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

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

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay Imu, we're back for another session together, taking a look at these fascinating parallels between the story of the Revelation and Yaakov's deception of Eisav and Yitzchak. And I'd like to tackle a question which we raised the first time we got together, and it is the question of favoritism.

You know, in Genesis 27, there's this competitive race between Jacob and Esau, and Father blesses one over the other, and it seems to be this catastrophic story. And yet, we seem to reprise the catastrophe with God favoring Israel over all other nations and saying, “You're My special nation.” Why would God make the same mistake that He points out so vividly in the Torah? 

Imu: It's a great question. It's so strange that God would say, “Oh yeah, remember that really terrible story that ended in, like, a cycle of favoritism, and brothers wanted to kill each other? Okay, I'm going to do that with you guys, oh Israel, and I'm sure it'll turn out great for you with the rest of the nations.”

Welcome back to A Book Like No Other.

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

So last time, we discovered some pretty unsettling connections between the revelation at Sinai and Jacob's deception of Isaac. I mean, is the Torah really suggesting that God choosing Israel was just another case of problematic favoritism - the kind that tore Isaac's family apart?

But Rabbi Fohrman hinted at another possibility, that maybe Revelation wasn't simply repeating that story of Deception, but rather redeeming it. Today, he wanted to show me what he meant by that.

Now, not to give too much away, but what we're about to see is how these two moments, though generations apart, are part of a much bigger story — one that traces the evolution of “chosenness” from the very beginning of Genesis, all the way through the end of the Torah itself.

To get started, Rabbi Fohrman wanted to zoom in on the story of Deception. He wanted to explore the pain of the child who is not chosen, and why Isaac would feel compelled to choose one child over the other at all.  

Rabbi Fohrman: Let's go back to Genesis 27. Genesis 27 is a terribly painful story, you know. At least the simple shot of the text paints Eisav as a very sympathetic character, which is hard for some of us to realize.

I don't know about you, but I grew up in school and Eisav was always the gruff bad guy. He was the one who killed people and he worshipped idolatry. But if you actually just go back to the text itself, he seems like a very sympathetic character, somebody who was sent off to do a job and he finds that his blessing is taken from him. And he cries bitter tears and just wants to be blessed, and he's like, “Really, there's no other blessing?” And it's like God goes out of His way to make you feel bad for him.

And part of the aspect of feeling bad for him is that question: הַבְרָכָה אַחַת הִוא־לְךָ אָבִי — Do you really only have one blessing, my father (Genesis 27:38)?

I don't know about you, Imu, but whenever I read that in the Torah, that moment when Eisav plaintively turns to his father and says, “Do you really only have one blessing in you, father?” It's like, you want to scream.

Imu: “Of course I have another blessing.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right.

Imu: It’s a blessing, a blessing is a spiritual concept. You didn't buy a blessing at the store and you only got one.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. And yet, the truth is that Isaac really only does have one blessing, because the blessing itself was so particular, was so zero-sum game.

A zero-sum game blessing is a situation where, to the extent that I lose, you win, and to the extent that you win, I lose. There can be no win-win situation. And Yitzchak himself admits that that's the nature of the blessing. When he tells Esav, when he finally gives him a blessing, he says, “Look, you know, literally, it's going to be you or him. And when he's up here, you're down here, and when you're up there, he's down there.”

Imu: I hadn't noticed that. Isaac could say, “Yeah, of course I could bless you, too.” But he's like, “I actually kind of can't, in the sense that you're asking, Eisav. I've already given away the blessing, the blessing of leadership but also dominance.” Dominance is a zero-sum blessing. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. Dominance is a scary thing. 

Imu: To ground this idea of it being a zero-sum blessing in the text itself, Rabbi Fohrman had us open up Isaac's blessing and see it inside — and, as it turns out, Rabbi Fohrman had another reason for wanting to look closely at the exact language of Isaac's blessing. He wanted to show me how it seemed to resemble the language of an even earlier blessing in the Torah.

Let's turn to Isaac's blessing to Jacob in Genesis 27, verses 28 and 29.

וְיִתֶּן־לְךָ הָאֱלֹקים מִטַּל הַשָּׁמַיִם וּמִשְׁמַנֵּי הָאָרֶץ — God should give you from the dew of the heavens and the fat of the earth. וְרֹב דָּגָן וְתִירֹשׁ — So much produce, beautiful.

Verse 29: יַעַבְדוּךָ עַמִּים — Nations should serve you, וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ לְאֻמִּים — and bow to you. הֱוֵה גְבִיר לְאַחֶיךָ וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ בְּנֵי אִמֶּךָ — But you'll be a dominator over your brother, and the sons of your mother will bow to you. That's family, right? Your own brothers will bow to you.

And then it continues: אֹרְרֶיךָ אָרוּר וּמְבָרְכֶיךָ בָּרוּךְ — Those who curse you will be cursed, those who bless you will be blessed.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. It's a pretty stark blessing.

Now Imu, as you listen to that blessing, does it remind you in any way of an earlier blessing that you've heard in the Torah? When Yitzchak says אֹרְרֶיךָ אָרוּר וּמְבָרְכֶיךָ בָּרוּךְ — Those who curse you shall be cursed, those who bless you shall be blessed…

Imu: Oh, that's Avraham.

Rabbi Fohrman: He didn't come up with that. That's Abraham. 

Imu: That's Abraham's blessing. 

Rabbi Fohrman: But Imu, is that really Abraham's blessing? “Those who curse you shall be cursed, and those who bless you shall be blessed.” Look back at Abraham's blessing. Abraham's blessing appears in the beginning of chapter 12. 

Imu: Okay. וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל — God says, I'm going to make you into a great nation, וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ — and I'll bless you, וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ — and I will make your name great, וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה — and you will be a blessing. That's new.

וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ — And I will bless those who bless you, וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר — and those that curse you I will curse. And then: וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה — And through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed.

So the object of the blessing is not Avraham. It's actually the nations, the families of the earth, and Abraham is the conduit.

Rabbi Fohrman: Ding-ding-ding! Yep, that's right. Everything is leading up to this climactic last sentence. Listen to how it builds: “I'm going to make you into a great nation and I’m going to bless you. Your name is going to be great.” And then, mysteriously: הְיֵה בְּרָכָה — It's going to be a source of blessing somehow.

Well, what does that really mean? וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר — I'm going to bless those who bless you and I'm going to curse those who curse you. And: וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ — Through you, will be blessed, כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה — All of humanity's going to be blessed (Genesis 12:2-3).

This is fascinating. The reason why God loves Abraham is for this last sentence. All of humanity's going to be blessed.

Imu: This is a take on chosenness, right, because here he's being elevated for the sake of being the conduit for blessing for the entire world. In this sense, you have Dad, God, who's not interested in this kid more than the other kids. He's just got a special job for this kid because Dad really loves some people. Who does Dad love? כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה.

While I personally found this read of Abraham's blessing very compelling, it was definitely a novel read of the text. And it turned out that what was nudging Rabbi Fohrman to read the blessing this way wasn't just the words of the text, but was also the larger context in which God gave this blessing.

To get the whole story, I would really recommend listening to Rabbi Fohrman's series called A Brief History of the World, followed by a second series called Abraham's Journey. (You can find the links to both in the show notes. I really recommend listening.)

But Rabbi Fohrman summarized some of the key points for us — key points that provide important context as to why God chooses to give the blessing of this special mission to only one person, one nation, and at this very specific moment in both history and in the Torah's narrative.

Rabbi Fohrman: Where do the families of the earth come from, if you're in Genesis 12? There's a historical context to this. There's a reason why God comes to Abraham at this particular moment of history, because what just happened in Genesis 11?  

Imu: The tower.

Rabbi Fohrman: The tower. Abraham lives in the shadow of the tower. You see, God always wanted a relationship with all of humanity, and he had it for the first 11 chapters of Genesis. He had it with Adam, he had it with Cain and Abel, he had it with all of their descendants. And then, things didn't work out, He started over with a flood, but God still had a relationship with everybody.

But ten generations go by, and something happens — the Tower of Babel. Somehow, in the Tower of Babel, humanity, which is one humanity, they use that unity in some sort of destructive way. And God makes a fateful decision not just to destroy the tower, but to scatter humanity. And in scattering humanity, nations are born, living all over the place with their own languages and their own cultures. The families of the nations get born in Genesis 11.

And in Genesis 12, God says, “There's got to be a new game plan. I have to pick a family, build it into a nation. But the problem is, I'm not interested in just that nation. I'm still interested in humanity.”

“Here's My plan: Abraham, establish a model society based upon the way I teach you to live. And if you do that, then those who choose to model themselves after you, I'll bless. And those who choose to curse you and say, ‘Who needs that,’ they'll get cursed.”

Basically, if Israel can manage to live up to that model, they give the nations of the earth something concrete they can look at and say, “We can do some of this, too.” And through that model, וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה. Blessing will come and filter to all of the families of the earth. That was Abraham's blessing.

Imu: So Avraham's blessing isn't a zero-sum blessing. In fact, it seems like it's exactly the opposite. And yet Isaac's blessing does seem zero-sum, even though it goes out of its way to call back to Avraham's blessing. Makes you wonder, what's going on with Isaac's blessing? Why the change?

Rabbi Fohrman: At some level, Isaac is trying to give over Abraham's blessing, but he doesn't quite give it over the way God gave it over to Abraham.

Imu: He misunderstands. 

Rabbi Fohrman: He misunderstands. The key to understanding the difference starts with his inversion of verse 3 in Genesis 12. God, when He talks about blessings and curses, which does He put first?

Imu: Blessings.

Rabbi Fohrman: “I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who curse you.” Now turn to Isaac's blessing. When Isaac seems to quote these words to Jacob, what does he do with the words?

Imu: He inverts them. He says, “Those who curse you will be cursed.” It's protectionist. It's, like, isolationist.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. You see, for God, it's all about blessing. “I'm trying to bless all the families of the earth. So the main thing is, anybody who emulates you will be blessed.”

“By the way, you should know, I'm sure there'll be some people who are jealous of you. There's gonna be some nations that'll say, ‘Ah! Who needs them?’ All right, so they won't get blessings, so they'll get cursed instead. So I've got to protect you from them,” right? But that's not the point. The point isn't protecting you. The point is that, through you, blessing should come to the world.

But Isaac inverts it. For Isaac, the main thing is, those who curse you will be cursed. Now, for Isaac, why would that be the main thing? Why is that so important to him?

Imu: He must feel threatened.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly.

Imu: I'm not sure why, but it also kind of explains maybe why he's interested in Eisav as a choice over Yaakov. So I think this goes back to a claim you make in your Genesis book, that what Yitzchak admired about Eisav was his sense of doing, the fact that he was a gibor, the fact that he was a hunter, that he was a man of the field. And Yaakov, as the kid in the tent, may have made for a great wise advisor and king's counselor, but not exactly the guy you want to lead the nation, right? You want the strong king, the strong man.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. He picks the strong man; His vision of Israel is as the great international strong man. And what feeling does the strong man inspire in everyone else? 

Imu: The strong man inspires fear. 

Rabbi Fohrman: And if the strong man inspires fear and jealousy, then how do I keep (in the words of Star Wars) the “outer systems” in line?

Imu: Through terror.

Rabbi Fohrman: Fear will keep the outer systems in line. “Those who curse you will be cursed,” right? You'll have great divine protection.

Imu: Okay, so just as a sidebar, if the arguments that we're making about why Yitzchak favored Eisav is making you somewhat uncomfortable, I've been there. Rabbi Fohrman made these arguments almost a decade ago, and when I first heard them, boy, did they not sit well with me.

The full scope of the evidence and why Rabbi Fohrman makes these arguments is something Rabbi Fohrman covered in his Parsha book in a Toldos essay. And I really, really want everybody to understand why Rabbi Fohrman argues this, so we're going to put a link to that article in our show notes. Please take a read, and hopefully you'll understand a lot more of the grounding as to why Rabbi Fohrman chooses to read the story this way. It's actually pretty compelling, but it takes some time to digest. It's going to be really foundational for the rest of the season.

Anyway, if you're feeling uncomfortable, just know I've been there. All right, back to our discussion.

So having observed this key shift in Isaac's blessing, the way he was taking Avraham's universalist blessing and changing it to an exclusive and isolationist blessing, what Rabbi Fohrman wanted to do was really dig into both blessings side-by-side and see in even more ways how, beat by beat, Isaac was drawing from Avraham's blessing but ultimately distorting it.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's like you can actually take Abraham's blessing and look at how that blessing transforms itself. In the blessing that Isaac gives to Jacob, you'll see stuff that reminds you of Abraham's blessing, but is a certain kind of interpretation of Abraham's blessing. 

Imu, I'll read from Yaakov's blessing and you tell me, does any of this remind you of an interpretation of a part of Abraham's blessing?

וְיִתֶּן־לְךָ הָאֱלֹקים מִטַּל הַשָּׁמַיִם וּמִשְׁמַנֵּי הָאָרֶץ וְרֹב דָּגָן וְתִירֹשׁ — Let God grant you, from the dews of the heavens and the fats of the earth, lots of grain and wine. This would be an interpretation of what aspect of Abraham's blessing?

Imu: Maybe making you a goy gadol? אֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל. 

Rabbi Fohrman: How are you going to be a goy gadol? 

Imu: You're going to have a lot of food. You're going to have a lot of kids. 

Rabbi Fohrman: A lot of food, you’re going to have a lot of kids. Exactly. 

Imu: Because right now you're just one dude. 

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, you're just one dude. So how are you going to become this goy gadol? 

Imu: Give you a lot of resources. 

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm going to give you the land. The land is going to make you into a goy gadol. 

Now: יַעַבְדוּךָ עַמִּים וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ לְאֻמִּים — Nations will serve you. They will bow to you. הֱוֵה גְבִיר לְאַחֶיךָ — You're going to master over your brother.

What, if anything, in Abraham's blessing does that remind you of? 

Imu: Probably וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's an interpretation of וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ. If you have a great name, one interpretation of that is, everyone's going to bow to you and everyone's going to serve you. That is one interpretation of it, but it's not the only interpretation. 

What else could וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ mean? “You'll be a great nation and your name will be very great.”

Imu: “You'll be famous, you'll be well known,” but, you know, the Dalai Lama is pretty famous and well known…

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. You don't necessarily need to be dominant. But what happens is, Isaac imposes a zero-sum vision upon this blessing. And crucially, there's one aspect of Abraham's blessing he doesn't relate to at all, and what's that?

Imu: It's וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה and וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly.

Imu: It's your “blessedness” in relation to others. Are you a conduit, a blessing to others? Are you a blessing to others? Neither of those elements are present in Yitzchak's blessing to his own son.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's as if that's been closed out. Abraham's blessing is there without the whole point of it, and the whole point is you're going to be this conduit to filter blessing to all of the מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה. Abraham's blessing was not a zero-sum blessing; it was just there so that you could be a conduit to My love of all nations.The whole reason why you're important is because of them.

And so Genesis 27, I would argue, is a corrupted version of Abraham's blessing.

Imu: Examining Abraham's blessings side by side with Isaac's blessing had revealed a whole new way to think about chosenness. Up until now, we had been automatically linking chosenness to favoritism, almost using those two words interchangeably. But perhaps that reflected Isaac's distorted understanding of chosenness, and not God's vision of chosenness as being a conduit to bring love and blessing to all the nations. 

If that's the case that Isaac somehow misunderstood God's blessing, then wouldn't God want to correct that misunderstanding, and right away? Well, that's what Rabbi Fohrman suggests happens next in the story. Right after Jacob receives the blessing from Isaac, he runs away from his parents' house and ends up falling asleep in Beit El. God visits him in a dream, that famous dream of the ladder, and God speaks to Jacob, perhaps to set the record straight about this blessing.

Rabbi Fohrman: Imu, it's fascinating. Now look at Genesis 28. You know, if Jacob stole this blessing and ran away, I would have expected, in Genesis 28, that if God is going to appear to Jacob, that the very first thing He would say to Jacob is, “Jacob…”

What would you say if you were God, right? You wouldn't give me a dream with a ladder. What dream would you give me?  

Imu: I mean, if I were God, I'd come and be like, “Whoa, you have a responsibility here. You need to be the conduit of blessing to the rest of the world. This isn't about you.”

Rabbi Fohrman: What do you have? God comes to Jacob and says, in essence, “Are you sure your father Isaac told you the truth about Abraham's blessing? Did he tell you everything in that blessing?”

Imu: Oh, he corrects it! Oh my gosh, I never realized this. He corrects it.

Rabbi Fohrman: Look at what He says. The missing piece. Read verse 14. 

Imu: וְהָיָה זַרְעֲךָ כַּעֲפַר הָאָרֶץ — Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, וּפָרַצְתָּ יָמָּה וָקֵדְמָה וְצָפֹנָה וָנֶגְבָּה — and you're going to expand into all directions. By the way, וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה וּבְזַרְעֶךָ — and you'll be the conduit of blessing. Through you, blessing will come to all the families of the earth, and not just through you, but also through your descendants. 

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Know what it's all about. 

Imu: Wow, look at that. You can see that expansion of the זַרְעֶךָ in the beginning of that verse. Like, “Oh, you're going to have kids and you're going to go expand this way, that way, that way.” Wow, great! Me, me, me!

Rabbi Fohrman: You know why? 

Imu: If the job of the זַרְעֶךָ is וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה, they're the “shock troops.”

Rabbi Fohrman: That’s right. They're the ones that are going to make it happen.

Imu: Yeah. We're going to have conduits of blessing that'll be like the dust of the earth, and they're going to go everywhere. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly.

Imu: It was really fascinating that God seemed to address and correct Isaac's distortion of Avraham's blessing almost immediately after Jacob received it, showing how Jacob and then his descendants were meant to properly embody and live this blessing. But while we're speaking of Yaakov's descendants and their future roles as recipients of the blessing, that actually brings us full circle to Exodus and the children of Israel, the children of Yaakov, at the Revelation at Sinai.

With this backstory about the blessing in mind, Rabbi Fohrman thought we were now ready to re-examine the parallels between Revelation and Deception that we saw last time, and perhaps understand how chosenness at Revelation is not just a replay of the damaging favoritism we saw in the Deception story, but in fact, redeeming it.

And to explain how all of this would work, Rabbi Fohrman was reminded of a sign that we used to have on the walls of the Aleph Beta offices. It had a pithy little phrase that would guide us on how to think about these challenging parallels in a new way.

Rabbi Fohrman: You know, Imu, we used to have a little sign up hanging around the Aleph Beta offices: “Remember But Choose A Different Ending.”

And that idea, “Remember But Choose A Different Ending,” gives a whole different take to intertextual parallels. It suggests that it's not necessarily the case that the same story is happening again. There's always two possibilities; either the same thing is happening or the opposite thing is happening. 

Imu: It's nuanced, because it's not like this is a “fixing.” There are aspects of it that are the same and there are aspects of it that are a correction.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, and I want to suggest that that's also true with favoritism. With favoritism, there is a sense in which the story of the Revelation is exactly the same as it was with Jacob and Eisav, and there's a sense in which the story is exactly the opposite.

Let's turn to Revelation. In Revelation, God is now going to actually anoint this nation and make them special and make them favorite the same way that Jacob or Eisav was all supposed to be favorite — but it's going to get changed. God picks up in a fascinating thing.

You see, in Genesis 27, there was another zero-sum game going on in the story besides the actual blessing. It was a zero-sum game between two parents. Isaac was not on the same page as Rebecca was.

Isaac says something to Esau, whom he loves, and Rebecca says something to Jacob, whom she loves. Isaac says: שָׂא־נָא כֵלֶיךָ תֶּלְיְךָ וְקַשְׁתֶּךָ —  Go pick up your bow and pick up your arrows, and then go hunt some game, וְהָבִיאָה לִּי — and bring it back to me (Genesis 27:14). That's what he says to Eisav, the one that he loves, so that he can bless him.

But Rebecca, who wants to make sure that Jacob is the one who gets blessed says: וְעַתָּה בְנִי שְׁמַע בְּקֹלִי לַאֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מְצַוָּה אֹתָךְ — You now need to listen to my voice, to that which I command you (Genesis 27:8). You should go to the sheep, and make your own little delicacies, and you should bring them to Father so you can get the blessing instead of Esau. They're in tension with one another. 

Now, look at what happens. Who is God mimicking — Isaac or Rebecca? Let's read verse 4: וָאֶשָּׂא אֶתְכֶם עַל־כַּנְפֵי נְשָׁרִים וָאָבִא אֶתְכֶם אֵלָי — And I have lifted You up on wings of eagles and brought you to Me (Exodus 19:4).

Now, Imu, in our first session, we mentioned that He was channeling someone when he said that. Who was He channeling?

Imu: He was channeling Isaac commanding Eisav.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isaac commanding Eisav. When Isaac says: וְקַשְׁתֶּךָ — Pick up your bow and arrow, with your feathered arrow that flies through the air, וְהָבִיאָה לִּי — and bring me some food. So God was saying, “I take this predatory animal and I bring you to Me,” right? It's evoking Isaac to Esau.

But the very next sentence, verse 5, who is God evoking? וְעַתָּה אִם־שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ בְּקֹלִי — And now, if you listen to My voice, וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת־בְּרִיתִי. Who is He evoking now? Who said, “And now, listen to my voice,” back in Genesis 27?

Imu: This is Rebecca.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's Rebecca. God is not choosing between Rebecca and Isaac.

Imu: He’s integrating them?

Rabbi Fohrman: He's integrating them. Isaac was talking to Esau, Rebecca is talking to Jacob. What's happening with God? Nominally, he's talking to the children of Jacob, the children of Israel, but really, He's talking to the whole world. He's talking to the “Esavs” of the world, too.

Listen to what He says: Now if you listen to My voice and you observe My commandments, וִהְיִיתֶם לִי סְגֻלָּה — You'll be treasured to me. I'll love you מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים, from all the nations.

But why? כִּי־לִי כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ — I own the whole world and I care about the whole world (Exodus 19:5). I would read כִּי־לִי כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ, it's not necessarily in terms of possession, but it's also “I care about the whole world.” It's Mine, so if it's Mine, don't tell me I shouldn't care about what's Mine. 

Imu: You don't need that line, right? If you just try and understand what this line means on its own, unrelated to our intertextual parallels or anything, right, “If you listen to My voice, if you keep My covenants, then you will be treasured to Me amongst all the nations because all the earth is Mine.” What does “because all the earth is Mine” add? It's not because “all the earth is Mine, you will be treasured to Me.” It's “I need you to be treasured from all the other nations because I have a role for you as it relates to the entire earth.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, and I care about all of them. “Of course I care about everything that's Mine.” Everyone belongs to Him. “All nations belong to Me. I love them. They're My children. Of course they're My children.”

Imu: So let's play skeptic and say, no, no, no, you're whitewashing this. Can't mean that. God is saying, “I'm picking you as the best from amongst all the other nations.” 

Rabbi Fohrman: “And no one else matters.” And now we get to the next verse: וְאַתֶּם — And you guys, that one nation, you know what your role is? תִּהְיוּ־לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ — You'll be a special, separate nation whose job is to be a kingdom of priests. But what does a priest do? A priest's whole point is to be able to connect people to the divine. The same way that you're going to have priests that help you connect to the divine, you're going to be a kingdom of priests that help all the other children connect to the divine. Just like I told Abraham, וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה, and just like I told Jacob to correct him, and now I'm making good on the correction.

Imu: The kingdom of priests thing is so good. The point of a priest is to minister to someone. You can't all be ministering to yourselves, right? You're ministering to everyone else. The point of the priest is to connect everyone else and their God, and you're the nation of priests to the other nations.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, so what you have here is, “Remember, but choose a different ending.” God says, “Remember your past. Remember that blessing you got from Isaac.” But I, God, have the right to modify it, and I am modifying it. And you better understood what I told your forefather Jacob. This is about you being there for all nations of the world. That's the whole reason why you're getting Revelation.”

“I'm teaching you something that ultimately you need to teach the world, by way of example. Somehow, Isaac didn't pay attention to that aspect and your blessing was all the physicality of the land, but none of the mission of the land. Through the way that you live in the land, all nations are going to look at you, and you're going to become blessed, and you're going to bless them. That is the blessing that I'm reasserting now,” God says. That's what Revelation is all about.

Imu: So we see at Revelation God redeeming the corruption of chosenness that happened at deception; redeeming two separate parents showing favoritism to two separate children by God's integrating these parents as the one Heavenly Parent, and by choosing all of his children, by singling out one nation to bring them all close to him.

It seemed to be the most elegant read of Revelation, a fascinating take on chosenness, and a beautiful charge to the people of Israel. 

But Rabbi Fohrman was not done yet. He still had one more text for us to examine. He suspected that this read of Revelation and this perspective on chosenness was supported by an even later blessing in the Torah, the final blessing of Moshe given at the very end of the Torah, a blessing that shares a vision of the end of history. To see if this take on Revelation and chosenness was indeed reflected in Moshe's final blessing, Rabbi Fohrman had us turn to the concluding verses of the entire Torah.

Rabbi Fohrman: And now look at the end of the Torah. It's Devarim (Deuteronomy) 33: וְזֹאת הַבְּרָכָה אֲשֶׁר בֵּרַךְ מֹשֶׁה אִישׁ הָאֱלֹקים אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לִפְנֵי מוֹתוֹ — And this is the blessing that Moses blessed Israel before he died.

וַיֹּאמַר — He says, יְקוָה מִסִּינַי בָּא — in the future, God will come from Sinai, as if there'll be another Sinai experience. וְזָרַח מִשֵּׂעִיר לָמוֹ — God's going to come from Sinai, but he's going to come from another mountain, too. Whose mountain? 

Imu: Seir, Eisav.

Rabbi Fohrman: Whose mountain is Seir? 

Imu: This is the unification of Israel and Eisav.

Rabbi Fohrman: God's not going to come from Sinai. He's going to come from Eisav's mountain, and not just Eisav's mountain. הוֹפִיעַ מֵהַר פָּארָן — He's going to come from Har Paran. Who lives in Har Paran? Not Eisav, not Israel, but another dispossessed child — Ishmael.

Imu: Right, the wilderness of Paran. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Ishmael goes to the wilderness of Paran. God's going to come from all three mountains: From Israel, from Ishmael's mountain, from Eisav's mountain. All the brothers are going to come together. וְאָתָה מֵרִבְבֹת קֹדֶשׁ — It's going to come from 10,000 holy points. מִימִינוֹ אֵשׁ דָּת לָמוֹ — And in His right hand, He's going to be holding this fiery Torah, אַף חֹבֵב עַמִּים — Even as He loves all nations.

Imu: All nations. כׇּל־קְדֹשָׁיו בְּיָדֶךָ.

Rabbi Fohrman: כׇּל־קְדֹשָׁיו בְּיָדֶךָ — He will hold the holy ones that were separated, Israel, in his hands, וְהֵם תֻּכּוּ לְרַגְלֶךָ — and all these nations will be arrayed at His feet, יִשָּׂא מִדַּבְּרֹתֶיךָ — but together will uphold all of God's commandments, all of God's laws.

תּוֹרָה צִוָּה־לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה — It's true that God gave us the Torah, מוֹרָשָׁה קְהִלַּת יַעֲקֹב — It was an inheritance that was given to the family of Jacob, but for what purpose? Ultimately, that all could be the upholders of God's values. 

וַיְהִי בִישֻׁרוּן מֶלֶךְ — And so when a king comes to Yeshurun, either the Messiah or perhaps God in His revelations, בְּהִתְאַסֵּף רָאשֵׁי עָם — when the heads of all nations and some sort of grand United Nations, יַחַד — together with שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, together with the tribes of Israel (Deuteronomy 33:1-3). 

This is the prologue to the blessings of every individual tribe. This universal moment in history when all nations will come together. This is the blessing of the וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה. It is the messianic ideal. It goes all the way back to the founding of the nation in the times of Abraham and stretches all the way to the end of the Torah, to its vision of the future.

And the key waypoint in the middle is the moment when the blessing underwent a subtle corruption in Genesis 27, the correction of it in Genesis 28 to Yaakov, and then the beginning of the building of that correction in the real world in Revelation and the story that we have in Exodus 19.

Imu: It's very cool and a very compelling vision, one we don't talk that much about but is redemptive in its non-zero-sum message. This is universalist and makes sense, right? Like, actually God is not like, “Oh, I'm going to take from this vision of a dad who picked his favorite kid.” He said, “Okay, I see how this could go wrong, and I'm going to elevate it. I'm actually going to take, you know, what you may fight for, which is this idea of ‘I want to be the favorite,’ or ‘I want to be the chosen child,’ and understand that I'm actually the Father. And if I'm the Father, then all the nations are My kids. And I don't love one kid – I love all My kids.”

Rabbi Fohrman: “Yes, it is true that you're favored, but the only reason why you're favored is because of the role you play for all of My kids. If you can help me connect all of My kids, boy, that's special. I'll be very indebted to you for that. Do you think you can do that for Me?” That's the role that God wants out of Jacob in Revelation.

Imu: Stepping back from our discussion, it was so powerful to see how those connections between Revelation and Deception that we initially found so uncomfortable had led us on a totally fascinating journey; one that not only shed a new light on chosenness, but on a possible vision of the End of Days itself. And with that, I assumed that our learning for this season had come to an end.

But here's the thing about intertextual connections in the Torah — they're rarely just about one idea. And after this session was over, Rabbi Fohrman and I continued to explore these parallels between Sinai and the blessing of Jacob, because Rabbi Fohrman had actually found a lot more parallels that he wanted to show me. And not just a few more — like 20 more.

And they don't just stay in Exodus 19. They continue right into one of the most important moments in the entire Torah — the giving of the Ten Commandments themselves.

Now, why would the story of Jacob and Esau be woven into the fabric of the Ten Commandments? And what could these additional parallels tell us about this foundational moment of Revelation? Well, that's where we're headed next. 

Now, something that I'm particularly excited about is that, for these coming episodes, we actually tried something a little different, a different style than we've done in this show in the past. We'll get into it more next time, but we've decided to leave in a lot more of the conversation between Rabbi Fohrman and myself in order to really bring you into the chavrusa (learning partnership) to make you feel like you're part of the exploration and discovery in what I think is a really exciting way.

It's a bit of a wild ride, but I think you'll like it. Until then, thanks for listening.

Credits: 

This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by the great Rabbi David Fohrman and the less-great me, Imu Shalev. 

It was produced by the awesome Robbie Charnoff. 

Our audio engineer is the tireless Hillary Gutman. 

A Book Like No Other's managing producer is the wonderfully organized and ever fantastic Adina Blaustein, and our senior producer is the ever creative Tikva Hecht. 

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum, good friends, great people. Thank you, Shari and Nathan, and thank you all, our greatest, bestest, awesomest listeners for listening.