Imu Shalev: I’m Imu Shalev, and this is A Book Like No Other. Over the last three episodes, Rabbi Forhman’s been building a thought provoking theory that the two special trees in the garden might, in fact, have been one in the same. And I don’t know about you, but for me, I was sold. Done deal. I was on Team One Tree. 

But this theory isn’t all about numbers. It’s about God’s plan for us in the garden. The tree, like the Torah, was meant to be a tool for connecting with God. The tree itself emitted God’s breath. The fruit, that’s where His Divine Knowledge of Good and Evil lay. We were meant to connect first to the tree. Fall in love with just being with God. And learn to appreciate and respect that relationship before reaping the practical benefits God had to offer. 

The tragedy is, this plan failed. Adam and Chava went for the fruit first, and, seeing their lust for power, God got worried the tree itself was next. What if they consumed it in a mad grab for immortality? So God kicked us out, and we lost access to everything — tree and fruit. Only maybe the story doesn’t end there. Rabbi Forhman promised last time that the tree returns. Now the question is, where and when? 

Rabbi David Fohrman: All right. Imu, time for us to get to that old cliffhanger there; where else have we met the Tree of Life? And again, I'm not talking about metaphorically, I'm talking about an actual vision as we last saw it. Does it ever appear again in the Bible? So in order to get our minds around that notion, let's just take a count of the vision of the Tree of Life as we've last seen it in Eden.

Imu: In order to do that, Rabbi Fohrman directed us to Genesis, chapter 3, verses 23 and 24. That’s where we find the last explicit description of the tree as Adam and Eve are exiled. Rabbi Fohrman’s plan was for us to carefully take note of exactly how the tree is described, so we can hunt for these specific details elsewhere in the Torah.  But before he could even start reading, an intriguing parallel in these verses caught my eye and sparked an unexpected sidebar. And I know this will probably seem like a tangent right now, but it’s going to end up playing an important part in our theory down the line. So hold on, enjoy the ride, and I promise we’ll get back to the Tree of Life reappearing in just a few minutes. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So we're actually going to look at the very end of Chapter 3, the last two verses of the expulsion from Eden. Two of the most mysterious verses in the entire Torah.

Imu: Hmm, I never noticed this before.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, so I'll read it and then you tell me what you never noticed.   “—וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ” (Gensis 3:23)

Imu: Wait, hold it right there.

Rabbi Fohrman: Go ahead.

Imu: For most of this podcast, we focused on Genesis 3, verse 22, where God is going to cast them out, “פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ”, lest he send out his hand and kind of violate the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22). But now, here, we're finally reading verse 23 and it begins, “וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְקוָה אֱלֹקים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן.”  Which means, “God cast them out from Gan Eden.” What I’m noticing is that the word here in verse 23 for “casting out”, וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ, has the same root as the word in verse 22 for “send out”, יִשְׁלַח, as in, יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ, “send out his hand”. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Same verb.

Imu: Right, same verb. Perhaps God is afraid of them casting their hand on the tree, so God casts them out from the place of the trees.

Rabbi Fohrman: That is fascinating that it's the same verb, as if God preemptively is casting them out of the garden, lest they cast their hand and do something devastating.

Imu: וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים, by the way. He's cast out לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם. (Genesis 3:22-23)

Rabbi Fohrman: I hadn't thought of that, that's beautiful. So what Imu is noticing is a confluence of two verbs in verse 22 and verse 23. In verse 22, וְעַתָּה פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח, “And lest Man stretch forth his hand and take from the Tree of Life,” (Genesis 3:22), and therefore, וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְקוָה אֱלֹקים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן, “God cast man out of Eden,” לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם, “to work the land from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3:23)

Imu: These verses seem to be responding to each other. God seems to be saying, “Hey, before you reach out and take My precious tree, I’m sending you out of here, back to where you came from.” So that’s a nifty little connection. But, honestly, we could have left it on the cutting room floor. Except, seeing this connection got Rabbi Fohrman’s wheels turning. And, as he does, he noticed something. Not only are verse 22 and 23 responding to each other, but they seem to be responding to an earlier verse as well, back in Genesis 2:15. This is a couple verses after the creation of the Garden, and look what we’re told: וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם, “And God took Adam,” וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, “and He placed him in Gan Eden to guard and to serve.” (Genesis 2:15)

Do you hear anything familiar? So first of all, וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה, God takes Adam and places him in the garden. It’s the same verb we saw before: קַּח, to take. And why was Adam taken and placed in the garden? לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, “to work and to guard it.”  Now that word, לְעׇבְדָהּ, you may recognize that from 3:23 as well. There, we’re told that Adam is being sent out of Eden לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה, “to work the land.” This time, land outside the garden, but it’s the same job. Adam’s punishment, being sent out of the garden to work the land from which he was taken, seems to be a reverse of God’s original plan to take Adam and place him into the garden to work and to serve the land there. Only, notice one more thing – it’s not a perfect reversal. Adam was meant to guard and work the land in Eden, but his exile only mentions working the land. Guarding is missing. Something isn’t adding up.  So what’s going on? This question nudged Rabbi Fohrman to take a closer look. Here’s what he came to:  

Rabbi Fohrman: If you think about it, God is making sort of a triage analysis. He's got to decide. “Oh my gosh, Man was put in this garden to actually do something. He was there לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, he was there to serve the garden, to work it, and he was there to guard over the garden and to watch it. The tragedy is: Mankind, whose job it was to guard the Tree of Life — what is God worried about? Who's going to attack the tree?

Imu: Man.

Rabbi Fohrman: The guards.

Imu:The gardener.

Rabbi Fohrman: What if the gardener becomes the threat?

Imu: They can't be trusted in the garden anymore.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, and therefore, there is no other solution other than banishment. Which is really beautiful, Imu, because if you view it any other way, you think like, “So Man was banished from the garden out of punishment.” 

Imu: “Go to your room.”

Rabbi Fohrman: No! We were banished from the garden because the whole point of you being in the garden was to protect the tree from those who would invade it, but now you've shown that you would be the invader. So I actually can't trust you to do your job. Not only can I not trust you to do your job, you're the very potential threat that you were supposed to guard against. Getting back to the idea of triage, if we then look at this verse, let's read it one more time, וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְקוָה אֱלֹקים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן, “God cast mankind out of the garden,” לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם, “to work the land that he was taken from.” In other words, it's like, “Look, I understand you're a worker of land. I just can't afford to have you in the garden anymore. You're going to have to work different land. Work the land from which you were taken. What about the guarding? I, for sure, can't afford to have you guard this garden. You're the potential threat.”

Therefore, the next verse, verse 24: וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת־הָאָדָם, “God casts man out of the garden,” and sets up, וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן־עֵדֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים. God sets up, east of Eden, the kruvim (cherubs), these angels with their mysterious לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת, “with the flame of a revolving sword,” לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים, “to guard the way back to the Tree of Life.” There it is; to work and to guard, man's original purpose in the garden, is coming back in these verses, and is actually being divided up in a terrible act of triage.

Imu: So, avodah, “serving the land,” that’s still a human job. But it’s got to happen elsewhere now, outside the garden. Meanwhile, inside the garden, no one would be working the land, but someone, or something, would still be guarding it.  

Rabbi Fohrman: That's the angels. They can, perhaps, keep it safe so that there can be another chance, whereby Man can be given access to the tree one more time.

Imu: And we’re back where our discussion began, but now the stakes felt higher. Exile cut us off from Eden, but it also left Eden without its gardener. And I wasn’t sure what to make of these angels usurping us as guards, but it certainly made the image on the way out of Eden that much more vivid. And it was this image that Rabbi Fohrman was interested in to begin with. Remember, he wanted us to get a good picture in our minds of what the tree looked like on the way out of Eden, so we’d know exactly what we were looking out for, in order to spot the tree’s return. 

Rabbi Fohrman: We leave Eden and we cast over our shoulder. There's that famous painting of Adam and Eve leaving Eden and peering over their shoulders at the kruvim.  That's the last we see of the tree. Interesting, we don't really even see the tree. We just see the path to the tree. Maybe we glimpse the tree at the end of the path. We see angels, these mysterious angels. We see a flame, we see a sword. We see a sword that’s mit’hapeich, that's revolving or somehow double edged in some way.

Imu: Upside down...?

Rabbi Fohrman: We don't quite know what that means, and that's the last we see. 

So, Imu, the question I would say to you is, if you caught just a little narrow glimpse of this last moment, what would it actually look like to you?

Imu: I would see, again, just repeating imagery, I probably would see angels. I'd see some sort of sword.

Rabbi Fohrman: But if you saw it really far away, what are the most outstanding images you would see?

Imu: Oh, you mean, if I see this whole thing from far away?

Rabbi Fohrman: See the whole thing. Say you're 500 yards away. What would you see?

Imu: Fire, probably?

Rabbi Fohrman: Probably fire. The tree, fire, maybe the angels and the sword if I got a little closer. And so when else do we meet an image like that, a fiery tree?

Imu: Oh, the Burning Bush. But it's a bush, it's not a tree!

Rabbi Forhman: So one second, hold on. Let's first establish whether Fohrman is entirely bonkers in this. I'm suggesting that the Burning Bush -- what if the Burning Bush was the Tree of Life? If the Burning Bush was the Tree of Life, then, as Moses gets closer, he sees fire and he sees the tree.

Imu: There's an angel there, right? Isn't there an angel?

Rabbi Fohrman: There's an angel there! An angel jumps out of the bush. 

Imu: There's an angel that talks to Moses. It tells him to take off his —.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Let's read the verse, let's go to Exodus for a moment. Why don't you start from chapter 3, verse 1?

Imu: Okay. וּמֹשֶׁה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת־צֹאן יִתְרוֹ חֹתְנוֹ, “Moses was shepherding the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law,” כֹּהֵן מִדְיָן, “who was the priest of Midian,” וַיִּנְהַג אֶת־הַצֹּאן אַחַר הַמִּדְבָּר, “He led the sheep through the desert,” וַיָּבֹא אֶל־הַר הָאֱלֹקים חֹרֵבָה, “and he comes to the Mountain of God in a place called Chorev.” וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַךְ יְקוָה אֵלָיו בְּלַבַּת־אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה, “An angel of God appears to him in לַבַּת־אֵשׁ, this flame of fire, מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה, from the bush.” (Exodus 3:1-2)

Rabbi Fohrman: From inside the bush. From the middle of the bush. Does that remind you of anything in the Tree of Life, of anything? Where was the Tree of Life?

Imu: Oh, b'toch, right. It was b’toch. It was b’toch, in the middle of, the garden. And here now the angel is b’toch, in the middle of the bush. Fascinating.

Rabbi Fohrman: So here you have the fire, here you have the tree and here you have the angel. But Imu's brain is saying, “Okay, Fohrman, I get it, but a number of things —

Imu: I mean, if I were to pick on you, I'll pick on לַבַּת־אֵשׁ, is “flame of fire,” but its not לַהַט, which is the only “fire” we have there. So it's a different word, לַבַּת and לַהַט.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's a different word, although we don't know the difference between --

Imu: Well, we got a bunch of different words. You're giving me a סְּנֶה, which is a bush, not an עֵץ.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, so one thing is, “Okay, Fohrman, the Torah knows how to say a Tree of Life. It wasn't a סְּנֶה, it wasn’t a bush, it was a tree; it can't be the Tree of Life.” So good, that's one question. What else?

Imu: There is an angel in both places. It's not specified that it's kruvim, but still, I'll give it to you. That is kind of intriguing to me.

Rabbi Fohrman: But your problem is, how many angels were guarding the Tree of Life?

Imu: Two, “kruvim.”

Rabbi Fohrman: So we're missing an angel.

Imu: Right, that's true.

Rabbi Fohrman: We're down an angel.

Imu: He's slacking off. 

Rabbi Fohrman: What, a missing angel? We have one angel AWOL?

Imu: So clearly, this was not a slam dunk, but it was interesting. And while skepticism is valuable, and I’d aired mine, one thing Rabbi Fohrman has taught me well about this Book Like No Other is that it’s always worth taking a closer look. And there were some compelling things to see. 

I'm going to read this a bit more because I see, you know, וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ,  Moses actually sees this bush that is burning, וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל and — oh cool, וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל!

Rabbi Fohrman: What are you seeing there?

Imu: So that means that the bush was not consumed, but that word, אֻכָּל, is the same word as achal, as eaten, which is exactly what's supposed to be for the tree. It's supposed to be a tree that is אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל, a tree that is not consumed.

Rabbi Fohrman: And not the fruits! The tree itself is not consumed.

Imu: The tree itself, right.

Rabbi Fohrman: The bark of the tree is not being eaten. Why were we banished? Because what was God worried about?

Imu: That we would eat the tree.

Rabbi Fohrman: That we would chop down the tree and eat it.

Imu: The fire's following the rules. Man doesn't follow the rules.

Rabbi Fohrman: The fire's following the rules. Man didn't follow the rules. That's the whole point of the angels. The angels are supposed to follow the rules, because we couldn't be trusted to follow the rules. We couldn't be trusted not to eat the tree, but the angels could be trusted to take their fire, which is a really dangerous thing, and to not eat the tree. Come here with your fire. Fire? Are you crazy? Look, I'm an angel, I know, I'm not going to destroy the tree, God, trust me. So here are these angels with their fire, וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל, and the tree itself was not being eaten-slash-consumed.

Imu: These angels. First they steal our job, then they upstage us on the “listening to God” front. I was liking them less and less. But I was liking this theory more and more. I also like the fact that Moshe is not here yet. He sees this a ways away. he says, וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אָסֻרָה־נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה, " I'm going to actually turn to go look at this,” אֶת־הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה. 

and here He's actually going to gaze at it first. (Exodus 3:2-3)

Rabbi Fohrman: How are you supposed to relate to the Tree of Life?

Imu: Right, נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה, first. (Genesis 2:9) You have got to actually see it.

Rabbi Fohrman: נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה. And the first thing that happens, he's entranced by a wondrous site. He's going to see it.

Imu: You once taught me this in a totally different context, but it means something else now. You have a Chanukah course about this. Verse 4, וַיַּרְא יְקוָה כִּי סָר לִרְאוֹת, “God saw that Moses actually turned to see.” (Exodus 3:4) And you pointed out that God had some sort of test here. Could Moshe even notice that there's something incredible here? If you were walking around in the desert and you saw a bush on fire, nobody would really — it's not a huge miracle. 

Rabbi Fohrman: How sensitive are you to the majesty of what's happening?

Imu: Right. Well, so here, it's actually, God is impressed that Moshe is stopping to smell the roses. He's actually “נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה”-ing. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. He's impressed with the subtle majesty of the site. That's how you were supposed to begin to relate to that tree. Don't start thinking about what you can do with it, just think about, “That's an amazing thing.”

Imu:  By the way, I actually also hadn’t noticed this, as to the names of God. So, וַיַּרְא יְ-ק-וָ-ה כִּי סָר לִרְאוֹת.

יְ-ק-וָ-ה, you would argue, is the aspect of God that is נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶ. He is taken that Moshe is looking, but then, וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו אֱלֹקים מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה. In the same pasuk, it is not יְ-ק-וָ-ה who talks, it is now אֱלֹקים who is speaking to Moses. וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה מֹשֶׁה... (Exodus 3:4)

Rabbi Fohrman:  Just one second, slow down for a minute. Just to roadmap a little bit for everybody. So we're excitedly going through this text and looking at the implications which seem to be many and manifold, but let's just understand that this is still an unproven theory. It's a theory that, maybe, when Moses sees a fiery bush, he's looking at the Tree of Life as we last saw it. We have a number of unresolved questions that we haven't dealt with. Why is it a bush and not a tree? Where's the rest of the garden? It's the desert! How come we only meet one of two angels? For that matter, where's the sword?

But other things are starting to fall into place. It still is this fiery bush. There still is this angel. What if that angel is one of the kruvim? It’s b’toch, the tree was in the midst of the garden. The way that you're supposed to relate to the tree is through sight. Moses is relating to it through sight. He is understanding the subtlety of it. So all of that is falling into place, and the other thing that Imu has just noticed is that the names of God are tantalizingly mysterious all of a sudden. 

Imu: I thought God’s names switching was interesting, but “tantalizing mysterious”? Rabbi Fohrman was seeing something I wasn’t. And, thankfully, he soon took me down the rabbit hole with him. We were about to switch gears from gathering evidence to support the possibility that the tree was the Burning Bush, to understanding what that meant. And it all began with going back to the garden to take a closer look at how God’s names showed up there.   

Rabbi Fohrman: Who was it who banished us from the Tree of Life?

Imu: Who was it that banished us?

Rabbi Fohrman: Look at the end of Chapter 3.

Imu: It seems like it's both. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Exactly, it is both. Hashem Elokim, יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים. Now, here's the fascinating thing: It turns out that יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים is a very unusual way of referring to God. Throughout the Torah, God is almost never referred to as יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים. There's one or two exceptions to it, but the real exception to it is one chapter in the Torah where, 19 times, God is referred to as יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים, and that is the Garden of Eden story. What are we to make of that mystery?

Now, I don't know for sure, but I'll give you my theory. The garden is God's place in this world and in God's place in this world, the reality of God as Hashem Elokim is manifest. But everywhere else out of the garden, human beings tend to view God almost as one and not the other.

Imu: This goes back to the idea we talked about in earlier episodes that God’s Names, יְ-ק-וָ-ה and אֱלֹקים, like the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, are a duality masking a unity. They each represent an apparent side of God, but ultimately, the division is false. God is One. But now, Rabbi Fohrman was adding that, maybe in the garden, God’s Oneness was more on display than we experience it day-to-day. And that’s why God isn’t just יְ-ק-וָ-ה in Creation Story Number Two, i.e. the Garden story, but יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים – both names together. So what does this have to do with God’s Names at the Burning Bush? Rabbi Fohrman was getting there. He just had one small, but powerful, point to add about God’s manifest unity in Eden. And that was to remind me, we rejected it.      

Rabbi Fohrman: When we take from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God says, הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע, “Now mankind has become like only one of Us,” is how I would read it. You've taken the אֱלֹקים aspect and said, that's the only thing that mattered. And therefore, you need to be driven from the garden because you haven't related to the Tree of Life aspect of the tree properly. 

Imu: It’s almost like the ability to see the יְ-ק-וָ-ה side of God was left behind in Eden with the tree. Until…drum roll please.

Rabbi Fohrman: Now, if we're really right, Imu, that the story of the Burning Bush is the reintroduction of the Tree of Life into the world, isn't it interesting that, all of a sudden, the two names of God are going back and forth with each other?

Imu: Yeah, it’s not quite יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים, like in the garden, but it's kind of moving towards יְ-ק-וָ-ה אֱלֹקים. Like alarm bells going off: I’m not just אֱלֹקים.   

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, it seems to be a reintroduction of the יְ-ק-וָ-ה name of God. It seems as if God is revealing this name. 

Imu: What Rabbi Fohrman was suggesting is that it wasn’t just the tree imagery from Eden coming back as the bush, like some kind of agrarian party trick. The tree’s return was part of something bigger. Somehow, our ability to perceive or relate to God as יְ-ק-וָ-ה was returning as well, which makes the Burning Bush a huge milestone in human history over and above its obvious significance in the Exodus story. 

It’s a bold argument, though, to hang on a little name switch in one verse. Especially since it’s kind of weird to say that יְ-ק-וָ-ה needs to make a reintroduction at all.  יְ-ק-וָ-ה doesn’t disappear after the exile from Eden like the tree does. God is referred to as יְ-ק-וָ-ה all over Genesis. So, what was Rabbi Fohrman thinking? 

Well, for one, he was thinking about a lot more than my one little noticing about God’s names switching. If you’re familiar with Rabbi Fohrman’s book, The Exodus You Almost Passed Over, you may remember that he makes a similar argument there. We’re not going to rehash all the evidence from the book (If you’d like to read it, there’s a link in the description), but let’s start with one important verse. This is Exodus 6:3. Things aren’t going so well in Egypt, and God is reassuring Moses. He cryptically says, וָאֵרָא אֶל־אַבְרָהָם אֶל־יִצְחָק וְאֶל־יַעֲקֹב בְּקל שַׁקי, “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the Name Keil Shakai.” וּשְׁמִי יְ-ק-וָ-ה, u’shmi Hashem, לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם, “but I did not make Myself known to them by My name, יְ-ק-וָ-ה.” (Exodus 6:3)

Interesting. So, you see where Rabbi Fohrman is coming from? Somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary in Genesis, God Himself is telling Moses that the forefathers didn’t know Him as יְ-ק-וָ-ה. Which means that the name יְ-ק-וָ-ה must have been shared with us sometime later. And Rabbi Fohrman’s argument is that, if you read the Burning Bush story carefully, it seems pretty clear that this is the spot where that big reveal took place.  

Rabbi Fohrman: I would argue that if you look carefully, the story of the revelation of יְ-ק-וָ-ה is the story of the Burning Bush. Remember that moment where Moshe says, “God, what's Your name? Tell me Your name.” Remember how God is caught off guard? And it's like, “What, My Name? I am what I am, don't ask Me My Name.” What kind of name is that? So God fumbles around, and God actually has three answers. First, His answer is אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, and then His answer is, “Well, just tell them אֶהְיֶה שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם. I am...something. And then He says, “You know what, I have an idea. Tell them this,” the third attempt. יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵיכֶם שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם, “Yud Kay Vav Kay, the God of their forefathers, sent me to you,” זֶה־שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם, “that's my name forever,” וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר, “This is how I always want to be remembered, by יְ-ק-וָ-ה.” Maybe that will be my name, the “I'll be with you” God. It's not just the God of being, it's the God of being with, the God of empathy, the God of love, the God of connection.

Imu: The God of the Tree of Life.  

Rabbi Fohrman: The main point I'm making is that the name is actually constructed. It's literally — God is involved in a branding exercise. Moshe says, “I need a name for you,” and God is like, “Really? A name? That's how you human beings work? Like, I Am Who I Am. Here's My quality that's really important. It's not really a Name, but it's a quality. I'll be with you the way I am with you. I'm always with you.”

And then God says, “You know what, I bet We can construct a name out of that. Let's take this idea of ‘being with’ and let's make a name out of it. How about יְ-ק and וָ-ה? It's kind of like haya, being in the past. It's kind of like hoveh, being in the present. It's kind of like yihiyeh, being in the future.” But it's all of them together, and God says, “That's a good brand name,” and Moshe's like, “No, that's not a word.” And God is like, “I didn't say it was a word, it's a brand. You get it? It's got this double entendre. It means ‘being without reference to time’. Just tell them יְ-ק-וָ-ה sent them to you. That's who I'll be.”

Once יְ-ק-וָ-ה gets revealed, so then, later on, when the Torah is given at Sinai, when God writes the Torah and says, “Moses, here's the Torah,” He includes יְ-ק-וָ-ה.

Imu:. Wow, so you're saying that this is ground zero. This is ground zero for יְ-ק-וָ-ה. It gets invented here.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Exactly. It's the revelation of the “with you” God, of the “יְ-ק-וָ-ה” God, this thing that was forgotten since the times of Eden. Abraham began to access יְ-ק-וָ-ה. He began to intuit that God was kind of this. וַיִּקְרָא בְּשֵׁם יְהֹוָה, “he called out in the Name of this יְ-ק-וָ-ה,” (Genesis 12:8) He was beginning to introduce this back into the world, but this is where God's name comes. And it's like, “Here's My revelation, this is Who I really Am.”

Imu: Just to make this crystal clear. What God invented, or revealed, at the Burning Bush was literally the word יְ-ק-וָ-ה. That word is then used throughout Torah anachronistically, including in the garden. Meaning, even Adam and Chava possibly weren’t using this name to describe the unique connection to יְ-ק-וָ-ה that the tree let them experience. But at least they had the tree. Outside of the garden, when יְ-ק-וָ-ה is used, it means God is acting from this side of Him. And maybe the foreparents had a sense of that. But, pre-Burning Bush, there was no precise Divine name for human beings to use to express that. So it’s not that יְ-ק-וָ-ה comes back at the Burning Bush. He was always there, but it’s our full awareness of יְ-ק-וָ-ה that’s coming back. 

Of course, that kind of access to יְ-ק-וָ-ה is what the Tree of Life offers us, as well. Just to throw in my own two cents: it’s kind of like, the tree offers experiential access, and the name, cognitive access. So, pretty cool that both of these are showing up at the Burning Bush. But the question is, why now? 

Rabbi Fohrman: How does this relate to the banishment from Eden? Like, let's ask this question: If you're really right that the Burning Bush is the next time we meet the Tree of Life, so you'd say, why the Burning Bush? How come I don't meet the Tree of Life in Jacob's ladder? How come I didn't meet the Tree of Life when Joseph was taken out of the pit? The answer is: We were expelled from Eden because, in God's words, הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע, “Mankind was like only one of Us. He's not willing to see Me as a whole. It's only Me as a Judge and as an Evaluator that He's interested in. And if you enthrone אֱלֹקים at the expense of יְ-ק-וָ-ה, he's going to destroy the tree. I need to save this tree for when mankind can begin to relate to all of Me, to when I can finally reveal יְ-ק-וָ-ה as the rest of Who I am, which happens at the Burning Bush. Welcome to the Tree of Life, Part Two. The Tree of Life is coming back into Man's history, because what journey is beginning at the Burning Bush?

Imu: The journey to Sinai.

Rabbi Fohrman: The journey to Sinai.

Imu: Which happens here, it happens at Chorev.

Rabbi Fohrman:  It happens at Chorev. Now, Imu, one of the problems we had is that there was no sword. There was an angel. There was fire. Where's the sword?

Imu:  The cherev! The cherev, the sword becomes Chorev, it becomes a mountain.

Rabbi Fohrman: The mountain's whole name is Chet-Resh-Bet. “Chorev” just happens to be spelled the same as cherev, the sword. There's the missing sword. 

Imu:  In what sense is it mit’hapechet (revolving)?

Rabbi Fohrman:  So that is the great question. If it's really true that Sinai, that Chorev, is the sword, so in what sense is it mit’hapechet? What about the mountain would be double-edged? But before we get to the revolving aspect of it, and I'll get to that in a moment, let me ask you another question. Let's come back to why it's a bush and not a tree. And what happened to the rest of the garden?

Imu: Because the tree is sad.

Rabbi Fohrman: Why would the tree be sad?

Imu: Wait, you're serious?

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm serious.

Imu: Why is the tree sad? Maybe nobody is ovdo- and shomro-ing (working and guarding) it? Maybe —

Rabbi Fohrman:  Whoa, slow down. Go back to the garden. When's the last time we left the tree? Go back to the triage in the garden. What did God have to do to keep the tree safe?

Imu: He needed to protect it, but no one's there to work it.

Rabbi Fohrman: If no one was there to work it, over the ages, what would happen to the tree?

Imu: Maybe it would erode?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, what would it look like?

Imu: A sad bush.

Rabbi Fohrman:  It would look like a sad bush. It would be protected, wouldn't have anyone destroying it, but no one's working it. If you never have any gardeners, and the only thing that they were focused on was this one tree, all the other trees would fall away. There wouldn't be a garden anymore. There would be a desert, and all there would be is one little sagging bush that's never been watered. There’s just this prickly little thing in the desert, but it's at least being guarded with this fire. That's the Burning Bush. It's the decomposition of the Tree of Life over time. God's Word has not been taken care of. The angels are great at playing defense for the tree, but there's no one nurturing the tree. Hence it's a bush in a desert. It's the garden, except the garden's all gone.

Imu:  That's so creepy.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes. This is the garden. It's this barren, craggy mountain top that hasn't been worked, with one little sad bush. It’s the Tree of Life.

Imu:  It's really interesting because the angel does his job. All he does is guard it. So I was reading in Verse 5, he goes, אַל־תִּקְרַב הֲלֹם, “Don't get close.” That's his job, “stay back.” And then he says, שַׁל־נְעָלֶיךָ מֵעַל רַגְלֶיךָ, “Take off your shoe from your foot.” כִּי הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה עוֹמֵד עָלָיו אַדְמַת־קֹדֶשׁ הוּא, “For the place on which you stand is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5) אַדְמַת־קֹדֶשׁ, the adamah (ground) shows back. The last time the angels showed up, it was right after God had said that He had to cast them out לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה, to work the land.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Oh, interesting. So, understand that you're no longer on that kind of land, you're not on “people-land”, you're on “God-land” now, because you're back in the garden.

Imu:  Maybe even more, He's called “Adam”. He's taken from adamah, but he sort of rises up beyond adamah, and doesn't remember his symbiotic relationship with adamah.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Oh, fascinating. So you're actually advocating — that's something, I never understood the answer to that. Why, if it's holy ground, do you have to take off your shoes? You're really providing an answer. In other words, because the value of יְ-ק-וָ-ה would be “connect to your source”. Well, I'm not your only source. I'm the source for your soul. Where does your body come from? Your body comes from the ground. So do you care about your source or not? If you're going to connect to me because this is the Tree of Life and it's God's Word, you've also got to connect to the ground. You can't connect to one source without the other.

Imu: The angel is makpid (particular). It's sort of like God's telling the angels, “Hey, remember I've been telling you to keep these men-folk away from the garden the whole time? He's learned his lesson. I'm going to let him back in.” Then the angel's there and he's like, “Why is he wearing shoes? Take off your shoes.”

Rabbi Fohrman: If you were someone who cared about their source, why are you wearing shoes? Do you want to connect to your source or not? That's beautiful. I never thought about that with the taking off of the shoes.

Imu: Think back to Eden. You want to come back to Eden, you got to connect in the same way the creatures of the earth would connect. I only would have seen that, only with your suggestion that it’s Eden. That’s creepy, it's a creepy notion to think of this as Eden, and it's a sad notion then that it's this mountain in a desert.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Right, and it's almost like Eden is not a place. It's transportable  somehow. It’s God's world in this world, wherever God puts it with its Tree of life in it. 

Imu: I had been wondering. Were we supposed to believe that the Sinai desert was Eden? But the point isn’t Eden the place. It’s Eden as an opportunity. We’d seen how that opportunity opened up at the Burning Bush. But now Rabbi Fohrman was ready to expand the story, all the way to Sinai. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Let me ask you a question, Imu. Did it ever strike you as strange that the Torah was given at Sinai of all places, in the middle of the desert, long before Israel made it into the land? When are you going to do the commandments? When you get in the land! That's when it's going to become practical. So right at the end of the Torah, when Moses is there, it should have been like, “Okay, hold up, guys. Before we go into the land, there are some rules.” Why does it happen in the desert, when there's all this time in the desert when we can't really implement the rules? I wonder if our first exposure to Torah had to be when it was only theoretical, when there wasn't the utilitarian —

Imu: Oh, fascinating. The Torah wasn't given טוֹב לְמַאֲכָל first, with the fruits first. It's given with the tree first. It's actually given in non-applicability so you can just hear the voice, and appreciate your creator and relate to Him.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. You can't really do it yet. The wonder of the revelation, the wonder of connection, is what it's all about.

Imu: Wow, that's really cool. So it's almost like the desert experience is the womb for the reintroduction of the tree to Israel, where you couldn't even eat the fruits. It's almost like the tree didn't yet bear fruits.

Rabbi Fohrman: Which is why, look at the Burning Bush. Did anyone say anything about fruits on the bush?

Imu:  No. It's back into the primordial form.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. It's just like, “Here, you've got to help it. You've got to help it grow fruits.” And then, somehow, if you get into the land, then there will be fruits and whatever, but we're not up to that yet. It's just this first revelation. Then, what's fascinating is, if you look in Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people how important Sinai was. He says, “Always remember and teach your children about Sinai.” But when he explains to them what was important about it, he doesn't say, “Teach them about the day that you learned the Torah. Teach them about the day that you learned about good and evil and about all these mitzvos.” He says, “Teach them about יוֹם אֲשֶׁר עָמַדְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּחֹרֵב, teach them about “the day that you stood in God's presence at Chorev.” (Deuteronomy 4:10) That's all you have to teach them. Teach them about just being there with God. 

Imu: Beautiful. This should be the inspirational keynote event of an educator's conference. Right, like, don't get so fancy with the things you need your kids to know. Just teach them about that day where you stood in Chorev.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. That's the first thing they need to know. Help them understand how wondrous that was.

Imu: It’s the same plan we saw in Eden: Connect to God, tree first, fruit second. Only here, in case you missed it, there is one little difference — well, maybe not so little. The tree has been replaced by the Torah. Sinai is a second chance at what we might have had in Eden, but it’s not an exact replica of that experience. It’s “Revelation 2.0”. The Torah, not the tree, is going to be our lifeline to God now. And maybe that’s why we need the tree imagery coming back at the Burning Bush. It’s the keystone clue, the big indicator, that, though Chorev, this desert, may not look like Eden, what’s happening here is a variation on a theme. Just like in the garden, we’re meant to connect with God as יְ-ק-וָ-ה first, and as אֱלֹקים second. And Rabbi Fohrman saw even more nuanced, and tragic, similarities between Sinai and Eden than that. 

Rabbi Fohrman: You know, it's interesting that, at Chorev, the first thing the angel says is, “Keep away, don't get too close.” What does that remind you of, back in Eden? Our very first command was, “Here are all these trees, but stay away.” And that's one value that you have, have proper respect. But then once Moshe stays away, what's God's message to him over and again? The יְ-ק-וָ-ה message, “Moshe, you're stressed? I'm right there with you. The people are stressed? Tell them I understand. I'm with them, I'm with them, I’m with them.” That's the tension. The tension is respect, distance, but connection. Connected distance. Respectful love. That's what's happening at the Burning Bush, and I want to suggest it's happening at Sinai too.

“If you go to Sinai,” God tells Moses, “tell them not to touch the mountain. If they touch the mountain they'll die. It's very dangerous. You can't touch the mountain. You have to have proper respect touching the mountain,” because it's like the Tree of Life story all over again. And what happens? If you go actually into Exodus 19 and you read what happens, there's a strange little verse there. Look at this little verse, 19:13.

Imu: Oh my gosh.

Rabbi Fohrman: Anybody who touches the mountain will die. Don't touch it! בִּמְשֹׁךְ הַיֹּבֵל,
“But at the shofar blast,” הֵמָּה יַעֲלוּ בָהָר, “everyone goes up the mountain.” (Exodus 19:13) What was supposed to happen at Sinai? 

Imu: They were supposed to go up the mountain. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Everyone was supposed to go up the mountain. Then, look in Deuteronomy, in Deuteronomy 5. Moses, 40 years later, recounts this. It's so sad. Read chapter 5.  יְקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ כָּרַת עִמָּנוּ בְּרִית בְּחֹרֵב, “God made a covenant with us.” כִּי אִתָּנוּ אֲנַחְנוּ אֵלֶּה פֹה הַיּוֹם, “He made it with all of us.” כֻּלָּנוּ חַיִּים, “All of us are alive.” And then, listen to what he said. פָּנִים  בְּפָנִים דִּבֶּר יְקוָה עִמָּכֶם בָּהָר מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ, “God spoke with us all, face-to-face,” מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ, “from the midst of the fire.” But then, אָנֹכִי עֹמֵד בֵּין־יְקוָה וּבֵינֵיכֶם, “I stood between you,” לְהַגִּיד לָכֶם אֶת־דְּבַר יְקוָה, “to tell you about the word of God.” Do you know why I stood between you that day? כִּי יְרֵאתֶם מִפְּנֵי הָאֵשׁ, “Because you were too afraid of the fire,” וְלֹא־עֲלִיתֶם בָּהָר, “and you never went up the mountain.” (Deuteronomy 5:2-5). You never embraced the Tree of Life.

This was a Tree of Life moment. This was a moment where you were supposed to just have that experience. Look at these words, פָּנִים  בְּפָנִים דִּבֶּר יְקוָה עִמָּכֶם. God was speaking to you face-to-face, but you wouldn't do it because you were afraid. So you said, “Moses, you stand there between us. We can't have this connection to the Loving God.” And then look what happens, 5:19. אֶת־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה דִּבֶּר יְקוָה אֶל־כׇּל־קְהַלְכֶם בָּהָר מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ, “God spoke all of these words —

Imu: “— to the whole congregation from the midst of the fire.”

Rabbi Fohrman:  הֶעָנָן וְהָעֲרָפֶל קוֹל גָּדוֹל. The voice, not just the words. Forget the words, the ideas, just the voice. וְלֹא יָסָף, “an infinite voice.” (Deutoronomy 5:19)

Imu: In episode two, we talked about how God’s voice is a source of God’s breath. At Sinai, we had the opportunity to just listen to this voice, to breathe in God again. But, jump to 5:24, and the people say to Moses:  

Rabbi Fohrman: קְרַב אַתָּה וּשְׁמָע, “You listen,” אֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר יֹאמַר יְקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ, “you listen to everything God is saying. We can't connect with God. We can't go up the mountain.”וְאַתְּ  תְּדַבֵּר אֵלֵינוּ, “and you tell us,” אֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר יְקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ, “everything that God says,”  וְשָׁמַעְנוּ וְעָשִׂינוּ, “you tell us about it so that we can do it.” (Deuteronomy 5:24) What part of the Torah do they want? They want what they can do. They want tachlis (practicality). “Tell us the laws! This connection with God, we're not made for that kind of thing.” They fail to embrace the Tree of Life. And what happens at the end is, Moses dies as לֹא־קָם נָבִיא עוֹד, “there's no other prophet who ever saw God face-to-face.” (Deuteronomy 34:10)

Isn't that fascinating that Moses said, “God wanted you up the mountain” and פָּנִים  בְּפָנִים דִּבֶּר יְקוָה עִמָּכֶם, “God was speaking to you all face to face, but you wouldn't go up the mountain. So, in the end, I became the only one. But that was supposed to be you all.” This time, it wasn't that they grabbed for the Tree of Knowledge, but that there was a withholding of embracing of the Tree of Life. And now the question is, well, where does that take us? Where does that possibly go?

So what I would just say to conclude is: The fascinating thing about Chorev, you asked where's the revolving sword? The algebra would suggest that if, on some level, the mountain is the sword, is Chorev, and this really is the Tree of Life, the sword would have to be mit’hapeich. Imu, how is the sword mit’hapeich? Let's say you were holding a sword for me, and I was looking at the business end of a sword. So I'd be really scared, but what if I got close to you and I was inside the perimeter of the sword. I was looking at the same sword. What if the sword never changes, but our perspective changes, depending on where we are? If you're outside the perimeter, the angels are keeping you out. If you're inside, the angels are holding you in.

What I want to argue is that the cherev ha’mit’hapechet wasn't a new thing. It was the nature of the Tree that there would be a cherev ha’mit’hapechet. The whole idea is that you have to be careful with this tree, meaning you have to respect it. But if you respect it, you can draw it close and be nurtured by it and love it. Loving respect is the cherev ha’mit’hapechet. “Keep your distance, now draw close. Moses, keep your distance, take your shoes off. Be very careful, don't come close. I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you.” What God was saying was, these angels will have a sword, but the fact that it is a reversible sword means that the consolation prize, humans, is that you're not banished forever. 

Imu: It's actually really interesting that you see the mountain — the mountain is the cherev, is the sword. I wonder why. I have to meditate on that as to — I mean, they're both pointy, so that makes sense. But in what sense — I can see a mountain dividing, swords divide. You can't go here, but in some sense —

Rabbi Fohrman: It's in time. It's, “First, stay away.” It's not place, it's time. God said, “First, establish respect. Do you respect me? Then you can love me. Stay away from that tree. Now embrace the tree. Then you can eat its fruits, but first show me that you can stay away.” Whenever you have a Tree of Life, it's always, “Stay away, and then draw close.” 

Imu: No, I understand the symbolism, but algebraically, I'm just trying to understand. Why is the sword the mountain? Is there a more elegant connection?

Rabbi Fohrman: How come the sword becomes a mountain?

Imu: Yeah, I get that the effect is the same, but I'm trying to understand how the sword — why does the sword become a mountain?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, I don't have an answer to that.

Imu: Well, that was an anticlimactic moment. What Rabbi Fohrman was saying was beautiful from the telescope view. Big picture, Rabbi Fohrman was seeing the tree in Eden and receiving the Torah at Sinai as two versions of the same thing: Gifts that, when approached and used properly, would help us develop a full and mature relationship with God. In both cases, this relationship began with a יְ-ק-וָ-ה connection. In the garden, we were meant to just behold the Tree of Life; and at Sinai, we were meant to just hear God’s voice, nevermind the words. But also in both cases, this יְ-ק-וָ-ה connection came hand-in-hand with a specific restraint: Don’t eat the fruit, don’t touch the mountain. This “stay away” stage was meant to lace our love with respect. Only when love and respect were both formed could we move on to the next stage, the stage of “come close.”

In the garden, if we’d only been patient, we would have been allowed to eat the fruit. And at Sinai…well, at Sinai, it seems we did make it to this second stage. And it wasn’t God’s fruit, God’s wisdom, that was suddenly allowed, but something even more precious – the possibility to see God face-to-face. To have the fullest experience of יְ-ק-וָ-ה we could ever imagine. Only, we shunned that offer. We still just wanted the fruit, the practical knowledge. It’s so tragic, if not for the sliver of hope the cherev ha’mit’hapechet brings, that the opportunity to come close will come around again. 

So, that’s the telescope view.  But does it add up? Looking through the magnifying glass, the sword turning into a mountain was clumsy and inelegant. And, remember, there was only one angel at the Burning Bush not two. So I couldn’t help feeling like something was missing. Turns out, that’s because it was. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So for next time, the next mystery we have to figure out is: If this theory is true, how come there's only a mountain that represents a sword instead of a physical sword? How come there's only one angel? Where's the other one? I believe that the Torah gives us answers to both of those questions. It turns out, there's another Burning Bush story. And if we can find the other Burning Bush story, we'll see the missing elements of this one. If you put them both together, we arrive at Eden. So we've only seen half the story. Next time, when we come back, we'll try to discover the other half.

Imu: Excellent, thank you. Awesome, I got to run because my kids are popping into my room.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay. Good talking to you.

Imu: Do you want to say goodbye to Rabbi Fohrman?

Chevrusa sessions with Rabbi Fohrman can leave me anxious, elated, inspired. This one left me pensive. Putting aside the fact that we only have half the story, let’s say the theory is right. We failed. Again. Okay, maybe this time, we did a little better. In the garden we fail in the “stay-away” stage. At Sinai, it’s in the “come-close” stage. And, look, God still gave us the Torah. He wasn’t afraid we’d eat that. So, progress. But still, how could anyone have turned down the opportunity to rush that mountain? Of course, what I’m really asking is, would I have? I want to say, no, I wouldn’t have turned it down. But I don’t know. The Tree of Life, hanging out with God. It sounds so easy, so attractive. So why isn’t it? What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, or any, part of the episode. There’s a  link in the description you can use to leave us a message. And I, for one, can’t wait to hear your voice for a change. 

Meanwhile, next time on A Book Like No Other: the tree returns, again! But this time, it’s not just a sad bush. This time, the tree bears fruits. And our story finds its second half. You don’t want to miss it, so make sure to subscribe. And, hey, while you’re at it, please share with a friend. If you liked it, maybe they will too. 

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people fall in love with Torah. Visit alephbeta.org for hundreds of more deep-dive audios and beautifully animated videos on nearly every Biblical text. If you’re enjoying this podcast, I hope you’ll find a lot there that speaks to you.

Credits 

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