Imu Shalev: Moshe and the Mekallel. One is the greatest prophet of all time; the other is an anonymous man known only for cursing God. It’s not the likeliest duo, and yet, the Torah links these men together.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev, and this is A Book Like No Other. A Book Like No Other is a project of Aleph Beta, and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum.

As we saw last time, there are a whole bunch of intertextual parallels between the story of the Mekallel in Leviticus and Moshe’s coming of age story in the second chapter of Exodus. Let’s just replay the highlights reel. Here we go: Both Moshe and the Mekallel come from mixed Egyptian-Israelite backgrounds. Both men begin their stories with the word וַיֵּצֵא, with “going out.” Plus, both stories feature fights, and both stories use the rare verb נָצָה to describe that fighting and the rare term אִישׁ מִצְרִי to describe one of the fighters.

These connections are pretty undeniable, and I was really excited to get into them further with Rabbi Fohrman, which is what we’re going to do in this episode. But there was more to it than just my general curiosity. There’s a lot riding on the meaning of these connections. Above all, we were hoping they would give us insight into that strange Midrash we’d seen. You know, the Midrash that the Mekallel cursed God because he wasn’t allowed to pitch his tent in the camp, and that even Moshe just ruled against the Mekallel, kind of coldly leaving him totally disenfranchised. What’s problematic about that backstory is that it paints Moshe in a bad light while also highlighting our sympathy for the Mekallel, and that made it really difficult to understand why God ultimately punishes the Mekallel with death by stoning. What moral does the Torah want us to learn from all this? “Justice be done,” and that's all that matters? 

So, as we flipped open our Tanachs to Exodus, the stakes were a little higher than our typical text-study hang out. Could something in Exodus, something about Moshe’s experience as a young prince, bring clarity to the messy, dark tale of the Mekallel? Let’s find out.

So what to make of these Exodus and Leviticus parallels? Well, to start, Rabbi Fohrman actually had one more parallel to show me — and this was a good one. Just to set this up for you, we're going to start in Exodus. Again, this is chapter 2. Remember, Moshe’s story begins with him going out and seeing an אִישׁ מִצְרִי, an Egyptian man, and the Egyptian is beating a Hebrew slave. So, what he does is, he intervenes and he kills the Egyptian. That's the first fight. But then, Moshe goes out again the next day and sees a second fight, and here's where we find our new parallel with the Mekallel.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Fight number two: There's these two Jews that are fighting with one another, and what does Moshe try to do?

Imu: Moshe doesn't want to kill the aggressor. He intervenes in a different way this time, and he says: לָמָּה תַכֶּה רֵעֶךָ — Hey, what are you doing hitting your friend?

Rabbi Fohrman: And what does the aggressor say back to Moshe?

Imu: He seems to reject Moshe standing entirely. He says: מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ — Who has placed you as a man, a minister, and judge above us? You have no standing to judge us.

And then he says: הַלְהׇרְגֵנִי אַתָּה אֹמֵר כַּאֲשֶׁר הָרַגְתָּ אֶת־הַמִּצְרִי — What are you going to do? Kill me the same way you killed yesterday's Egyptian  (Exodus 2:13-14)? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Take a look at Rashi in Shemot (Exodus) on pasuk yud-gimmel (verse 13): הַלְהׇרְגֵנִי אַתָּה אֹמֵר — Are you saying to kill me? The Midrash is bothered by that language, הַלְהׇרְגֵנִי אַתָּה אֹמֵר. The way the Midrash understands it, it doesn't just mean, “Are you saying that you will kill me?” It's, “Are you saying to kill me?” In other words, “Would you kill me with your words?”

מִכָּאן אָנוּ לְמֵדִים — From there we learn, שֶׁהֲרָגוֹ — that when Moshe killed the אִישׁ מִצְרִי, he killed him, בַּשֵּׁם הַמְפֹרָשׁ — with God's name. He killed him with words. He killed him with God's name. Oh, so we have Moshe, uttering the name of God…

Imu: In a story of struggle.

Rabbi Fohrman: …in a story of struggle. Now turn to Rashi in Vayikra (Leviticus) and look at the blaspheming. Rashi, Vayikra 24:11: ויקב — When he curses, וּפָרֵשׁ — and he specifies the name. What name does he specify? שֶׁנָּקַב שֵׁם הַמְיֻחָד וְגִדֵּף, וְהוּא שֵׁם הַמְפֹרָשׁ. It's the same name, and the Midrash is saying that's the name that Moshe uses to kill the Mitzri. That's the name that the Mekallel uses to curse God.  

Imu: So, my initial reaction to seeing this parallel was, wow, the Sages are seeing these stories as intimately connected in a way that I never would have seen. The text seems to be hinting to Moshe using speech as a kind of weapon, and then the Sages fill in the rest for us. What could that weapon possibly be? The name of God — and I think that's really, really cool.

But on the other hand, if we're to take that parallel seriously, it left me confused because the Mekallel uses God's name to curse God, and Moshe uses God's name to kill someone. These uses are far from parallel. They're not the same thing, but they're also not inverses of each other. So what exactly is the relationship between these two usages of God's name? How do they line up in any meaningful way?

Now, not surprisingly, Rabbi Fohrman had a theory. But to see that theory, we needed to take a step back and dive a little bit into Moshe's back story. What led him to those fateful outings where he came across these two fights? 

Now, Moshe's origin story is, of course, a lot more famous than the Mekallel's. Most of us know the basics: Hebrew male babies were supposed to be drowned, but instead of drowning him, Moshe's mother puts him in a basket and leaves the basket in the Nile. The baby is discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh, and this is how Moshe ends up being raised in the palace. While the text gives us these details, it's less explicit about what this whole experience was like for Moshe as a person, or, again, why he suddenly leaves the palace and starts mingling among the common folk.

So Rabbi Foreman's hunch was that the text did give us a clue to all of this in the form of a strange little repetition. And actually, Rabbi Fohrman's hunch was that this repetition would not only explain how Moshe was using God's name compared to the Mekallel, but would be our gateway into understanding the meaning behind all of the parallels between these two stories.

To show me what he noticed and its implications, we headed back to the beginning of chapter 2, starting from around verse 6. This is right after the daughter of Pharaoh rescues baby Moses. Suddenly, Moshe's sister Miriam, who had been watching from a distance the whole time, steps forward, and…well, I'll let Rabbi Fohrman take over from here.

Rabbi Fohrman: The daughter of Pharaoh sees this crying child on the side of the Nile. Miriam says, “Can I get a nursemaid to nurse him for you?” and the daughter of Pharaoh says, “Yes, that's an excellent idea.” Then the daughter of Pharaoh, unaware that Miriam has actually designated a nursemaid who's the mother of the child, promises this disguised mother of the child money to nurse the child for her.

הֵילִיכִי אֶת־הַיֶּלֶד הַזֶּה וְהֵינִקִהוּ לִי — Nurse this child for me, וַאֲנִי אֶתֵּן אֶת־שְׂכָרֵךְ — and I'll pay you. וַתִּקַּח הָאִשָּׁה הַיֶּלֶד וַתְּנִיקֵהוּ — She goes and she nurses the child.

Look at the next verse: וַיִּגְדַּל הַיֶּלֶד — And the child grew up, וַתְּבִאֵהוּ לְבַת־פַּרְעֹה — and brings him to the daughter of Pharaoh, וַיְהִי־לָהּ לְבֵן — and she adopts him as her son. וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ מֹשֶׁה — She calls him Moshe, because “I brought you out from the water.” 

The very next verse: וַיְהִי  בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם— And it happened in those days. Second vayigdal: וַיִּגְדַּל מֹשֶׁה — and Moshe grew up, וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו — (Exodus 2:5-11).

Imu: — and went out to his brothers. That's our verse, the one that goes on to describe Moshe witnessing the Egyptian beating the slave. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn't that fascinating? Two verses, back to back: וַיִּגְדַּל/וַיִּגְדַּל. What do you make of the double וַיִּגְדַּל? Why is the Torah repeating that word?

Imu: To answer this question, we began by just looking more closely at the first וַיִּגְדַּל.

וַיִּגְדַּל הַיֶּלֶד — The child grew up. And so Yocheved, Moshe’s birth mother, brings Moshe to the daughter of Pharaoh. Now, to get to the deeper significance of this phrase, Rabbi Fohrman wanted us to consider what this moment might have been like for Yocheved. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So, you play birth mother for a moment and go back a verse here. The daughter of Pharaoh doesn't know who you are and says, “I'll pay you to nurse this child.” How are you feeling?

Imu: I mean, overjoyed. This is something I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do. I thought he would be dead. I never thought I'd see him again.

Rabbi Fohrman: And here I have this child back in my arms. It's the most wonderful thing. My child is back in my arms. But now why is it bittersweet?

Imu: The fact that I'm being paid to do this…

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes.

Imu: It means that they just see me as like I'm functionally donating breast milk. They don't see me as this…

Rabbi Fohrman: As a mother.

Imu: As a mother.

Rabbi Fohrman: The whole reason why Pharaoh's daughter has skin in the game is because she wants to be the one who's Mommy for this child. So I'm gonna give her to you to nurse, but then bring her to Mommy. So when I go to bed that night, I realize that there is an end date on my relationship with this child. When I wean this child, I surrender him to another mother. This is the last I'll see of him. He's going to have an Egyptian mother now. Not only will it be another mother, but it'll be another identity; it'll be another nationality. 

Imu: So וַיִּגְדַּל doesn't just mean that the boy grew up; it means that he was torn away from his mother, and she from him. It means that his whole self-identity, his family, his nationality, changed. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, now go to the second וַיִּגְדַּל. The Torah uses the same language. So what's the implication with the second וַיִּגְדַּל?

וַיְהִי  בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וַיִּגְדַּל מֹשֶׁה— And it happened in those days that Moshe grew up, וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו. What happened?

Imu: He goes out to his true brothers.

Rabbi Fohrman: And why?

Imu: Seemingly, he's been weaned again — this time, from the influence of his adopted mother.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Go back to the bittersweet aspect of becoming Mom and having that child. Just as for Yocheved it was bittersweet, so it was bittersweet for the daughter of Pharaoh. There was an end date, and the daughter of Pharaoh knew it. Why did she know it? Why was he so sure that there would be an end date, that there would be a moment where the relationship would have to take a turn?

Imu: I don't even know if she was sure of it. I imagine what she would try to do is to suppress or disconnect him from his identity. She would resist that as much as she could.

Rabbi Fohrman: You would imagine. But there's one thing that won't let her do it, even if she wanted to.

Imu: Is it his Bris?

Rabbi Fohrman: The child is circumcised.

Imu: Yeah.

Rabbi Fohrman: There will come a time when that child grows up and knows enough to know that that makes him a Hebrew, and that's the moment he'll question everything. She had to have known that when she took him in, that all she could do is have him for a time but there would be an end date.

At some point, she sits him down just before that end date. Maybe she's the one who breaks the news to him and says, “You look out that window. Do you see all those slaves? You're actually one of them. I love you to pieces, but that's where you come from. Those are your brothers.” Moshe knows it's true. He sees his Bris, he goes out, and that's the end date.

Imu: So, here too, וַיִּגְדַּל doesn't just mean that the boy grew up. It means that Moshe was torn away from his mother, and she from him. It means that his whole self-identity, his family, his nationality, changed. But this time, he's not a child being handed from one mother to another, as traumatic as that probably was. This time, he's a young man, leaving the home where he thought he belonged. Does that remind you of anyone? 

Rabbi Fohrman: If you think about what lies behind the motivation of the Mekallel according to the Midrash, this sense that I have no place, this desperate search for identity, that I just need somewhere to call my home — “Just tell me where I can be,” right? Think about what must have been going on in Moshe's mind in those days. Here's Moshe; he grows up in the palace, he's a prince of Egypt, he is the ultimate made person, the ultimate person whose future is secure. In a flash, that future becomes insecure. All is not as it seems. “This woman that I've always called my mother, she's an adoptive mother, but I have another side of my lineage.”

What's it like to be Moshe? Moshe looks out the window and sees all those people that we used to make fun of in the palace, that he’s one of them. He rushes out and sees one of this people striking one of that people, like the two sides of his heritage in conflict with each other. Every bone in his body is screaming, “Who am I?”

Imu: We'd seen all these textual parallels between Moshe's story and the Mekallel's, even that they both use the name of God during a critical moment. But now, we were seeing that, at that critical moment, they were both experiencing similar strife. For both these men, their mixed lineage left them not belonging anywhere. Let that sink in a second. But then it's time to return to our earlier question: Given all this, what does it mean that Moshe killed the Egyptian with the name of God?

Rabbi Fohrman: I was chatting with a friend who was over here for Shabbos, and he asked me a question. Rashi says over here that Moshe used the שֵּׁם הַמְפֹרָשׁ, this inexplicable name of God to kill the Mitzri. How did he know that name? He was an Egyptian in the palace. He was brought up as an Egyptian. What does that mean? How did he use this special name of God to kill the Mitzri? What would you say to that, Imu?

Imu: Maybe this is a name that was whispered to him in his unconscious mind when his mother desperately prayed for his survival.

Rabbi Fohrman: An interesting possibility; I hadn't thought of that.

Here's another possibility which maybe dovetails with that. Imagine the change that Moshe is going through right now in how he views these Israelites that are being beaten. How had he viewed these Israelites for the last decade of his life, ever since he was first brought into the palace? What was palace culture like? Everyone saw out the window what was happening to these slaves, and they were fine people in the palace. They went to dinner parties, they appreciated the fine things in life. How did they reconcile themselves with this world in which the Israelites are being beaten?

Imu: They dehumanize the Israelites.

Rabbi Fohrman: They dehumanize them. I wonder if what Moshe is doing is that he's completely rejecting the moral world that he's been brought up with. He has no other world to go to other than to say, “I think there must be a God in the universe, and if there's a God in the universe, then human life is sacred,” because we reflect that human life. Therefore, what he did in standing up for the Israelite was standing up for the little piece of God in that Israelite. In essence — I would say, metaphorically — he killed him with the name of God.

In other words, his moral vision is so powerful at that moment. “What are you doing killing another human being? This is another human being you’re killing! You're desecrating God's name in this world. To stand up with that kind of moral vision, coming from the palace, is something that is so stark and powerful that somehow, by Heaven's judgment, the Mitzri just drops dead just by him opening his mouth, without him even having to raise a club.

Imu: Rabbi Fohrman's theory here is a little speculative, but I think it’s insightful into the type of faith that Moshe likely needed to stand up to the Egyptian at that moment. Now I could see how Moshe's use of God's name, whether literal or metaphoric, contrasted with the Mekallel's use of God’s name. Moshe's was an affirmation of God; the Mekallel's a terrible sin against God. 

I really wanted to explore this contrast more. If Moshe and the Mekallel were having similar struggles, and both invoked God's name but to such different ends, then understanding exactly where their paths diverged seemed essential to understanding the lesson these stories were meant to teach. And, spoiler alert, it kind of is. 

But it's a puzzle we'll have to get back to, because for now, Rabbi Fohrman had his eye on another prize — seeing how all these Moshe/Mekallel parallels could help us explain the Midrash back in Leviticus. 

To get there we had to finish our read through Moshe's story, starting back at that same verse where we left off: Exodus chapter 2, verse 14. Again, this is right after Moshe tried to intervene in the fight between the two Hebrews, and the aggressor says to him: מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ — Who made you chief and ruler over us? הַלְהׇרְגֵנִי אַתָּה אֹמֵר כַּאֲשֶׁר הָרַגְתָּ אֶת־הַמִּצְרִי — Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?

We just saw how this verse hints to Moshe's use of God's name, but we were about to see how it's hinting to another really important development in this story as well, one that would make Moshe even more akin to the Mekallel. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Now it always struck me as strange — who is Moses? Who was Moses just a verse or two ago?

Imu: He’s the prince of Egypt.

Rabbi Fohrman: What are these guys saying, מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ? He's literally a crowned prince of Egypt. If there's anybody who's a שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ, anybody who's a prince…Why aren't these guys, who are two Jews who are slaves, why aren't they scared for their lives in the face of this Egyptian prince, especially since almost every Egyptian has the status of שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט upon Jew? The Egyptians are a ruling class, and when, in fact, the Israelites are enslaved, that language of שַׂר comes back: שָׂרֵי מִסִּים לְמַעַן עַנֹּתוֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָם — There were these sar’im (taskmasters) that were there to torture these Israelite (Exodus 1:11). It's such a strange thing to say. So why would you say that Moshe was not feared as a taskmaster if he's the prince of Egypt?

Imu: Hmm.

Rabbi Fohrman: What just happened in the last story?

Imu: He killed an Egyptian.

Rabbi Fohrman: He killed an Egyptian, right? Did that have something to do with it? 

Imu: He's left his post. He's forfeited his standing. Yesterday, you were the prince of Egypt — until you turned on your own kind.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right, and I heard that you turned on your own kind. So you've obviously put down the crown. Now that you put down the crown….

Imu: Now you're a nobody.

Rabbi Fohrman: You're a nobody. The same Moshe that had just seen the power of God's existence in the world, talking about the sacredness of every human being, now finds himself on the short end of the stick. He's a human being who now has no place to go. He's not an Egyptian; he's not in the palace. He's not even accepted by the Israelites. If he thought he was siding with the Israelites to stand up for them, they won't take him.

So now, how would you feel about this God that you say is the source of all sacredness of human life? “What about me? What place do I have in the world?” 

That's exactly where the Mekallel ends up years later.

Imu: We discussed earlier how Moshe and the Mekallel shared a similar plight. But the truth is, when Moshe first goes out, he's psychologically dealing with a similar identity crisis, but practically he still had a home. What Rabbi Fohrman was pointing out now was how that changes when Moshe kills the Egyptian, how he actually loses his place in society. Even the Hebrew slaves make it clear that they know his secret and they aren't going to protect him. Now, he's not just struggling internally; he too, literally, practically, has no place in the world. Truly, just like the Mekallel.

Though their stories align at this moment, they go in very different directions from here, and this was the last comparison between these stories that Rabbi Fohrman wanted to show me. Moshe runs away at this point. He flees to Midian, but when he gets there he has an encounter that totally changes his life.

Rabbi Fohrman: He gets recognized by the daughters of Yitro; the daughters of Yitro see him, and how do they identify him, ironically?

Imu: “He’s an אִישׁ מִצְרִי.”

Rabbi Fohrman: An אִישׁ מִצְרִי, that’s right.

Imu: That’s got to be pretty bitter to hear that.

Rabbi Fohrman: Pretty bitter. That's right.

Imu: If he were an אִישׁ מִצְרִי, he'd have a palace, he'd have a future.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. He turned his back on all of that, and then along comes Yitro, and Yitro says, “Invite the guy in.” But interestingly, when he says “invite the guy in” Yitro doesn't address him as an אִישׁ מִצְרִי.

Yitro’s language: וְאַיּוֹ לָמָּה זֶּה עֲזַבְתֶּן אֶת־הָאִישׁ — Why'd you leave the man behind? Almost as if Yitro is very happy to leave behind national affiliation. Just, “You're a guy,” right? And then: וַיּוֹאֶל מֹשֶׁה לָשֶׁבֶת אֶת־הָאִישׁ — Moshe was very happy to be with this guy (Exodus 2:16-21). 

Imu: It makes me think of The Prince of Egypt — they didn't have it so wrong. Their Yitro figure is very kind of hippy.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, this jovial person who can leave everything behind. And maybe, at some level, that's the sense of it in the text, which is that Yitro just scoops him up and says, “I don't care who you are. You don't have to be a prince of Egypt for me. You don't have to be a Hebrew for me. You just have to be an אִישׁ.”

Imu: An אִישׁ, a man, as opposed to an אִישׁ מִצְרִי, an Egyptian man. And by the way, remember that term אִישׁ מִצְרִי from last time? It's used to describe the Egyptian man Moshe kills, and, over in Leviticus, the father of the Mekallel. Add to that Yitro's daughters calling Moshe an אִישׁ מִצְרִי here and that's all three times this phrase is used in the entire Torah, which I think highlights what we were noticing, how significant it was that Yitro drops the “מִצְרִי” and just refers to Moshe as an אִישׁ, as a “man.” What a gift, what a Godsend, that Moshe stumbled upon a man like Yitro at this moment in his life. Imagine if the Mekallel had someone like Yitro who welcomed him in at his lowest point.

This brings us back to the Midrash from last time. Why, we asked, did the Midrash spotlight Moshe as the one who ruled against the Mekallel in that infamous court case? Maybe now we had an answer. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Moshe was fortunate. Moshe had someone in his life that was there at the right moment that could take him in, that could make him feel like he was a part of something. The Blasphemer didn't, which all goes to an understanding perhaps of what the Sages are saying when the Sages say, “Where did the Blasphemer leave from? He left from Moshe's court having lost his case.” It's almost like the Sages are setting up Moshe as a bad guy.

Look at what we know. We know that Moshe should have some sympathy with his plight because Moshe was in his plight. Moshe was in exactly his same shoes. It's almost as if Moshe is in the potential Yitro role right now. Moshe can just say, “Hey, let's not talk about what identity you are, but I have a place over here. Come sit with me, hang out with me.”

It's almost like if you were to play a thought experiment, you would say, all right, according to the Midrash, Moshe had this court, and in that court, Moshe condemned this Mekallel. What if there was another court? What if there was a court in Heaven that was prosecuting Moshe for his behavior here and saying, like, “Oh, one second, you missed something. You could have dealt with this guy differently.” Who would be the prime witness? Who would you bring as a witness against Moshe? I would call to the stand Yitro. Here's this guy who is there for you. Let him testify what you could do with somebody who feels dispossessed, how you could bring someone in.

Imu: We'd come to Exodus hoping to make sense of the Midrash and, in a way, we had. At least, we could now understand why the Midrash expected more from Moshe. But, I don't know, I expected more from Moshe too. Am I allowed to say that? I was hoping studying these parallels wouldn’t just explain the Midrash, but redeem it, help us see a really good reason why Moshe was so cold towards the Mekallel, and maybe even help us understand the moral of this whole story. But now...  

Imu: I think we've made all of our problems a lot worse, right? The Mekallel is extremely sympathetic. He's suffering from an identity crisis that Moshe suffered. Now we have this new question, which is, Moshe should have seen the struggle the Mekallel went through, and have identified and said, “I remember this. I remember what it feels like to be on the outside.” So, you know, put that together with the Medrash — how did Moshe not find some way to bring this guy in the way Yitro brought him in?

So we have questions on the Mekallel, we've got questions on Moshe, and I think most of all we've got questions on God. They turn to ask God what to do here, and God says, “Stone him.” All those questions have been made stronger by our journey to the past in Moshe's life. What really is the moral of the story?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, Imu, again, I go back to what I said before. There's a moral of the story ultimately for what it means to be Moshe, for what it means to be the Blasphemer, for what it means to be God, and all of those figures are different. The moral of the story may be that this is a catastrophic story that, at some level, went wrong in many ways.

But sometimes, what you learn from a story that went wrong is how it can possibly go right, what right is supposed to be. But to really get there, I think, having seen the past of this story, we need to see the future of the story too. Because this story doesn't end here. There's an epilogue to it, centuries later.

Imu: I’d forgotten about the epilogue. Rabbi Fohrman mentioned it last time. So it seemed I just had to be patient. Everything would come together when we got to...insert mystery epilogue here.

Would it clear Moshe’s name? Would it justify the Mekallel’s death? I really was as in the dark as you are about its identity, and just as eager to get to it. But between sessions, I kept thinking about this cryptic line that Rabbi Fohrman had said:

Rabbi Forhman: The moral of the story may be that this is a catastrophic story that, at some level, went wrong in many ways. But sometimes, what you learn from a story that went wrong is how it can possibly go right.

Imu: It seemed like a warning; “Don’t expect the Torah’s message to come wrapped in a bow.” This epic trilogy may not end on a happy note. In fact, it may contain catastrophe.

So, would the epilogue really resolve our issues — or, like Exodus, just make them worse? We’ll find out together next time.

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

Our producer is Tikva Hecht.

Audio editing for this episode was done by Hillary Guttman.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

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

Thank you Shari and Nathan, and thank you all for listening.