for someone to say, Hashemi, you're amazing and
do so out of choice, not do so because they're programmed to do
so. That's, that's greatness.
That's, that's true relationship with unions.
That's true Sheva Rashem. When we hear the midrashem
talking about the malachim singing God's praises, that's
worthless. He told them to do it.
Of course they get into it. They have no choice.
It's like Hashem praising his singing his own praises.
But for a human to do that, that's unbelievable.
This human is not capable of that.
Yet this human is nothing more than a programmed being.
He said don't eat from the Azadat tovara.
He doesn't eat from the Azadat tovara.
And he says this is not working. Low tov, it's not working.
You know what? Let me let me find a way to get
him closer to that. Oh, sorry.
So. It the way the story is actually
set up, every step of that story, Hashem is taking one more
step to get the human to eat from the tree that he said don't
eat from because he wants that human to become human, but he
wants the human to own the fact that he became human.
So, Loto, you need a helper. Azer Kanegdo.
Well, guess what? We don't know how long that
lasted either. Before.
Before Ashem intervenes yet again.
She's there. He told her you can't eat from
the tree. She didn't eat from the tree.
He didn't eat from the tree. They went on the merry way.
Could have lasted a million years, or 7 billion years.
Or 15 billion years. I don't know.
Right, because time is meaningless when you have no
lack of time and you have Infinity.
So time is meaningless. And that's why there's no time
there in that whole story, because it's completely
meaningless. It's only half the words that
Hashem introduces. The third character, that
character is a nahash. What does that nahash do?
That nahash doesn't go to the man.
The man can't be swayed because he got a direct command from
Hashem. The woman, however, never got a
direct command from Hashem. The woman got an indirect
command from the man. So he says something.
The snake says something different.
She now has to weigh in her head, well, which one's right?
That's an intelligent being who speaks.
He says that if he eats from the tree, you're going to die.
This one says, is there also an intelligent being?
It speaks and it says, no, if he eats from the tree, you're going
to become God. Like you can become a Yudea
Tovara. And she has to every day she has
to decide which one's right. And maybe that conversation
happened a million times, right? So it so the story of Ghanaian
is the story of how humans become human.
And it's precisely because humans become human that Hashem
established as a covenant with them.
And. The the punishment is actually a
sense of time, right? Death means that there's a
limited amount of time, which so which goes with what you were
saying, yeah. So yeah, I'm, I'm hesitant to
use the word punishment because the question.
Is leading the question of yes, yeah, it's.
It's almost a natural consequence, correct?
You become a Yodea Tovara, right?
So therefore you cannot be immortal anymore.
That's my definition, that's right there.
There is a being, by the way, that can be immortal and Yodea
Tovara that session. Uh huh.
He's he's infinite, but he carries me.
But he has he's not, he's not limit.
He's not limited to meaning from from his infinitude.
That's correct. That's.
Interesting. You know, and I was thinking, as
you were saying this, the concept of Ezra Kenegdo.
I mean, I think just on a very practical level, you know,
people with relationships mostly with, with, with their, with
their wives or conversely with their, with their husbands, You
know, we kind of want like a, like a, you know, someone who's
gonna sit there and tell you how amazing you are every day, you
know, but but you know, real growth is when you're actually
connected. Meaning for Hashem to have an
actual meaning with humanity, he needed to give them that.
He needed he needed them to be able to oppose him.
Interestingly, when it comes to marriage or joining of the man
and the woman, that's that that opposition is also used as a
connecto and that opposition is also a good meaning to our
relationships and also like. So we shouldn't.
Be looking for like you know the the you know the yes man yeah
build. Building off of that, Yaakov
this week's partial that we just went over, which was Yaakov
blessing his sons. It's not the blessing that we
what we consider blessings, right?
But it's more like a insight into the character of his sons.
He's critiquing them, giving them constructive criticism.
The only way to really grow is to know your strengths and your
weaknesses, right? You, that's the biggest bracha.
I'm telling you what you, what you're capable of doing, both
good and bad. I think that also ties into this
message and, and, and on another note, it just this whole
narrative really, I think for me, the Rambam's explanation
really speaks to me because clearly this is about the human
condition. This is a very universal
message, as you mentioned before.
But in the second section of the Moray he discusses, you know,
Adam being the soul and Khabab being the body and the Nahash
Nahash's desire and right, the whole punishment is that Hashem
is not punishment, but when, when, when, when they sin,
right? He, he says, how can you, why
are you blaming me? Blame the woman that you gave
me, which, and on a spiritual level, it kind of makes sense
because it's saying that, you know, I have a body, right?
And the body naturally will have desires.
So how can you punish the soul for the for the, the desires and
the physicality and the materialism that you gave me?
That's naturally going to happen.
So I think that there's so much to unpack.
Obviously here this, we can't do it justice in one podcast or
probably in a million podcast, but I just find that there's so
many layers and deep, you know, messages here that we can
unpack, which is really exciting.
The the whole thing with Hashem being infinite yet carrying
caring meaning is like something that's blowing my mind as I'm
thinking about it right now. OK, so I, I never thought about
it like that. On to Abraham.
So Abraham's journey is central to the establishment of the
covenant. Personally, what I'm asking you
to speak about is probably my favorite part of the book.
It's just everything in your book is incredible, but just
something about this, really. It was like everything about it.
So how does this challenge evolve in the transition from
Laca to Vieira, particularly with the news of Sarah's
pregnancy? OK, so this this is one of my
favorite pieces. I mean, I have a lot of favorite
pieces in, in Sacred Brexit. This is one of my favorite
pieces in Sacred Brexit. You know, growing up, you
described how you were taught homage.
I was taught homage probably the same way that many of you were
taught homage. And you know, we learned how
much with Rashi. And you know, Hashem tells
Abraham at the end of how he's going to have a kid, and Abraham
laughs and Hashem doesn't get upset.
And Sarah laughs when she hears the news and Hashem does get
upset and Rashi gives his own his old explanation.
If even though it's the same exact word that's used in the
Hebrew, Rashi says no one of them would meant it was happy.
And the other one means that as she was mocking.
And you know, given that it's the same exact word and two
Prakhim 1 exactly right after the other, I was always, always
distressed by that. And you read the story really
carefully. It turns out that Hashem is not
upset with Sarah for laughing. He doesn't rebuke her.
He's upset with Avraham for the fact that Sarah laughs.
You know, it's one thing for Avraham to hear from Hashem
directly. You know, laughter, by the way,
makes sense. He's 99 years old.
He's childless. I mean, he has used my ill, but
he's basically childless. And, you know, in terms of
Sarah, and Hashem tells him you're going to have a kid from
Sarah. She's 90 years old.
She's barren. And Avraham laughs because
that's what we that's our response when we hear something
absurd. That's what laughter is.
It's a response to something that it's so absurd it's funny,
right? Avraham thinks that message is
absurd and he laughs. Hashem doesn't get upset with
him because that's a normal, healthy response to hearing
that. Your barren wife who's post
menopausal, not just barren, but she's barren and she's after
menopause that she's going to bear a child in another year.
It's it's just an absurd message.
Doesn't mean that Avram doubted whether Hashem could do that or
not. It's just an absurd, right.
It's hard to wrap your head around it.
Yeah. So it it's it's just absurd.
Sarah hears it not from Hashem and not from Avraham.
She hears it from three strangers.
She overhears a conversation between three who thinks, she
thinks are three normal travellers.
And these three normal travellers tell Avram that Sarah
is going to have a kid. And she laughs.
That's a perfectly normal response.
There's no reason for Hashem to get upset with that response, no
more than if somebody knocked on your door and said, by the way,
you just won the lottery, here's a billion dollars, but I didn't
play, right. You see you're laughing already,
right? Sorry, I didn't play the
lottery. And somebody knocked on her door
and said you want, you just won a lottery.
It's absurd. The reason Ashem gets upset is
why is this the first time that she's hearing this?
Why didn't Avraham tell her? If he would have told her, maybe
she wouldn't have laughed. But the fact that she's laughing
points to something. Avraham didn't share this with
her. And you know, even though the
two, the two proc you are written right next to each
other. And now she following the
Midrash says, you know, there was this was three days after
the brief milah. I think if you read the care of
the text carefully, it's actually three months.
You can tell it's three months because in the previous Parekh
Hashem says a year from now she's going to give birth.
And here these three guys say kait haya.
Kait haya literally means in the time it takes to give birth, a
kait is a pregnant woman. So Kait Haya is in, in the
period of pregnancy, nine months from now, she's going to, she's
going to bury your child. So there were three months.
But in those three months, Avram told Sarah that my name is
changed to Avraham, your name is, is changed to Sarah.
He's told her all sorts of other things that Shem came and
established with this covenant with me.
I'm, I'm going to do some surgery now on myself, on
Ishmael and all the other males in our household.
So we've had time to do all this stuff and he forgot to tell
Sarah that she's going to give birth, that she's going to have
a child. So Hashem comes and rebukes
Avraham. That's what I think was the
whole purpose of that. That entire scene is to rebuke
Avraham for not sharing with Sarah and that that scene is
actually inserted right the opening of the story and Rambam
points this out and all the partial name point this out that
the opening of the story seems like it has no continuation by
you. I love Hashem beggar name Amre
and there's no conversation. So Rambam has there's an.
Interruption, right? I read that as an interruption
and after this scene with the three guys is over, Vashem Ammar
Hashem said. That is why that takes us right
back to the beginning. Avraham A Sharaniyosa.
What I am doing as a, as, as a covenantal partner with Avraham
is I am sharing with him the important things.
I'm about to destroy Saddam. He's my partner.
I have to tell him, well, I'm modeling that for you, Avraham.
But before I do that, you know, I have to let you know that
you're supposed to have included Sarah and.
And you didn't. And that's the rebuke.
It's such an incredible trap. Yeah.
Really amazing. Amazing stuff.
So jumping to the next part, which is Yitzhak's role in the
covenant. Yitzhak is often viewed as a
transitional figure in the patriarchal narrative.
What is his unique covenantal challenge and how do you begin
to see his character arc unfold in Genesis?
And just to piggyback of what you just said, this lack of, you
know, conversation between Avraham and and Sarah, we we see
like it's almost it's very striking that Yitzhak and Rifka
don't communicate. That's that's just something
that jumps out. Yes, it.
Does jump out. Yitzhak, by the way, is the only
one of the upvotes whose name doesn't get changed.
Yeah, I was. Thinking about that when you
were mentioning the name changes.
Right. And I, I think that's
interesting when you take a look at the Yitzhak story.
And again, there's a, there's a lot to try to pack into a, you
know, a, a podcast over here when you take a look at the
Yitzhak story. What's interesting is I'll just
going to try to do this really briefly.
The opening of Yitzhak's story is he copies Avraham.
The closing of Yitzhak's story is he copies Avraham, right?
But there's a difference. In the beginning, he copies
Avraham blindly, without thinking, and he fails
miserably. He goes down to Guerrero and
tries passing off his wife as his sister.
And how do you explain the twin boys?
And he doesn't know that you're supposed to close the window
shades, right? So that Abby Miller doesn't see
that you're doing things with your sister that people don't
usually do with their sisters, right.
Meaning he, he just doesn't get it.
And then afterwards, so this is a year of famine.
There's a drought in the land. And Yezhak invests in farming.
He's the only one of the alvo to farm.
Everybody else with shepherds. Yezhak invests in famine in
invests in farming. In the year of famine, there's
no reason for him to have succeeded.
Any success he has is not due to his own credit.
It's because Hasha made him successful.
He got back 100 times his investment.
He became instantaneously wealthy.
So Yitzhak is doing a lot of things there.
And then he starts digging wells and he does re digs his father's
wells, His father, Doug Wells, The police team stuffed them up.
He goes and re digs them, calls them the same names.
You wouldn't even know what those names are.
Calls them the same names that his father.
He's just mimicking his father. That's, that's the beginning.
That's early Yitzhak, right? Late Yitzhak.
He, he actually ends up doing the same thing.
He digs wells, but now he's not digging his father's wells.
He's digging his own. And he gives them names and
eventually he digs well, when the name sticks and was actually
a name that his father had given and it didn't stick and Yitzhak
made it stick. OK, So in terms of Yitzhak's
personal character, right? I think what Yitzhak really
represents, he's very passive. There's only one Perak in all of
Tanaka, which Yitzhak is really active.
And that's the story of the Wells signs that Yitzhak is
primarily a passive guy. Things are done to him.
Things are done around him. He doesn't do a lot of the
doing. This is the only place where we
see him doing the doing. This is where Yitzhak becomes
his own person, and the person he chooses to become is the
carbon copy of Abraham, meaning he goes from copying Abraham
blindly to saying no, my job is to follow in my father's
footsteps. There's an element of greatness
in that right saying, no, I am not going to innovate.
I am not going to do something new.
I'm not going to blaze my own path.
My father created a good path. I am going to actively choose to
follow that path. And that's who Yitzhak becomes
that that captures it. Avraham has to, you know, we
need, we need 10 procurement about Avraham to find it, to
figure out who he becomes. And Yitzhak takes just a single
Perak. He becomes the link, which is so
powerful because how many of us are going to become innovators
in the world? So right, or leaders in the
world. You need followers too.
And, and Yitzhak is the prototype of the follower.
He's the prototype of the person who chooses to follow because
that's what they will do best. Beautifully said.
Beautiful. All right.
And. So moving on to Yaakov, Yaakov's
path to establishing the covenant is fraught with
personal and relational struggles.
What role does Raquel play in his journey, and how does her
presence shape the covenant? The legacy.
So you like the shadowing? Of course you like that piece.
This is also the truth is this is more about Raquel than about
Yaakov. Raquel is when we, when we meet
her, she's a little bit of a troubling character.
You know, Yaakov loves her. It never says that she loves
him. You never see that, you know,
and the Mid Rashim, I think the Mid Rashim do her tremendous
disservice. You know, the Mid Rashim that's,
you know, talk about how she helped, she helped Leia deceive
Yaakov in order to protect Leia's dignity.
The Keys. The the signs.
Yeah, that with the the signs. So, you know, it's, it's a true
act of Chester to her sister, but a true act of cruelty to
Yaakov. How can you do that to him?
So Rachel is a is a, is a is a difficult character.
What Yaakov sees in her is not clear.
I think when you look in the humash, what he sees in her is
that she's a shepherd. She's like him now.
And now I'm going to frame something.
I don't think I've ever framed it this way.
So he thinks that she's just like him, and it turns out that
she's actually not like him. Yaakov, by his nature, is not
devious. He was forced into that.
Raquel by her nature is devious, right?
And that's where I think the Madras is coming from, which is
she played a very active role in that whole in in that whole
deception. Amazing.
Never thought. About it, that is amazing.
OK. OK, so and this goes back to
Ben, See what you were talking about earlier.
He thought she was going to be his Azar the best way.
To help was by being a negative. Right.
And so when you don't, when you don't understand that she's a
very troubling character, she turns to Avraham out of
bitterness and say, Gimme kids. Well, honey, I'm trying.
You know, it's not all up to me. What do you mean, Gimme kids?
Does she think he's holding back on her in some way?
Right there, there. There's something that that that
doesn't sound, I mean, it sounds childish and petulant to me.
And then, you know, they, I, I want the flowers on Reuven's
flowers. Like there's something about
that that bothers us, Like we don't understand it, which is
why all the all the mafershim have to, you know, come up with
explanations that are going to sound less troubling.
But the Hamas presents it presents this as a a little
troubling. I think the redemption, Raquel's
real redemption, comes when she uses her deviousness for good
things, when she uses it to undermine Yaakov in a way that
Yaakov can never thank her enough for.
You know, when, when Yaakov Yaakov, what we can actually say
about him is you until, until the end of of of which parsha by
Yeatsay, until the end of Parashat by Yeatsay.
Yaakov avoids all conflict. He runs away from conflict at
the end of a Yeatsay, he confronts Lavon.
That's the first time you see Yaakov engaging actively, right?
Why did that? And, and from that point
onwards, he actually engages. He, he engaged Lavon, he's going
to engage Asav, right? He's going to engage Hamor of
Isham in his own way and Rachel gets all the credit for that
turn around. He forced his.
Hands. Basically yes.
Because they they were going to sneak out of Lovan's house And.
And Lovan, right. Lovan catches up to Yaakov.
You look at the speeches really carefully.
Lovan gives a speech to Yaakov, and Yaakov basically backs down.
Yeah, he says, OK, search me, search my house, search
everything you want. How many of us would have invite
somebody to come into our house and open our drawers and go into
our intimate spaces? That's the the ultimate act of
submission. But what happens as a result of
that scene? Lavan had accused Yaakov of
stealing his truffim, his gods. And when it turns out that there
were, that nothing was to be found, that's when Yaakov
unleashes a very powerful speech on Lavan.
And that is Yaakov's first time that he confronts somebody.
That's his turn around. And one who forced that was
Raquel. She was the one who took to the
truffim. Everybody wants to know why she
took picture of fame. You know, her motives were this,
her motives were that they, when you read the text, it looks like
her motives were to force Lavon into a confrontation with Yaakov
in which Yaakov would would just rise up in rebellion.
She I, I think she anticipated all that stuff happening that
Obama's going to come chase them and everything Lavon said to
Yaakov, Yaakov didn't have any response to he basically gave in
to Lovan. But when Lovan says Llama
Ganafda Dalai, why'd you steal my gods?
And it turns out that it, it was a false accusation.
I mean, it was, it was a true accusation, but it, but you
know, he, well, only the reader knows that it's a true
accusation, right? Even Yaakov didn't know there
was a true accusation. So in the end, it turns out that
that is what when Yaakov is accused of theft, for 20 years,
Yaakov has been running away from the accusations of theft.
And after 20 years of being more honest than the Pope, Yaakov,
right? I'm not saying anything about
the Pope, but but after 20 years of being accused of, of having,
you know, look over his shoulder, right, of of who's
honest and who's dishonest in this relationship, and now he's
being accused of theft. Yakov's been trying to reclaim
his reputation as a decent guy for 20 years.
And now Lovan accusing and Yakov loses it.
And for the first time he pushes back really hard against Lovan.
That's the Connecto that Raquel created.
Yeah. And by the way, the, you know,
later on in their book you tied in, which I never really thought
of. And I thought this was this was
mind blowing for me, but it's almost like mind blowing because
I'm like, how did I miss this? But you know, when the brothers
later on are are, you know, they're being accused of
stealing the goblet of, of Yosef, right?
And he, he basically, he, he plants it in the bag of you know
what I mean? The test, I was, I was OK.
They're testing to see his, you know, the, the loyalty of the
brothers towards Benjamin, right?
But what was the real like it's not fair to Benjamin that he
should be accused of theft. Why theft, right?
Because his mother, her reputation was, was that she
stole the Trypheme. So this is a this is an ultimate
test because now they want to see if they had any respect of,
of Rachel, right as, as the beloved.
And we see very clearly in Yehuda's speech at the end that
he mentions his beloved Raquel. So they acknowledge that his
that, that Raquel was the most loved by, by by Yaakov.
So I think the way you tied all that in and that's what I love
about your book. It's just like one thread that's
just the tapestry that's just constantly like unpacking and
and showing us like the connections.
It's, it's really, I'm, I'm not doing it justice right now, but
I, I, I get chills, you know, when I read these parts, it just
like blows my mind. To finish off, we want to talk
about Yosef and his brothers. The culmination of Genesis
focuses on yourself and his brothers.
How did their struggles and reconciliation reflect the
process of achievement achieving the covenant, and how does their
journey signal its success? So, you know, for years, for
many years, I, I felt like the end of Vayigash and Parshad
Vayehi were sort of just like an appendage.
It was just hanging on there. The story, you know, when they
did the play, you know, Joseph and the technical Dreamcoat.
So the story ends with the with the family reunification.
Everybody thinks that that's the happy ending.
That's not the happy ending at all.
That is a false happy ending there.
There's a whole nother story that happens that happens
afterwards. That happy ending, though, is
the precursor to it comes afterwards.
And, and the reason that the happy ending is so is so
important is if the family doesn't hold together, then, you
know, I'm going to go back to where we started.
Hashem create creates people. He wants relationships with
people. And, and it didn't work, didn't
work once it didn't work a second time.
He chose a different path. I'm going to start with one man.
He's going to have a family, finally get the Yakov.
We think that this is the family that's going to OK, this is
this, this family is going to do it.
And then there are problems. There's a problem with Ruhuven,
the problem with Shimonon Levy, the problem with Yehuda.
There's a problem with Yosef. Yaakov basically almost lost,
right? He almost lost the whole thing.
Yosef is the one who actually pulls it together.
That that's the great irony. The one who is the most rejected
amongst the brothers is the one who actually creates
unification. It's the unified family that
becomes the core of the nation. If you take a look and safer
British sheet nations are basically formed when people
have 12 kids. Karan has 12 kids, Ishmael has
12 kids, Yaakov has 12 kids. Asav is more complicated because
he actually he has 13 because he becomes two nations.
He becomes two nations that are emerged Asav and Adom and emerge
so so Asaph is is is a little bit more complicated there.
That's where there are two told oath of Asaph is told oath of
Asaph who Adom and Asaph Avi Adom, the father of the nation
of Adom. I guess he basically merges
himself, his nation together with Sahir and that that's,
that's the end of but the coming together as a family is, is not
the end, but it's what allows the covenant to continue through
this family. That in itself is not a
confidental statement. But now that we have a nation,
now Hashem says, OK, well, we have the the kernel of the
nation. The 12 is the kernel of the
nation. Now this kernel has to grow into
a nation. This is going to be the people
that are going to be my messengers to the rest of
humanity. This is, by the way, what I talk
about in in my next book, which is coming out very soon.
That's Harcini by pericute tetev Seifish Mote attempt to use the
Mamlukhat Kohanim Vigori Kadosh. What are kohanim?
Kohanim with the bridge between God and and and people.
But if the whole nation is a nation of Kohanim, so who are
they? Who are they?
The bridge between bridging to the world.
Right. A bridge between Hashem and the
rest of the world, right? That starts when we have the
kernel of a nation. The kernel of the nation happens
when all 12 are together. Yosef is the one who engineers
that. It's a long story.
We all know that. And as I see, if you read the
books, then you know that the story is actually even longer
than we think, right? But but that's, that's the role
that that plays. It's they they become the kernel
of the nation and that that's not the confident, but it is the
family. This is the family that is the
kernel of the nation that Hashem is going to then build his
relationship through them to all of humanity.
Amazing. I, I think that one of the
lessons I take from all of this is that us OK, so this is the
message to Amisrael, right? This whole book that that we
are, we may, we may, you know, go astray for a while and we may
be violating the covenant, but Hashem is constantly waiting for
us and giving us opportunities to be part of this partnership,
right? It's not, but it's on us to
keep. We have to keep our end of the
bargain. And as long as we keep our end
of the bargain, then we, we are now, we are following in the
footsteps of the Evolt, right? We are, we are carrying on their
legacy. We can't carry on their legacy
if we're not, you know, observing the breeds and and
maintaining the breeds. So I think for us, the message
is very powerful. You know, especially in a world
that says, oh, the Jews are no longer part of the breeds and
all that the breed is a is a choice.
It's an active choice that we can make at any point.
So to me, I think that that just speaks to me, if you.
To take a look at the end of the toka in in beautiful Kotai,
you'll see almost that exact message.
The very, very end of the Torah, right?
That all the bad things that happened are not because Hashem
has rejected us, but exactly the opposite.
He rejected us. He wouldn't care if he's if he's
doing these things to us, it's because He does care, because he
never gives up on us. Never.
Not till the end when we're constantly messing up.
I think that's another amazing feature of Tanakh.
We're constantly messing up. He's constantly staying with us
and he's giving us. It's like the way we would be
with our own children. You know, it just makes sense.
They can keep messing up, but they're always going to be our
children. So, you know, we're not going to
leave them. We're not going to abandon them.
I, I, we really want to thank you.
This was unbelievable. Appreciate it.
Very. Much you know you're.
You're you're like I said before, you know, I keep singing
your praises, but your your book is one of the best I've read on
on old Genesis. And I highly recommend that
everybody get this book. It's just amazing.
You know, it gives it gives you chills on almost every chapter.
So we really want to thank you for that and thank you for
joining us. My pleasure Javlotov.
OK. Chevroletov And it was wonderful
talking to you guys, meeting you and talking to you guys.
Thank you very. Much.