[Exclusive] The Manna, Part 1

Could the flavor of Biblical food teach us about the Exodus? This new season kicks off with an unbelievable connection between how the Israelites ate manna in the desert, and how they ate their Passover meal before leaving Egypt. The secret lies in how each meal affected our tastebuds. You'll have to taste it to believe it!

For more of the parallels we discovered, check out this chart. 

We love to hear from you! Click here to share your thoughts, insights, questions, and reactions by voice note, or send us an email at info@alephbeta.org.

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, and made possible through the generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. Aleph Beta is a Torah media company dedicated to spreading the joy and love of meaningful Torah learning worldwide.

Transcript

BLNO S7 Episode 1 Transcript [05 For SITE]

Rabbi David Fohrman: Hello, Imu. How are you?

Imu Shalev: Hi, Rabbi Fohrman. I am great. I want to do something exciting and new with you today, which is to catch you unawares and show you some really interesting stuff in Torah that you've never seen before and get your honest reactions to it.

Rabbi David Fohrman: All right, that sounds good, Imu. I'm looking forward to that. Lay it on me.

Narration:  Welcome, everybody, to a brand new season of A Book Like No Other. As you just heard, this time things are going to be a little bit different. We're flipping the script, and this season, I'm going to be the one who is presenting to Rabbi Fohrman and leading him as best as I can through the text. It's something that we've never really done before on the show, and honestly, I am very nervous about it. Let me tell you the story of how this season came to be. So a few months ago, Rabbi Fohrman was deep in deadline mode writing his upcoming book on Sefer Devarim. And around that time, our friend Michelle Zeriker reached out. Now, Michelle is someone that we've learned a lot from over the years. She is a real talmidah chachamah. She knows the text backwards and forwards. She actually won a chidon Tanach, and she said she'd found something really interesting and she was, like, rushing to show it to Rabbi Fohrman. But since he was racing up against his book deadline, I volunteered to step in between Michelle and Rabbi Fohrman and let Rabbi Fohrman keep writing. And honestly, I went into that conversation a little bit skeptical.

Michelle had told me that she had noticed things in Exodus 16 in the chapter dealing with the mann. And I mean, come on, how many times have we at Aleph Beta studied the chapter on the mann? What could possibly be hiding there that we hadn't already uncovered? Well, boy, did I have egg on my face because Michelle showed me many strong and surprising intertextual parallels that we legitimately had never seen before. And I knew that I just had to bring them to Rabbi Fohrman. But I realized something. This could actually be a great opportunity to take you guys even more behind the scenes of what we do here at Aleph Beta. Because, you see, usually here on A Book Like No Other, you're listening to the end result of Rabbi Fohrman's process after he spent 40, 60, sometimes 80, 80 hours or more working through a text, assembling documents and testing theories. What you don't usually get to experience is him working through the puzzle pieces in real time. That is exactly what we're going to share with you this season. I'm going to be presenting Michelle's findings to Rabbi Fohrman along with some of my own.

And you're going to hear Rabbi Fohrman's genuine, unfiltered reactions as he encounters this material for the very first time. I am super excited to take you along on this journey with us, but know that it's going to be slightly different of a ride than usual. Oh, and our topic. Well, as I said, we're going to start in Exodus, chapter 16. It's the chapter in which God first gives the people the man, this miraculous bread that falls from the heavens to sustain Israel in the desert. So without any further ado, let's jump in and take a look at what Michelle noticed in the mann story in chapter 16. And we're going to start with our corner pieces, as we like to call them here in Aleph Beta. 

I'm Imu Shalev, and this is Aleph Beta's A Book Like No Other, generously sponsored by Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. Okay, so the first thing that we do when we show parallels is we look at not any dinky old middle piece, but we look at a corner piece. So I need to show you the corner pieces.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Would you care to explain what a corner piece is, Imu? For those uninitiated, yes.

Imu Shalev: The easiest pieces to start with when you're building a puzzle is you find those corner pieces, because with those grounding you, you can find the piece that attaches to it next, the piece that attaches to it next. You create a perfect frame. And once you have your frame, then the middle pieces can fit in and your puzzle starts coming together. It's a far faster, more efficient way to assemble a puzzle.

Rabbi David Fohrman: And just to be a little bit clear about it, one of the beautiful things I find about this analogy is that a corner piece is a piece that you know exactly where it goes in the puzzle without needing to have any other piece as a reference point. So similarly, corner pieces in intertextual methodology is like if the Torah wants to relate one text to another, how in the world is anyone supposed to know that? The answer is corner pieces will tell you. You've got to be sensitive enough that when there's a corner piece screaming at you, look in Jeremiah 48, this is the only other time this appears. A corner piece is a piece that you know where it goes without reference to any other piece text, it screams of itself, go look at this other passage. And then what happens is, once you have a few of those corner pieces, then you begin to see the rest of the puzzle. There are some pieces which you would not have noticed belong. And once you see the corner pieces, you realize, oh, yeah, yeah, that actually paired with this idea. And look, that idea is right over here too. So little intermission there.

Imu Shalev: Yeah, but a very worthwhile intermission. Okay, without further ado, let me show you the corner piece. So come with me to Exodus 16, verse 16. And the context here is that the manna begins to rain down, and the people see this bread that falls from the heavens. And then Moshe answers them. What? What? This thing is right?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Verse 15 is when they don't know what it is. And it's when Moshe answers them. And Moshe says, "הוּא הַלֶּחֶם אֲשֶׁר נָתַן יְקוָה לָכֶם לְאָכְלָה – this is the bread that God has given you to eat" (Exodus 16:15). And you want me to go to the next verse, is that right? "זֶה הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְקוָה לִקְטוּ מִמֶּנּוּ אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ עֹמֶר לַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת מִסְפַּר נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם אִישׁ לַאֲשֶׁר בְּאָהֳלוֹ תִּקָּחוּ – This is what God has commanded. Every man should gather from it according to what they can eat. An omer's worth for each head. For the number of souls that are being fed, presumably. A man for those in his tent" (Exodus 16:16). Okay, great.

Imu Shalev: So now there is a corner piece in this verse, and it's a little bit wily, but there is a phrase here that is very rare, and that phrase is...

Rabbi David Fohrman: מִסְפַּר נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם?

Imu Shalev: No, it is not that one. I'm gonna guess again. Okay, as we're spiking out words in...

Rabbi David Fohrman: This verse, let's see. Is it לִקְטוּ מִמֶּנּוּ?

Imu Shalev: No, it is not לִקְטוּ מִמֶּנּוּ. It's the very next words.

Rabbi David Fohrman: אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ.

Imu Shalev: Each person according to what they can eat. Does that remind you of anything?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah, it does. Is that the Korban Pesach?

Imu Shalev: It is the Korban Pesach. Give this man a free coke. If you go to Exodus 12...

Rabbi David Fohrman: Four, hold on. Let's go to Exodus 12, verse four.

Imu Shalev: You can read verse three and then verse four.

Rabbi David Fohrman: "דַּבְּרוּ אֶל כָּל עֲדַת יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר בֶּעָשֹׂר לַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה וְיִקְחוּ לָהֶם אִישׁ שֶׂה לְבֵית אָבֹת שֶׂה לַבָּיִת – everyone should take themselves a sheep for the house of their fathers. A sheep for their house" (Exodus 12:3). "וְאִם יִמְעַט הַבַּיִת מִהְיוֹת מִשֶּׂה וְלָקַח הוּא וּשְׁכֵנוֹ הַקָּרֹב אֶל בֵּיתוֹ בְּמִכְסַת נְפָשֹׁת אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ תָּכֹסּוּ עַל הַשֶּׂה – if they can't eat a whole seh, they can go with their neighbors, covering their souls. Each man according to what they can eat" (Exodus 12:4). Yet there it is, אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ.

Imu Shalev: Right. Each person according to what they can eat in one case. Each person according to what you can eat is gonna be man. Each person according to what you can eat in 12:4 is going to be the Pesach offering, when they were back in Egypt.

Imu Shalev: There's something else that I should show you. We're still in corner piece territory. Why don't you read verse 10?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Sure. Verse 10 in the Korban Pesach narrative, "וְלֹא תוֹתִירוּ מִמֶּנּוּ עַד בֹּקֶר" – oh, that reminds us of something with the manna, doesn't it? You shall not leave any over until the morning. "וְהַנֹּתָר מִמֶּנּוּ עַד בֹּקֶר בָּאֵשׁ תִּשְׂרֹפוּ – and if you do that which is left over in the morning, you have to get rid of with fire" (Exodus 12:10). And lo and behold, we had a very similar command with the manna. With the manna, we said you're supposed to gather it all. And verse 19 says, "אַל יוֹתֵר מִמֶּנּוּ עַד בֹּקֶר – you shouldn't leave any over until the morning" (Exodus 16:19). But they didn't do it. "וַיּוֹתִרוּ אֲנָשִׁים מִמֶּנּוּ עַד בֹּקֶר" – and lo and behold, they found, when they tried to save some for the morning, "וַיָּרֻם תּוֹלָעִים וַיִּבְאַשׁ – it actually stank because worms infested it" (Exodus 16:20). So what happens is that in each case, but there's a...

Imu Shalev: There's a little word hiding in that word, וַיִּבְאַשׁ. What word?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Do you see? Yeah, that word would be esh, בָּאֵשׁ תִּשְׂרֹפוּ. Interesting. So it's a play on words when you leave it over into the morning. But בָּאֵשׁ תִּשְׂרֹפוּ, you have to get rid of it in the fire. It's almost like God's way of getting rid of with fire, was with these worms that caused it to stink. Because וַיִּבְאַשׁ, which means to stink, is a play off of the beit ayin shin of וַיִּבְאַשׁ. So that's kind of interesting.

Imu Shalev: One more corner piece. Take a look at Exodus 16, verse 29.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Moshe says, "רְאוּ כִּי יְקוָה נָתַן לָכֶם הַשַּׁבָּת עַל כֵּן הוּא נֹתֵן לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁי לֶחֶם יוֹמָיִם – Look, God has given you the Sabbath, that's why he gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. שְׁבוּ אִישׁ תַּחְתָּיו אַל יֵצֵא אִישׁ מִמְּקֹמוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי – Everybody sit where they are. Nobody go out collecting on the seventh day" (Exodus 16:29).

Imu Shalev: Okay, now, does that remind you of anything in the Korban Pesach in the second half of the verse in Exodus 16?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Slowly. Yeah, yeah. So אַל יֵצֵא אִישׁ מִמְּקֹמוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי. Are you talking about the idea that a person can't go outside their house? Isn't that all night long, everyone's supposed to be in the house and they only go out in the morning? Where is that verse?

Imu Shalev: It's going to be in Exodus 12, verse 22.

Rabbi David Fohrman: "וּלְקַחְתֶּם אֲגֻדַּת אֵזוֹב וּטְבַלְתֶּם בַּדָּם אֲשֶׁר בַּסַּף וְהִגַּעְתֶּם אֶל הַמַּשְׁקוֹף וְאֶל שְׁתֵּי הַמְּזוּזֹת מִן הַדָּם אֲשֶׁר בַּסָּף וְאַתֶּם לֹא תֵצְאוּ אִישׁ מִפֶּתַח בֵּיתוֹ עַד בֹּקֶר" – so no one's allowed to go out until the morning here (Exodus 12:22). No one's allowed to go out until the evening, which would be until the Sabbath is over. But again, there's this notion that nobody leaves the house, or they didn't really have houses. Nobody's leaving their spot. Right. So, yeah, that is pretty interesting.

Imu Shalev: That's right. They're pretty different, right? In Exodus 12, don't go outside because there's a plague. The whole Pesach ritual is like warding off your home so that God passes over you. Definitely. You don't want to go outside because you could die. Whereas in Exodus 16, why can't you go outside?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Again, because the opposite of plague, there is this wonderful tranquility, and the tranquility is just going to be enjoyed in your house. You don't need to go outside for your sustenance.

Imu Shalev: Right? So same law, nobody can go outside. Entirely different reason. One is because there's a plague outside and you might die. And this time, don't go outside. Why don't you go outside? Chill out at home, there's no labor that needs to be done. Kick your feet up, take a rest. Completely different energies, but same words. So these three phrases and concepts, I think, really convince me that something is going on. So those were our three corner pieces. And while they already convinced me that there had to be a connection between the texts of the mann and the text of the Korban Pesach, the question was, did they convince Rabbi Fohrman? And he later told me that they did. Mostly. You see, Rabbi Fohrman is never one to take evidence at face value. He firmly believes that when researching something in the Torah, you really have to sit with it. You gotta reflect on it and literally map it out in a chart. When he did, he noticed something that I had totally missed. He saw that all three of these corner pieces not only linked these two texts, but they were in order. The phrase אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ, each one according to what they can eat.

That's the first phrase to appear in both texts. אַל or לֹא תוֹתִירוּ מִמֶּנּוּ עַד בֹּקֶר, the prohibition to leave any food over. That appears next in both texts. And finally, אַל יֵצֵא אִישׁ, or לֹא תֵצְאוּ אִישׁ, the requirement to stay inside. That's the last corner piece in both texts. Three solid corner pieces, and they were in order. Rabbi Fohrman told me that was what really got his complete buy in on the evidence. But what did it mean that these texts were connected? Why did the Korban Pesach seem to be replaying itself in the man? And why were some of these connections inverses of one another? I hoped that as we moved on from those corner pieces to the other noticings that I had to share with Rabbi Fohrman, more of the puzzle would start to come together. Honestly, I shared a whole bunch of smaller connections to Rabbi Fohrman, way more than can fit into this episode. And if you want to see them, you can find a link in the description to a PDF that really maps them all out, color coded and all. But I want to take you to one of the later connections that I shared with Rabbi Fohrman, one that actually presented another interesting inverse between the mann and Korban Pesach.

And it would end up laying the groundwork for an answer to some of our questions. So the next thing that I want to take you to, there's this one verse that stuck out at me in Exodus 12 that I kept thinking about, like we say it in the Haggadah, that in Korban Pesach, right? It wasn't just meat and bread, but there was something else. There was another element. Do you know what verse I'm talking about? You're talking about, yeah, you're supposed to eat this meat and bread with bitters or bitter herbs.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Where was that? What verse?

Imu Shalev: It's verse eight.

Rabbi David Fohrman: "צְלִי אֵשׁ וּמַצּוֹת עַל מְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ" – so you have to eat it with bitterness (Exodus 12:8).

Imu Shalev: So I'm like, there's meat, there's bread, there's bitters. If these things should be connected, then there should be meat and bread and bitters in Exodus 16 in the story of the man. But there is no bitter in the story of the man. I looked and I looked and I looked and I couldn't find it. So I was thinking, look, I don't have bread, meat, and bitters. Do I have an inverse in the man? Maybe something that wasn't bitter, but the opposite of that...

Rabbi David Fohrman: Because it was sweet. It was specifically like dvash.

Imu Shalev: Exactly. And this is Exodus 16, verse 31. "וַיִּקְרְאוּ בֵית יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת שְׁמוֹ מָן – the people called it man. וְהוּא כְּזֶרַע גַּד לָבָן וְטַעְמוֹ כְּצַפִּיחִת בִּדְבָשׁ – it tasted like fried in honey" (Exodus 16:31). And at this point, yeah, it tasted like Krispy Kreme.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Right.

Imu Shalev: At this point, I leaned back in my chair and I kind of laughed because I thought this was very funny that you'd have meat and bread and you'd have the bitters, but this time it wouldn't be bitters.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Right. Specifically because the Torah is saying, עַל מַצּוֹת וּמְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ, the merorim is what's giving the distinctive taste. That's saying, oh, wow, the whole thing is going to taste bitter because of this bitterness. Whereas over here, the whole experience of maybe eating the meat together with the bread is a very sweet experience. The idea is sweet and bitter are two tastes that take over your palate and sort of lend their taste to whatever else bland you might be eating.

Imu Shalev: Yeah. And that really tipped things for me because it did feel like the parallels were coming back, but that this one and some of the others are inverses, that they're taking a night that may have been bitter and turning it sweet. They're the same symbols show up, but now they take on something completely different. And this one, I think is the most obvious, but I don't know, it made me smile.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So feels like to me is that there's this evolution, that there's a certain kind of symbolic eating on the night of the 15th of the first month that has the memories of bitterness that Israel had from their experience in Egypt, even as they are being reborn into a new nation. And then somehow in 16, you have food that the people desperately need, and somehow there's some sort of inverse of it. And in this flipped script, there's sweetness. Specifically that. The sweetness is like dvash. What does that remind you of? Why would manna, of all things, taste like dvash?

Imu Shalev: Well, Moshe has been promising to take them to the land flowing with milk and honey.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Exactly right.

Imu Shalev: אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Right. So now if I would say, why does the Korban Pesach come with merorim? What would that...

Imu Shalev: Oh, that's interesting. So if dvash is the destination, then maror is our origin. Yeah, our marorigin.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Right. Like, there was something about this eating in Exodus 12 which was reminiscent of the past. But the dvash seems to take you forward into the possibility of a future of a land flowing with milk and honey.

Imu Shalev: I really appreciated how Rabbi Fohrman had taken my noticing of the inverse in taste between bitter maror and sweet mann and run with it. But my mind immediately started turning to other foods that were relevant in Egypt that could play a role in our discussion. And I actually tripped over another key word that we hadn't talked about yet, one that led me to yet another taste. Not just any taste, but a taste that, just like the bitter maror, is a contrast to the sublime sweetness of the man. In the story of the Exodus, you have to throw out your chametz and your se'or. Oh, that's interesting. Chametz. The word chametz, if you had to vowelize it differently, what else does that word mean?

Rabbi David Fohrman: How else could you vowelize chametz?

Imu Shalev: Chametz, chamutz, which means sour. Chametz is sour, which is interesting again, considering that the manna is sweet. It's not just the merorim, the actual bread. Bread in Egypt. How did bread in Egypt taste? It tasted sour sourdough. But God's bread tastes sweet.

Rabbi David Fohrman: But see, that's interesting. What you're saying is that you have to throw out your sour bread. Let's just think about that for a moment. So there's a process of fermentation that has to do with sourdough bread. And if you eat sourdough bread, even once you bake it, it still tastes somewhat sour. It's a good kind of sour, but it definitely is sour. It has that sort of almost vinegary taste.

Imu Shalev: It's fermentation.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's fermentation. And so you throw that out, and instead you eat matzah. Now, what I would say is matzah's neutral bread, right? Because it tastes like nothing, really, because it doesn't have the sour aspect of it. So it's very bland. And then manna is sweet bread. So it's almost like there's three points in a line which is sour, matzah, neutral, and then manna, sweet. And so the idea is, on this day, you throw away your sour bread. But interestingly, even though you throw away your sour bread, you're still eating "צְלִי אֵשׁ וּמַצּוֹת עַל מְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ – you're eating matzah, this neutral bread, but you're eating it with the memories."

Imu Shalev: It's almost like remaking sourdough without the corruption of sourdough.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah. In other words, eating matzah with merorim seems like artificially bringing up the taste of sourdough while saying that it's something else. So that's kind of interesting, right? It's this notion that you're gonna have a new kind of bread now, and we'll make it taste like your old kind of bread, that you've always been eating all the sourdough bread. But you should know that the sour now is separate from the bread and that you can sort of leave behind the sour part of it. And eventually that will. Oh, you know what's interesting about that? When do you eat מַצּוֹת וּמְרֹרִים?

Imu Shalev: On that night on Pesach?

Rabbi David Fohrman: And when do you eat matzah?

Imu Shalev: The next seven days.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yes. So you understand what's happening. So now the continuum is clear. In other words, until now, you were eating sourdough.

Imu Shalev: Suddenly you're saying it goes from sour to neutral. Sweet.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yes. No, it goes from sour to the break between the sour and the dough to neutral to sweet.

Imu Shalev: Let me explain which was good, because I don't know about you, but that nuance went a little over my head.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Until now, you were eating sourdough. Right. All of a sudden, there's a moment where God says, okay, no more sourdough. Throw out your sourdough. We're going to give you a different kind of bread. But a different kind of bread that we're going to artificially make taste like sourdough. Because you're going to have matzah, which is neutral bread, but you're going to eat it עַל מְרֹרִים – you can eat it with merorim, so it has the taste in your mouth as if you're eating sourdough. But really, we've redeemed your bread already because the bread is now separate from the sourness. Right?

Imu Shalev: Right.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Then the next day, we're going to see you're play acting. It's simple.

Imu Shalev: It's play acting.

Rabbi David Fohrman: We're gonna say, okay, now drop the merorim part of it and keep your matzah. And you see that there's an evolution in your bread now because now the bread doesn't even taste maror anymore. Now it just tastes neutral. And for seven days you're gonna eat neutral bread. And you say, don't feel like it has much taste to it, but at least it's not sour. Right. And then all of a sudden, in Exodus 16, God comes along and says, no, there's a new thing which is the very opposite of sourdough bread. And it's actually sweet bread, and it's really great. And it is foreshadowing sort of a different kind of experience where food can be associated with sweetness rather than with bitterness. And maybe that really is what the idea is, which is that maybe food mirrors our experience on some level. And when the people were in Egypt, they really had bitter experience. And therefore your bitter experience makes all food, you taste bitter, or you're just comfortable eating bitter food because it just works with your experience better. So God is redeeming our food as a way of redeeming our experience and saying, all right, let's make a break between the bitter and the food, and we'll let you have the feel of the bitterness. It'll kind of feel familiar, but we've created the break which will allow us to have an evolution. Then let's drop the bitter. Let's just have the bread. And then the bread will eventually become sweet. And that is going to foreshadow a time when your experience of the land is sweet, and that will go and reflect itself in your food choices as well.

Imu Shalev: I was really excited about this possible continuum we had unearthed of sourdough to bitter herbs with matzah to neutral matzah alone to sweet man. Now, in my mind, this discovery seemed to present the perfect opportunity to suggest a much more speculative connection that I had found between Exodus 12 and 16. And see what Rabbi Fohrman thought about it. It had to do with an important element of food in the Exodus story that we hadn't really addressed yet that I wanted to swing back to that of se'or, leavening. And my hope was that this might, in fact enhance or leaven our entire discussion of these breads and their tastes that we'd been having until now. I'm jumping to show you something else, because this was the more speculative part. But it just fits nicely, or I don't know if it fits nicely. I'm curious to have you react to it. But you just said that the bread somehow is a symbol for our experience. Our experience was bitter. And you, by the way, you also ate sourdough or bitterness. We're gonna then go to put the car in neutral, and then you're gonna put the car in drive, and then the food will be sweet and hopefully reflect a future sweet experience.

But what was gnawing at me is, wouldn't it be even more elegant if the food wasn't only symbolically connected to their labor or their time? But what if there was a deeper connection, the bread itself and their actual slavery experience, that the metaphor and their real life experience were more intimately connected?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, okay.

Imu Shalev: So this is not a direct parallel, but I saw something in Exodus 12, which is that you're supposed to "תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר מִבָּתֵּיכֶם – you're supposed to get rid of se'or, of leavening, from your house" (Exodus 12:15). That word se'or, leavening, it reminds me of the word she'ar. It's the same exact letters.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Right.

Imu Shalev: But it means leftover. Right. Which is how I understand how I've done this. That's how sourdough is made. You have some flour and you leave it over and it ferments with the yeast in the air. And that's how se'or turns into chametz, right? Se'or is the leftover flour turns into chamutz. It turns into sour. And I thought that would be really cool if I could find that word in Exodus 16. I couldn't find that word, but I could find the idea of leftover. It's in Exodus 16, verse 23. Moshe's telling the people, this is a Shabbos. Everybody should cook today before Shabbos. "וְאֵת כָּל הָעֹדֵף – and everything that's leftover" – doesn't use the word she'ar, but it uses וְאֵת כָּל הָעֹדֵף, all the extra. You can actually save it until the next day. This is the exception to leaving over. The only day you're allowed to leave over is from Friday to Shabbos. So I thought that was an interesting parallel. It's not an exact word parallel, but I thought it was really interesting with me so far.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah, that is interesting. First of all, you have a theory. Your theory is that se'or is named se'or almost intentionally because of the double entendre with she'ar, that somehow what becomes sour is the leftover part. And it's interesting that you have תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר מִבָּתֵּיכֶם, that you are supposed to get rid of the leftovers, and that you have the word Shabbos as a play on words of תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר. And in the parallel language in Exodus 16, you have "הַנִּיחוּ אֹתוֹ בְמִשְׁמֶרֶת עַד הַבֹּקֶר – hidden, preserve the leftovers for tomorrow" (Exodus 16:23) – on the Sabbath, which is you have leftovers. And instead of getting rid of the leftovers, you have the opposite, which is keep the leftovers for a mishmeret for tomorrow. But what's also really interesting, Imu, is what happens with those leftovers. Those leftovers do not rot. They stay as sweet as before. So that's right, you have the opposite happening with the leftovers, which is that conventional bread leftovers become sourdough. And that's what you have to get rid of at the moment of Korban Pesach. And manna will also rot. But it doesn't rot on the Sabbath, and therefore you can keep it. And what you're keeping the odef in this case is actually sweet bread instead of sour bread.

Imu Shalev: So I was meditating on this. Like, leaving over is generally not great, right? All the laws seem to be about anti leaving over, with one exception. When leaving over leads to you resting, is it possible that leaving over in Egypt is not great? And it would even be elegant if it would be not great in. And the only exception to leaving over would be is if you could rest. In other words, think about what the labor in Egypt was. Egypt is this agrarian powerhouse, right? We talked about them as being the inventors of sourdough. You can only be the inventors of sourdough if you have abundance. You've got a lot of bread and so much bread that in other cultures, you didn't have it lying around, but the Egyptians did. They had it lying around, and it turned into sourdough. But something about these Egyptians made them really fearful about losing their abundance. And what we hear about is how they caused the Israelites to enter into backbreaking labor. And their labor specifically was. Do you remember their labor, Rabbi Fohrman?

Rabbi David Fohrman: What were they building storehouses for bread or storehouses for grain?

Imu Shalev: Do you remember the language for the storehouses are miskenot. Translate that word for me. Miskenot.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Well, miskan can be a poor person or an unfortunate person.

Imu Shalev: It's a double entendre. Miskenot means storehouses. But it possibly comes from the use of miskin, meaning somebody who is poor, meaning we're terrified of being poor. We're the Egyptians. We don't want to be miskenim. That would be horrible. Let's build storehouses so we can always have grain. And the end of that sentence would be so that each person can get what they need to eat. But that's not the end of the sentence for the Egyptians. It's so that we can have our sourdough. Right? So that we can have she'ar, we can have se'or, we can have leftovers, and we can enjoy our sourdough. But what they do is they enslave a populace in order to be able to preserve that. So there's no Shabbos, no Shabbos, so that we can have she'ar. And it's interesting that in the man...

Rabbi David Fohrman: So one second you're thinking that she'ar is not just like the little bits of bread that were left over from which you would make sourdough order, but you're thinking that it was this conscious desire to hoard and make sure there was bread for tomorrow.

Imu Shalev: Yes. And there's one more piece of this in Eikev, when it talks about the memory of the event of the man. Moshe says that you're going to a land. And this is in Deuteronomy 8:8. Moshe says you're going to a land that is "אֶרֶץ חִטָּה וּשְׂעֹרָה – you're going to a land of wheat and barley. גֶּפֶן וּתְאֵנָה וְרִמּוֹן אֶרֶץ זֵית שֶׁמֶן וּדְבָשׁ – you're going to go to a land with tons of these seven species, the last of which is honey" (Deuteronomy 8:8). "אֶרֶץ אֲשֶׁר לֹא בְמִסְכֵּנֻת תֹּאכַל בָּהּ לֶחֶם – it is a land lo miskenut" (Deuteronomy 8:9). What a word that would have been for them. Miskenut was their whole labor you were building. You're going to the land where there's no miskenut. You're not going to be afraid of being poor because you'll have tremendous abundance, which is why God gives you this whole mann story, right? The whole reason I gave you the mann is because I want you to remember that when you have your abundance, you shouldn't be afraid that you're going to lose it. And you should also know that it came from God. That to me, actually, I think. And this again, I don't know if this is striking you as compelling, but if we're looking for a link between the symbols and their actual experience. So if the symbols are their bitterness or their sourness, that goes into neutral, that goes into sweet, I can't think of a more direct metaphor than their experience in slavery, because slavery was directly related to bread, related to sourdough, related to having so much abundance that you weren't sharing that you had no Shabbos. The bad guys were hoarding, hoarding so that they can have sourdough. And then there's the evolution to our sweetness, to coming into the land. Actually, you said it right, that you're going to come into the land of honey וְלֹא בְמִסְכֵּנֻת, where there's no poorness.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's interesting you point out that in Egypt, hoarding was a culture. It wasn't something which was just born of necessity. And therefore even rich landed people hoarded. And it was just the way of doing things. And that the whole idea of se'or, you're arguing might have been a result of Egyptians always making sure they had for tomorrow.

Imu Shalev: It has to be right. Vinegar, pickles, cabbage and bread. Chamutz comes from fermentation. Fermentation comes from having enough that you're leaving over. This is a theory, right?

Rabbi David Fohrman: But I don't know if you've proven the notion that Egypt used that deleteriously. In other words, they were hoarding in a way that was problematic rather than prudent. Right? Some sort of saving for tomorrow is prudent. But you seem to be arguing that the culture is obsessed with it in a way that makes it not prudent to me. The evidence, if it comes, would come mostly from Pharaoh, which is the most landed guy of all, who, in the wake of the Joseph story, is hoarding everything and in essence forcing his own people into a position of slavery because he insists on having all the money in the world.

Imu Shalev: Right. And I think also that the choice to enslave them, particularly to build, are miskenot. Right. Like, I think that's probably the biggest proof.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah.

Imu Shalev: Interesting.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So you're saying that this notion of an evolution from sourdough to sweet, sweet dough is basically God's way of saying we're moving beyond the hoarding society and as long as you hoard, all bread will be sour. And if you let go of that and trust in the abundance coming from God, then all bread turns sweet.

Imu Shalev: Yes. So it's not just like the bread that you were eating or the experience you had was bitter, but your economic system was related to the metaphor here. Like your economic system was bitter and your economic system is going to turn sweet, but the economic system was related to hoarding bread. And if I'm right about this, it would make so much more sense as to why תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר מִבָּתֵּיכֶם. Like, why is that even a part of the Pesach experience at all? Why do you need to get rid of sourdough on Pesach?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah. That's interesting because you say sourdough was born from hoarding bread and keeping it around long enough that it fermented.

Imu Shalev: That's right.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's very fascinating because it provides a really interesting lens to a very vexing problem, which is why in the world is a holiday of freedom from Egypt associated with...

Imu Shalev: Celebrated with flatbread.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Celebrated with flatbread. So, you know, you can go all sociological and anthropological about this and say that, well, Egypt was, you know, the home of sourdough. And leaving behind Egypt is leaving behind sourdough. But that's all very nice, but, you know, I could leave behind...

Imu Shalev: It doesn't explain what's wrong with sourdough. We could leave it behind. Egypt by removing all the sphinxes from your house.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah. I could just say that we should no longer have triangle shaped things because it reminds us of the pyramids.

Imu Shalev: Nope, no papyrus.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It makes it more meaningful because the sourdough really was the memory of the disease that infected society, which you might say is the sort of hoarding mentality in the wake of famine, which might have been the very impetus for slavery in the first place, which is the obsessive desire to hoard required slave labor to create these huge hoarding cities. And sourdough is just what you get when you have a society that's constantly keeping bread around and will never waste bread, even old bread. And suddenly you get fermented, though. Fermented dough. Yeah.

Imu Shalev: So at this point, our session was about to wrap up, and like I said, at the top of the episode, I was curious and a little nervous to see how Rabbi Fohrman would respond to what I had to show him and what we would explore together. So before we turned off our mics, I checked in with him, and he gave me his honest thoughts on what we had discussed so far.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Look, it's indisputable that Exodus 16 is connected to Exodus 12. That, I think, is indisputable. I think the argument about going from bitter to sweet is persuasive. I think the idea of se'or having to do with hoarding. It's a really interesting theory. Don't know if I've bet my house on it, but maybe you don't bet your house on theories. You bet your house more on evidence than theories. A theory is just there to explain the evidence that you would bet your house on. So there is bet your house evidence. The other thing is, it's like I would also want to see what the larger meaning of the move from bitter to sweet is.

Imu Shalev: I really appreciated that reflection. One of the main goals with this season, in addition to all the good stuff about matzah and mann and bitter and sweet, is to share with you Rabbi Fohrman's process. You clearly see how careful he is to tease everything apart and identify what's clear to him and what needs more work and why. It's really a testament to Michelle's keen eye that Rabbi Fohrman was sold on the intertextual parallels by the end of our session, and I was super happy to hear that he felt we'd done some good work making sense of their meaning. But I have to tell you, I was really surprised when he said we needed to continue to explore the meaning of the movement from bitter to sweet. Hadn't we just done that? What more did he want? But that's the thing with Rabbi Fohrman and his process. Many times, even when it seems like we've come to the end of the road, he's determined to keep pushing to go even deeper. Our exploration of the movement from bitter to sweet in the Exodus story was no exception. You see, what we were noticing wasn't just a move from bitter to sweet.

There were all of these in between stages. After the sourdough, there were bitter herbs with neutral matzah together, then just neutral matzah, then finally sweet man. That's what was nagging Rabbi Fohrman, what was being added with these in between stages. That's what he wouldn't, couldn't let go of. And I'm glad he didn't, because when we next met, what he had come up with to address that question really knocked my socks off. And I can't wait for you to hear it yourself in the next episode. We'll see you then. This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev. It was produced by Robbie Charnoff. Our audio engineer is Hilary Gutman. Our senior producer is 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. Thank you, Shari and Nathan, and thank you all for listening. And hey, we'd love to listen to you for a change. Please leave us a voice note with your thoughts, your reactions, what you love about the show, even what you don't love about the show. There's a link in the show notes. It is really easy to use. I hope you'll try it out.