[Exclusive] The Manna, Part 3

A bizarre moment in the Manna story occurs when the Jews lament that they should have been killed in Egypt by “the hand of God.” Was this a hand that benevolently pulled the Jews out of Egypt, or that hand that smote the Egyptian firstborn? How do we teach our children the truth of that fateful night of the Exodus? Our season finale tackles the big questions of food, trauma, and the Exodus.

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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

Imu Shalev: Welcome back. At the end of our last episode, I shared that we still had one last leg of our journey to go, and our point of departure is going to be this one verse that Rabbi Fohrman had touched on briefly at the end. It's part of the prelude to the giving of the man. When the people are in the desert, they're hungry, and they get to grumbling, and God responds by giving them the man. They say, if only we had died by the hand of God in Egypt, where we sat by the pot of meat, and so on and so forth. Now, Rabbi Fohrman had brought out some really beautiful nuances in this verse, but that would prove to be just the beginning. As you'll soon see, we're about to blow open this verse in a way that I was not expecting, because I don't know about you, but this verse has always puzzled me. It's one of those verses that the closer you look, the less and less sense it starts to make. And I've never really gotten my hands around any truly satisfying answers. So there I found myself with Rabbi Fohrman at the end of our recording session, looking at this verse, and something delicious happened.

One of those moments that I live for. A light bulb went on, and it hit me that maybe, just maybe, I've been misreading this verse my entire life. And that it's only now, in light of all those connections that Michelle turned us onto, that I'm finally able to understand what it's really saying. And Rabbi Fohrman, well, he's just about to run off to dinner. Remember, it was the end of our learning session, but this wild, haunting theory has taken up residence in my mind, promising to maybe provide satisfying answers to my question and not sharing it with him. That's not an option. And that's where we'll begin, with me bringing Rabbi Fohrman up to speed on my long standing questions, explaining to him what I have always found so puzzling about this verse. By the way, this episode includes a discussion of the 10th plague, the death of the firstborn, and we're going to be getting into some sensitive topics, including stillbirths. I wanted to let you know in case that sounds like something that you'd rather skip. Okay. I'm Imu Shalev, and this is the season seven finale of Aleph Beta's, a book like no other, generously sponsored by the Never Puzzling Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum.

I don't know about you, but I always found this verse to be very upsetting because it's one thing to complain against God after he had just—or complain against Moshe and Aaron after, you know, God and Moshe and Aaron had taken them out of Egypt. But the point they're making is very puzzling because it would have been, you know, upsetting enough if they would have said, I can't believe you took us out of Egypt just to die of hunger.

That's not what they say.

They said, would that you had left us to die at the hands of—and I would expect the hands of Pharaoh. Pharaoh was just chasing them, right? Or the taskmasters. But no, they say, would that you had let us die by the hands of God.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Hashem. Yeah, that's strange in Egypt.

Imu Shalev: Very strange, right?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Why do they say that if only we would have died at the hands of God in Egypt? What do you mean? Why do they think that if they would be back in Egypt, they would be dying at the hands of God? They'd be dying at the hands of those lousy taskmasters.

Imu Shalev: It's doubly chutzpedik, I think. It's not just that they're ungrateful, but they're somehow characterizing God as a potential murderer or as someone who could have killed them in Egypt. There's one other piece of this complaint that, you know, maybe struck me as odd, which is, you know, they're really fondly remembering their time in Egypt. בְּשִׁבְתֵּנוּ עַל־סִיר הַבָּשָׂר בְּאָכְלֵנוּ לֶחֶם לָשֹׂבַע (Exodus 16:3). They're remembering the flesh pots and all the bread they had. But I just—I can't shake the feeling that they were slaves. They probably didn't have a ton of meat and bread sitting around. So are they just like, lying? Are they mischaracterizing their time in Egypt?

Or maybe Imu's wrong.

Maybe like Pharaoh fed them really, really well so that they'd be good slaves.

It could be that.

But there's something puzzling here, I think, about their memory of the time, the rose colored glasses of their time in Egypt.

That never sat with me.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Well, yeah.

Imu Shalev: So those are the questions that have always puzzled me about this verse.

Question number one.

What's with the yad Hashem here? Why are the people wishing they had been killed by the hand of God back in Egypt? And question two, the people were slaves. Were they really sitting down every night to a feast of meat and bread? I'm supposed to believe that Pharaoh was serving up Denver steak and first cut brisket? Now, Rabbi Fohrman agreed that my questions were interesting, especially the one about yad Hashem. And he didn't have any easy answers. Until, that is, I gave him just a little tiny hint. A nudge, really. I said, rebbe, look at the verse once more. But this time, I want you to keep in the back of your mind all the connections that we found between the man and the korban Pesach. That was all it took. And for those of us who aren't Rabbi Fohrman, here's one more little hint. If only we had died in Egypt at the hand of God. There was a time back in Egypt when God was going around killing people, wasn't there? Here's Rabbi Fohrman having his own little light bulb moment.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Oh, gosh. You think—oh, wow. So you think they mean if only we had died as part of the 10th plague.

Imu Shalev: Yes.

When was there a time where the people were sitting over a flesh pot of meat with bread?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah, but it wasn't a flesh pot of meat. It was stew.

Imu Shalev: You don't have to envision it as a stew, right. It could have been they roasted it in a pot. Or it could have been specifically, like, they didn't eat it off the spit. Maybe they put it in pots.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, I hear you. So maybe—interesting. So when they're thinking about it, it's almost like they're thinking about their Pesach night. And it's like, this was supposed to be so joyous. Or, Pesach night when we went out. We should have died that Pesach night, just like the Egyptians died that night. We at least had our korban Pesach between our teeth, and we wouldn't have been starving. And you took us out with that feast, and now there's no food.

Imu Shalev: Yes.

So I originally read this verse as like—remember that time in Egypt, those nights of the meat? No.

There was one night where they had meat and they had bread, and God was going around killing people.

Rabbi David Fohrman: They never had—right. They never had that kind of luxury. It was that one night where God said, take that little sheep and—and slaughter it. The one that you've always had in the backyard as a pet. And so they never had lamb chops normally. But this is gonna be their night, and it's gonna be celebratory. And now they're throwing it back in Moshe's face. That celebratory night. We should have died that night.

Imu Shalev: That's right. And there's something about that night that is terribly traumatic.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Why are you so angry about that night?

Imu Shalev: Right.

We think of that night as like, well, this is the greatest night.

We celebrate it for ages.

And we replay it. But that night actually seems like it was a night of violence and maybe fear. And the only thing they remember positively is the meat and the bread and their filled bellies, but they remember God going around killing a lot of people.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So—one second. Slow down. It was a little fast for me. You want to argue that there was some trauma with that night because seemingly it's this great, wonderful celebratory night, but you're saying, no, there's a problem with that night. Yes, even Israel would be traumatized for some reason by that night. So I would need to interview you on that and why you feel that way. But—but evidently you do. So I'm just pointing that out. And when we come back, I'm looking forward to hearing why.

Imu Shalev: Good.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest. You have definitely whet my appetite as part of the pun. And hopefully—

Imu Shalev: And now you're off to dinner.

Rabbi David Fohrman: And not a traumatic way. Not a traumatic way.

Imu Shalev: Okay, see you later.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Bye. Bye.

Imu Shalev: Does that mean you mean like your champion?

Rabbi David Fohrman: It could be like after a prize fight in the ring, the champion goes and puts his fist aloft as if he is victorious. But I'm thinking of something else. Imu in our Aleph Beta land, this isn't the first time we've talked about the 10th plague. We talked about it often in terms of birth. There's a lot of birth imagery. You've got this animal that's tied up with its head over its knees in a fetal position, waiting all night long, and then bursting in the morning through this bloody doorway. It's birth imagery, right? And God is saying, בְּנִי בְכֹרִי יִשְׂרָאֵל—my firstborn child is Israel. And the firstborn child becomes the firstborn child, maybe on the day that all the other firstborn in Egypt are dead except for God's own firstborn. And he spares the individual firstborn of Israel, while the national first born of Israel comes into being through a process of birth. If it is a process of birth, what do you think chozek yad would look like then.

Imu Shalev: Interesting. So it reminds me of, like, the arm of a midwife or nowadays the gynecologist, the OB, actually, who's withdrawing the baby. Actually delivering. Right. We talk about us being delivered from Egypt.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Literally delivered.

Imu Shalev: Yeah.

And they call it labor and delivery, right?

Rabbi David Fohrman: That's right.

Imu Shalev: But that's very interesting also because the metaphor is every house is a womb, and in some houses, the hand was destroying the people inside, and in the other, it was delivering.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Yeah. Almost as if the same hand that Egypt saw the fingers of the hand come together into a fist, and Israel saw the fingers of the hand, so to speak, receiving a baby. That's what you do. You catch a baby with your hands and God is like, literally, I got you. And the—I got you is the chozek yad, the strong arms, which is like, you can trust me. I'm there. I will not let you fall. And it's scary. And your child's crying because he's coming into this whole new world. But the first thing the child experiences without knowing it is the steady hands of someone who's receiving him. And—and those steady hands are God. Right. So this language of yad Hashem is coming back now in the manna and Imu. It's striking because in the manna, the people are saying, fascinating that the last time we had yad Hashem was also with death. It's almost like there's this common denominator which is like, okay, we now identified three instances of yad Hashem having to do with the Exodus. Instance number one is dever, the fifth plague. Instance number two is the plague of the killing of the firstborn.

Instance number three is the people saying, if only we had died in the yad Hashem in the land of Egypt. And then you would ask that question, like, what do you mean? If only we died at the hand of Hashem? If only had we died at the hand of the Egyptians. The Egyptians were being mean to us. But I think you're right. You're absolutely right, which is when they say this. They're taking us back to the last yad Hashem we've seen. The last yad Hashem we've seen is the yad Hashem of the 10th plague, which was presaged by the yad Hashem of—of dever. And what's fascinating is that the common denominator of all yad Hashems is visceral death.

Imu Shalev: Immediate death.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Immediate death. It's not like these are the only plagues that have to do with death. When blood came, there was a kind of process of death where the fish in the river died, right? There were other deaths, but they happened sort of, by the way, because something else happened. The river became flooded, wild animals and armies. The fish died and the wild animals probably killed some people. But if you think about it, there's only two plagues that are death, that are death to flesh and blood beings. And one of them is dever, the plague that hits livestock, that hits cattle. And the other is the plague that hits firstborn people that is called yad Hashem. You wanna know what the hand of God is? The hand of God is death. And the people are evoking that haunting notion of—of the hand of God as death is saying, if only we would have died back then. And it seems to be that the people are looking back on their experience and rather than seeing the hand of God who can catch them? The hand of God that can be relied on. The hand of God. That's the first stable thing in a scary new world that an infant experiences after they're born.

And here's this infant nature that's born, right, looks back and instead of seeing that hand of God, is wishing for the other hand of God. If only you could have just killed us.

Imu Shalev: I think what's also extra surprising about that verse is that they don't say, would that we had died by the hands of Elokim, right? Elokim would make a lot more sense. Elokim is the power God. If you're going to talk about a yad chazakah, I would talk about Elokim's yad chazakah, right? The one who can hurl the javelins and the lightning, you know, and be the grand power. But yud-kei-vav-kei is the God of compassion, yud-kei-vav-kei is the God of being, right? A very different energy. And if you've been around the block with us at Aleph Beta before, right, we talk about this a whole lot. So to hear that they would be afraid of the yad of yud-kei-vav-kei, would that we had died by the hand of yud-kei-vav-kei. That was especially startling and jarring to read and to relate to.

Rabbi David Fohrman: And let's actually sit with that for a second. Why is yud-kei-vav-kei normally in our mind, such a comforting force, such a comforting force that the rabbis, when they talked about the midot of God, associated reflexively the idea of yud-kei-vav-kei with rachamim with compassion, whereas they associated Elokim with din and with a certain kind of harshness. We've talked about this before. I'm fond of quoting Emmanuel Levinas, the French Jewish philosopher who was also a literary critic.

Imu Shalev: He was named after me.

Rabbi David Fohrman: That's right, Emmanuel Levinas. And Emmanuel Levinas says in one of his books, Nine Talmudic Readings, he makes this really provocative claim. He says, people think that there's this Platonic ideal called compassion, and there's another idea called femininity, and women just happen to be a little bit more compassionate than men most of the time. Emmanuel Levinas says there is no Platonic ideal that exists somewhere called compassion. The only way we know compassion is as a derivative from femininity. And the organ of femininity is the womb. What compassion is is wombness. What does a womb do? A womb says, I'm going to nurture you and I'm going to pour everything into you and help you become what you were always meant to be. That is what wombness is. That's the way we know what compassion is. So yud-hey-vav-hey. By this measure, the rabbis seem to be saying when they associate it with compassion is God, is the wellspring of all being, whose fundamental intention is fostering life the way a womb is. So for a God like that, how could there be a יַד יְקוָה הוֹיָה בְּמִקְנְךָ? How could there be this opposite side of God that brings death?

To me, that's really striking. You know, you were talking about the difference in Elokim and yud-kei-vav-kei Elokim is this powerful God, and seemingly the makkot are functions of Elokim, of all these different kinds of powers, all the stuff you could do here, all the stuff you could do over there. Look at all these tricks I have, says the powerful God. But it turns out that there are tricks you can do through being. Also, chillingly, the great trick is non being. And maybe that's יַד יְקוָה הוֹיָה בְּמִקְנְךָ, that little yud that creeps forward, you know, when God's name is God's name, yud-hey-vav-hey. So what kind of being does that name signify?

Imu Shalev: Would you say a past, present, future being? A being beyond time or complete mastery over time, as opposed to a little us trapped in time?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Because if you take these words that humans have for the three phases of time, haya, hoveh and yihiye, to be in the past, to be in the present, to be in the future, and you take those words as they're written, and you perfectly overlay them one on another. It spells yud-hey-vav-hey. It's a perfect amalgamation of past, present, and future, as if the God who's outside of time experiences past, present, and future all at once. And how in your mind does that change? When you take the little yud in the beginning and let it creep forward three places.

Imu Shalev: The yud in the beginning of Hebrew words in general and of that particular word of yihiye is future tense, right? He will do so.

Rabbi David Fohrman: The yud is the part of yud-hey-vav-hey that signifies the future aspect of God, the God that's interested in taking life forward.

Imu Shalev: So that little yud takes a walk and he's like, I'm just gonna go hide in the middle of the word over here for a second. It's almost as if the yihiye part of God has collapsed in on itself, and all that's left is was, but not a will be. And that dovetails with a fascinating observation I had many years ago about korban Pesach. That absolutely gave me chills when I first saw it. Imu, could you just read that verse in chapter 11, when God predicts what's going to happen when he goes out in Egypt? What effect is his going out in Egypt going to have on all these bechorot?

Rabbi David Fohrman: כַּחֲצֹת הַלַּיְלָה אֲנִי יוֹצֵא בְּתוֹךְ מִצְרָיִם וּמֵת כָּל־בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם (Exodus 11:4-5)—about middle of the night? I am going out in the midst of Egypt. And will die or die. It's hard, tense wise.

Imu Shalev: Yeah, you can't translate it.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It doesn't say will die and they died.

Imu Shalev: It should say, and I will kill. You should have said וְאַהֲרֹג and I shall kill or וְיָמוּתוּ and they will die. We have Hebrew words for the verb to die, but we are not getting a Hebrew verb for the word to die. Instead, we are getting a static state of is dead, וּמֵת כָּל־בְּכוֹר. You're going to look out there and lo and behold, every bechor around is already dead. But did anybody kill them? No, there's no act of death. They just are dead. How do you get dead if no one killed them?

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's like they went from a status transfer. They were alive and then they were dead.

Imu Shalev: But there's no act of killing.

Rabbi David Fohrman: There's not even a process.

Imu Shalev: There's no process. There's just like, oh, those guys have been dead. That's dead bechor. How did it happen? It didn't happen. It just is that way. How is it is that way. That's crazy. How it is that way. Because that little yud took a walk.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It didn't even happen. That's so weird.

Imu Shalev: It didn't even happen because the God of being just withdrew life, right? It's like the only reason why existence exists in the world is because the wellspring of God's existence lends existence to it. And this literally is the first Rambam in the Yad HaChazakah. The Rambam defines yud-hey-vav-hey in these terms. Let's actually read that Rambam just for funsies, really fast. יְסוֹד הַיְסוֹדוֹת וְעַמּוּד הַחָכְמוֹת—the very most fundamental thing that you have to know, the Rambam says, listen to those words. Yesod ha-yesodot, the foundation of all foundations, וְעַמּוּד הַחָכְמוֹת and the pillar of all knowledge, Imu spell yesod for me. What's the first letter? Yud-hey yesodot the first letter hey. וְעַמּוּד. The first letter. Vav hachachmot the first letter hey. There it is. The Rambam is actually using yud-hey-vav-hey as this opening acronym. And he's saying the most foundational thing you can know is this. And he's slyly referencing God's name and by so doing is suggesting that the most fundamental foundational thing you can know is something about God's name. And it is this to know that there is a first—a first what?

Rabbi David Fohrman: Matzui is a very hard word to translate that which is found. But a being, a principal cause, hazuhu is not a cause.

Imu Shalev: It's not a cause. When secular philosophers talk about God, they talk about God famously as a first cause. But that's to speak of God as a doer, a prime doer. This is not about a prime doer, it's about a prime being. It's about a prime existence. There is something found in the world. There's something that exists in the world. The most fundamental, the most fundamental thing to know about God is that there's someone there. Now listen to what we know about that first existence. הוּא מַמְצִיא כָּל־נִמְצָא. How would you translate that? Imu, הוּא מַמְצִיא כָּל־נִמְצָא.

Rabbi David Fohrman: He creates all who are found.

Imu Shalev: He causes to be found all who are found. Almost like he reveals the existence of everything. It's fascinating because mamtzi kol nimtza is as close to—as you can get to not having a doing in creation.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's sort of like there's a primary existence and then unfolding from the primary existence is more existencing an organic unfolding from primary existence. Right? When you think about God as Creator—Elokim, you think about this very majestic prime doer, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים. The great word for God's doing is creation. And there is no word for creation here. The Rambam is not talking about that, he's talking about that gentle unfolding of existence. God's existence almost gives birth. Gives birth is the great metaphor. It's like God is the great womb of the world and God is delivering the world into existence from his own self. The same way that when a woman delivers a baby, she's not creating the baby as she delivers it, she's not making anything, she's not tinkering and fiddling, she's allowing something to come into the world that comes from her. That's the imagery you get from the Rambam. And then the Rambam says something else. אִם יַעֲלֶה עַל־הַדַּעַת שֶׁהוּא—if you might imagine for a moment that God didn't exist, nothing else could exist. But if you would imagine that other things in the world didn't exist, if you had a thought experiment where you erased all the universe, he could still remain in existence in that thought experiment.

He would not be destroyed by their being destroyed because all of existence needs him and he does not need them. Rambam's talking about a subtle philosophical concept here, contingent and essential existence. He's saying the thing that you need to know about God is that his existence does not depend on anything else. Everything else's existence depends on him. The way to think about God is almost a kind of electricity. But it's not just that he once gave birth to the world, it's that he continues to provide existence to the world. Do not think that God was some sort of first cause that first brought into existence the world. God is the energy of being. And all being energy in the world is borrowed from his energy. God may not be a doer, may only be a be-er, but there's great power. Because what if yud-hey-vav-hey this kind of essential existence for everything decides to turn off the electricity, decides to dim an aspect of his being, wink out the future side of his existence, and only give the past side of his existence to a certain category of being? What would happen to that being?

Imu Shalev: They're done.

Rabbi David Fohrman: They're done. But they never died. There's nothing that kills them.

Imu Shalev: They just aren't.

They're just not alive.

Rabbi David Fohrman: They just aren't anymore. That's וּמֵת כָּל־בְּכוֹר. And that was dever.

Imu Shalev: So that's really creepy because if you ask people, like, what are the scariest plagues? If we did top 10 plagues, which are the scariest makat bechorot, I'm sure gets there. But like dever is like, okay, so Bessie died and you know, it's very sad. We were really close with Bessie the cow. But there's something really creepy about this, which is that it's not that there was a particular, like mad cow disease or some, you know, there was no process. The animals were here yesterday and they're not here now. They're dead. And that, I find, freaks me out. There's something so much scarier than if it had been a great power or a biological attack, because at least that's something in my world, right? But there's nobody I know who can wink people out of existence, who can just change the rules of reality to say Bessie was and is not anymore and never will be. And then to take that from the animal world and to apply that to the people world, that makes the 10th plague, which is already quite scary, far scarier. Because to know that they died just in an instant, yeah, absolutely nightmarish. That's the hair raising version of death that God deals, that the people experience vicariously.

Imu Shalev: At this point, my mind is reeling from everything that Rabbi Fohrman is showing me and the way he's just weaving it all together, that phrase yad Hashem. When I first encountered it, it seemed plain, just a slightly figurative way of saying that God was doing this, doing that. But now I'm seeing that it brings with it this whole world of meaning. Yad Hashem is what it looks like for the God of being to manifest in our world up close and personal in matters of life and death, either sustaining our being in a gesture of ultimate care and protection, or hauntingly extinguishing it. What happened next is that Rabbi Fohrman continued meditating on this idea, but as he did, he sort of slid into a new realization. His eyes glanced ahead to the very next section in the Torah, where we hear about the ritual of telling our children the story of the Exodus and reading it through the lens of everything we'd seen so far. It suddenly came into focus for him more sharply than ever before. That ritual. You'll hear him argue is perhaps God's attempt to help the people begin to process these two very different views of the hand of God that they witnessed that last night in Egypt.

Rabbi David Fohrman: When your child asks you, looks you in the eye and says matzot, what exactly happened? וְאָמַרְתָּ לוֹ, you gotta tell him the truth. You tell him. בְּחֹזֶק יָד הוֹצִיאָנוּ יְקוָה מִמִּצְרַיִם (Exodus 13:14). God took you out with a strong arm and that meant something to you, but it also meant something to the Egyptians. The hand that caught us was also the hand that killed because וַיְהִי it happened, we were supposed to go out of Egypt. There was a crisis in birth. Pharaoh is causing the crisis. That crisis, if the crisis is allowed to persist, is going to end up causing death. When you are in crisis and birth, there's no going back, there's no whoops, things aren't going well. Let's save birth for another time. Go back in the womb, little baby. No, you're coming out now. What's going to happen? So part of my strong hand is that I'm there to catch you and receive you. But part of my strong hand is that what's getting in the way of birth. There's a crisis. Pharaoh is the crisis. He's going to die. I'm going to attack the crisis maker, וַיַּהֲרֹג יְקוָה כָּל־בְּכוֹר מִצְרַיִם and I'm going to destroy all the first born of Egypt as my firstborn comes.

And that will cause Pharaoh to relent. And when you remember that hair raising truth, right, that God said, if I am the womb of existence and I am bringing my people into being by delivering them from a womb and giving them existence and I can't because there's something that gets in the way of that coming into existence. That I'm going to use the same power of my existence, not just to give new life and to deliver into existence this child, this nation child, this bechor of mine. I will use the inverse of my power of existence against Egypt to clear the blockage by non existence. So it's as if their bechorot were never born. It's as if their bechorot collectively experience the same kind of blockage that you were experiencing, that's the way I'm going to stop the blockage and then Pharaoh will relent. That's pretty hair raising. That's the experience we had. That's the truth we tell our child, which is you're old enough to understand there was another side to this delivering hand, there was a nurturing side that brought existence into the world, and there was a side of ultimate brought to you by none other than the nurturing side of God that withdrew existence from the force that was blocking the birth of Israel.

So, Imu, our producer, Tikvah, off camera, right. Tikvah never likes to be quoted here, but we're going to quote her anyway. Just shared something kind of mind blowing, which is that, you know, Tikvah says, like, look how it all began. It all began with the first plague. The first plague was a plague of blood. But why was the first plague a plague of blood where suddenly the Nile was blood? And we talked about this in Aleph Beta videos on the three great lies of the Exodus. We suggested because it didn't really begin with the first plague. The first plague is a response to Pharaoh's first acts of aggression against Israel. And what were those acts? Those acts involved blood and involved the Nile. Pharaoh took our babies and threw them into the Nile and their blood was washed away in the millions and millions of gallons of water in the Nile, such that the Nile covered up the blood. And God made that manifest when he turned the entire Nile into blood and said, the aggressor cannot hide from their crime. The whole Nile is blood. But that was just the end. The real beginning was the first way that Pharaoh tried to kill children through compromising the most compassionate thing in the world.

The power of midwives. The power of a midwife with her strong hand to be able to receive a child becomes the hand that kills. Because Pharaoh says, take the hand that you used to receive the child and use your hand to deliver a forceful blow to kill the child, and then lie to the mother about it and just say the child was a stillborn. The child never made it out of the womb. And it's almost like God didn't forget that. It's like you wanted to take the sanctity of the hand of the midwife, that strong hand that receives the child and have that hand betray the child and pretend that there was a stillborn. All of your bechorot will become stillborns retroactively when וּמֵת כָּל־בְּכוֹר when suddenly they're all dead. Because like the God who's outside of time goes back in time and re-engineers all those births. So every single birth in Egypt of a firstborn was just a birth that ended in the stillborn. You thought the child was born because he lived for 35 years and is a regular functioning member of society. Oh, you were wrong. Really. It was a stillborn.

That's what Pharaoh tried to do to us. I thought I heard the cry of the child. No, really, it was a stillborn. God is literally inflicting that midah keneged midah. That is the experience that Egypt will have. The deprivation of life when you thought there was. Because yud-hey-vav-hey turns existence into non existence. It's pretty spooky.

Imu Shalev: Super spooky.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Foreign.

Imu Shalev: Now that Rabbi Fohrman had shown me how the Torah's verses about how we teach our children about that night very much seem to be inflected with this energy of how Israel struggled to make sense of what they saw God do on that night. He's going to show me that it doesn't end there, that the Torah continues to develop this theme as it transitions from the discussion of what we tell our children to something seemingly unrelated to these two mitzvot, two rituals that we are instructed to perform. Peter chamor, the redemption of the firstborn donkey and the wearing of tefillin.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So you just dropped the anvil on your child. Like, that's the truth of the story. Like, really? Yud-hey-vav-hey was a killer too. Was not just a preserver of life. And it's like, yeah, but that's what he had to do. Because it was either them or us. It was the crisis point. Birth had to happen. Someone had to go. It's not pretty, but that's what it is. So what am I supposed to do with that? The kid says, so God says, let me tell you what to do with that. After you tell him the truth. בְּחֹזֶק יָד הוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִּצְרַיִם. That those strong hands that caught us were also the strong hands that killed. Say, you know what I do with that? There's a ritual I do to remember that עַל־כֵּן אֲנִי זֹבֵחַ לַיקוָה כָּל־פֶּטֶר רֶחֶם הַזְּכָרִים וְכָל־בְּכוֹר בָּנַי אֶפְדֶּה (Exodus 13:15). You, child who are standing before me, you're living. But we all, all of our bechorot, indeed our whole nation that was a bechor, could have died. The way I commemorate that was I look at your life and I say, what a blessing. But I understand that that blessing was a gift.

That the blessing of any bechor's life was a gift. That but for the grace of God, we could have been the bechorot ha-Mitzrayim. We could have been subjected to that death. We could have been subjected to it on a national level. Had the birth process been arrested and our national existence were destroyed, we could have experienced it on an individual level had we been on the other side of that incredible fist. And just like all the firstborn of Egypt died, our firstborn have died. And in recognition of that truth, and in recognition of the violence that allowed our existence to come into being, I kill. I offer to God an offering of life of all the firstborn of my flocks. And I redeem all the firstborn of my children. And that's the way I acknowledge the truth that our existence owes itself to this power of yud-hey-vav-hey that but for the grace of God go I. And the same way that I acknowledge one side of the equation, what it was like to experience the fist of Egypt and how hair raisingly close we came to experiencing that fist, I also acknowledged something else, what it was like for us on the loving, nurturing side of the equation when that fist became the hand that caught us.

וְהָיָה לְאוֹת עַל־יָדְךָ וּלְטוֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ כִּי בְּחֹזֶק יָד הוֹצִיאָנוּ יְקוָה מִמִּצְרָיִם (Exodus 13:16). 

There's another thing that I remember when I think of the chozek yad, the strong hand that took us out of Mitzrayim. I remember tefillin. And tefillin goes between my eyes where I can see something and I can cognize it. And it also goes on the arm. And when it goes on the arm, it goes on the bicep and the bicep becomes bigger and stronger and—and I literally take my bicep and turn it into a strong outstretched arm as a way of commemorating the strong outstretched arm of the midwife in the sky that reached out with her hands and was there to catch me when I came into the world. And tefillin is the way I remember that, even as I remember the fist that struck Egypt. And I have to remember both peter chamor and tefillin not one or the other, but both in order to be able to move forward. And this is the ritual that makes it okay. Because there's something comforting about a ritual that expresses thanks and expresses gratitude and expresses a recognition of sorrow that people had to die in order for me to be able to go free.

Imu Shalev: It's really striking when you step back to look at the Torah's chronology here. The Torah describes how God saves the people by killing all the Egyptian firstborns. It describes the people's confusing encounter with both sides of yad Hashem. But it no sooner does that than it gives them tools to cope with it. The ritual of peter chamor, sanctifying the firstborn donkey of tefillin, celebrating God's strong arm that led them out of Egypt. And וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ, a script for how they should teach their children. But perhaps in a nod back to the insight that we arrived at in our last episode, what we're about to see is that this coping process takes time. And where are we going to see that coping process continue to play out? We're going back to the man story, one month after the Exodus, when the people were in the desert and whatever provisions they brought with them had dried up and they started to feel those first pangs of hunger. That's right. After all that, all the places we've been, we're finally ready to come full circle to return to my puzzling verse. And this time I think we'll finally be in a position to understand it.

One last note. You know that analogy that we've been talking about all the way through, that the people leaving Egypt were like an infant being delivered by a loving God? Rabbi Fohrman is going to take that analogy one step further.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Here they are, the people have left Egypt and now they're hungry. Well, when a little baby that's just born is hungry, what does the mother do? The mother's going to feed the baby. And this mother in heaven, God is going to feed us. Feed us by taking food from his special place and giving it to us. Sky bread is going to come to us. But the people are hungry and they don't know that. And they're crying like a baby cries like a baby's terrified. And like, I don't know if my mother's here for me or not. Is my mother really going to be here for me? The mother needs to somehow reassure that of the baby, needs to remind the baby. Remember the strong arms that caught you with birth. Remember that you can always count on me. But babies are not so good at remembering. Babies cry like they think they're going to be abandoned and they think like their mother doesn't care about them because they're hungry. And mother hasn't shown up for the last 10 minutes because she was late from work. And poor baby is absolutely terrified.

Imu Shalev: I have a 10 month old. Literally this morning on the couch, my wife sat down holding my 10 month old and she put her down on the couch next to her in between me and her, like, and she, Mariah, our baby thought like, that's it. I've been—like, the panic on her face really looked like she's like, I've been abandoned.

That's it.

It was a great 10 months here, but my mom has had enough of me. And, like, real tears streaming, like, rolling down her cheeks.

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's all over. I knew, and it was just like, she knew it was going to happen all along because I knew this was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen. And for sure there it wasn't happening. But that's the fear of the child that always knows that they're going to be abandoned when mother—gets the last thing on mom's mind. And here the people in Exodus 16, they're hungry. And that hunger that strikes them just like it strikes any infant, it strikes 10. Like, why would a child cry with abandon just because it's a little hungry? Like, deal with it, child. Because it's not crying because it's hungry. It's crying because I'm hungry and I'm not immediately satisfied. I always knew you would abandon me. And that's the people. Oh, I'm supposed to trust the hands of the midwife that drew me out? I know something about those hands. Those hands also killed. There are people who died because of those hands. Now, where is this mother? מִי־יִתֵּן מוּתֵנוּ בְיַד־יְקוָה בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם (Exodus 16:3). If only we would have died. And these memories of the truth that I learned of korban Pesach, the truth of this night when we came out, this truth of this birth night.

But the birth night had a harrowing nightmarish side of it also. And the people, in their despondency, have this death wish that I can't take. Being in the desert and being tricked and thinking that there was this birth. The Egyptians also thought there was this birth. They thought that they had bechorot who were hanging out and had a nice thriving thing, only to learn that no, no, no, existence was withdrawn from them. They just died and they were gone. Now the same thing's gonna happen to us. We think that we're born. We—we think that this nation is a bechor and has an existence, only to cruelly find out that we've been abandoned and existence has been taken away from us. That's too much to imagine. That's the worst kind of death you could imagine. I can't imagine dying here. If only we had died back in Egypt. If only we had never been born as a nation. If only we could have participated in the collective death of the firstborn in Egypt and not had to have an existence that we felt abandoned in. We know there was death on the other side of the ledger.

We know the hand that drew us out had another side to him also. If only we had experienced that. And that's the nightmare that somehow they seem to be reliving.

Imu Shalev: It's interesting because seeing this verse about the Israelites wishing that they had died at the hands of God in Egypt, it was a bitter pill to swallow that after such triumph, after the splitting of the sea, after the miracles, that the people would turn against God so quickly. But I think what we spent most of the time doing this episode is showing how there was trauma that night, how yud-kei-vav-kei had a side to him that was terrifying because he winked people out of existence. And we brought textual support for, you know, the idea that you could read that the Israelites really, really were afraid. But it—it highlights a tragedy. And it's a tragedy we talked about in previous seasons and in your own books, which is yud-kei-vav-kei really didn't want to do this. There—there was a consequence. There was something that stuck with the people and with God's relationship with the people purely from the fact that yud-kei-vav-kei had to act this way. There was a—there's a cost that got paid not only by the Egyptians, but also by Israel, maybe even by us.

Right.

There is a possibility for us to misunderstand who God is. That's something that's shocking me, at least at the end of this episode.

Rabbi David Fohrman: And it feels to me like if you would interview God about that, God might acknowledge that cost, but also point out, right, that, look, what I ended up doing was the only way that I can save you. And violence, yes, was part of it. But if anything, the lesson you should take from it is that I am so committed to you that I will even use violence and stop at nothing against an aggressor that would want to wink out your existence before you could even come into existence. Ultimately, it's all in the service of rachamim. It's in the service of life. The service of life sometimes requires the judicious use of death.

Imu Shalev: I think that we could end there. But the interesting thing is that the Torah doesn't—that actually, like, that's not what Moshe says. He doesn't come down the mountain and tell everybody just, you know, God did it because he loves you. And sometimes you gotta, you know, break a few eggs in order to make an omelet and just shows that God really loves you. There's actually a rehabilitation campaign. There's actually God wants to go out of his way to nurture the people and to nurture them in a particular way. Where we replay that night, the night of trauma, and there's gonna be some differences this time around.

Rabbi David Fohrman: And, you know, I was chatting about it with my daughter Ariella that I think was seeing it on somewhat of a similar lens, that there's some kind of replay that's going on in the provision of manna that takes you back to this harrowing night. And it's almost like in this moment of great tenderness when God is the mother that's providing this food for their child for the very first time. And saying, you may not be in my womb anymore, and you may be really scared that I've abandoned you, but there's another miracle which is not only can your life come from me, and I can deliver you into the world. And that was scary enough. You remember how you cried then, but I had the strong hand and I silenced your teeth and everything was okay. And now you're hungry and there's a whole new crisis, which is like, maybe my mommy abandoned me again. There's another miracle which is that food can come from inside Mommy to you, and it's this crazy miracle, and she hasn't abandoned you. It's not like God went and planted crops in the desert. God said, no, there's heaven food for you.

Food from my realm that I'm giving you. And every bite you have of this, everything that every aspect of this food that I give you reminds you of something about birth and creates this through line to this moment that I delivered you. And yes, there was violence at that moment, but I was caring for you. Every scary moment of that transition, when you heard the screams from outside the doors of the Egyptians screaming, I was caring for you and I was delivering you. And there were strong hands there. And we're going to replay that and replay that and replay that as you delight in this bread that comes from heaven. And somehow God is saying, like, get in touch with the love. Get in touch with the love. Get in touch with the love. And the violence was there and the service of that love. And somehow he's asking us to trust the strong hand. The strong hand is not going to fail me. And it's something we learn over time. But the first moments are full of terror.

Imu Shalev: That's really beautiful.

Imu Shalev: So when we step back, what's the big picture that we're seeing? How does it all come together? Well, first there's the idea that we established in the first two episodes of this season, which is that the man is a gift that God gives to the generation in the desert, really a therapeutic tool to help them slowly and carefully emerge from the trauma of slavery. But in this episode, Rabbi Fohrman has lifted up something else for us, which has to do not with how the people were impacted by their years of bondage, but with how the people experienced one single night, the night when they went free. That night left its own distinct mark because in the process of saving the people, God revealed the side of God's self that was, frankly, terrifying. That inspired anxiety in the people and left them reeling, wondering who this God was, maybe even fearing that he might one day turn on them. And the man is a response to that, too. It's a gentle reminder from God as nursing mother to the people, as hungry, wailing infant, that God is still here, loves them, and is prepared and able to meet their needs.

And the way this one verse sort of tells that whole story, the way that the Torah embeds its wisdom in these layers, each one standing alone, but combining into this rich tapestry. What can I say? It takes my breath away. And you, dear listener, I hope that you're also able to give yourself over to that feeling of awe of this book that is truly like no other.