On Being

Program Particulars
*Times indicated refer to Web version of audio

(01:57–03:16) Music Played
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(02:09) Pharaoh During the Exodus
Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, reigned over the kingdom of Egypt for 67 years during the 13th century BCE. The history that lies behind the story of Exodus and Ramesses is much debated, but the Cambridge Egyptologist John Ray points out that "the character of Ramesses fits the picture of the overweening ruler who refuses divine demands."

It is generally believed that the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, refers to Ramesses II as Ozymandias in his 1818 poem, "Ozymandias of Egypt":

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(02:18) Citation of Solon
Solon was a statesman and poet who is known as one of seven wise men of Greece and a great Athenian lawmaker. Krista paraphrases Solon: "Myth is not about something that never happened, but about something that happens over and over again." An interesting sidebar: in two of Plato's dialogues, the Timaeus and Critias, Solon is said to have learned of the Atlantis myth from an Egyptian priest and brought it back to the people of Athens.

(03:22) Practice of Midrash
Although a specific definition of the term midrash can be difficult to pin down, it is a central part of Jewish life and rabbinic practice, an intellectually lively and creative approach to searching for new and deeper meanings in biblical texts. Most formally, midrash refers to a category of literature of classical rabbinical commentary on each of the five volumes of the Torah.

In The Particulars of Rapture, Zornberg offers her working definition of midrash with the caveat that the term remains "essentially undefined":

Midrash, derived from the root darash, "to seek out" or "to inquire," is a term used in rabbinic literature for the interpretive study of the Bible. The word is used in two related senses: first, to refer to the results of that interpretive exegesis; and, second, to describe the literary compilations in which the original interpretations, many of them first delivered and transmitted orally, were eventually collected.

Midrash can be divided into two categories: Midrash Aggadah and Midrash Halakhah. Both of these use similar interpretive techniques to delve into two different realms of Torah. Midrash Aggadah deals with the narrative portions of the Torah, while Midrash Halakhah deals with the legal elements of Torah, sometimes even using narrative portions of Torah, as a source for the derivation of law.
Since midrash is a type of interpretation of scripture, it's found in many rabbinic works, including the Talmud. Other rabbinic works are made up primarily of midrash and are referred to by that name, such as Midrash Rabbah and Midrash Tanhuma. There is at least one midrash for most books of the Bible, and there are several different midrashim for others. One of the most notable of these interpreters is the 11th century French rabbi, Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105), more commonly known by his acronym, Rashi, whose commentary plays an integral role in Jewish culture's basic interpretation of the Torah.

(03:36–04:52) Music Played
"Shabbes" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(04:34) Translations of the Book of Exodus
Translations of this epic book of the Bible have varied greatly over centuries. Read side-by-side passages from three translations of the text: Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (1985) by The Jewish Publication Society, The Five Books of Moses (1995) by Everett Fox, and the New Revised Standard Version (1989) by National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Read comparative examples of the following passages

• Moses being rescued from the Nile (Exodus 2:1-10)
• Moses killing the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-15)
• Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:18)
• Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 14:1-28)

(05:34) Moses' Stages of Maturing
Zornberg cites the Hebrew phrase, vayigdal or "he grew up," to describe a pivotal moment in Moses' development when he recognized his brothers, the Israelites, and intervenes on one Hebrew's behalf:

Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

Read the extended comparative translations of this part of Exodus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 15.

(06:36–08:00) Music Played
"Shabbes" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(06:41) First Reading from Exodus (Story of Burning Bush)
The following edited passage was excerpted from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, of which an expanded version can be read along with other translations:

Now Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn't the bush burn up?" When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am." And He said, "Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground. I am," He said, "the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me; moreover, I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Come, therefore, I will send you to the Pharaoh, and you shall free My people, the Israelites, from Egypt.

(09:33) Critiques of Moses in Midrashic Tradition
Zornberg notes that midrash often faults Moses not for being defiant of God but for slandering the Hebrew people for not believing them worthy of redemption. Commenting on Moses' statement "and that I should take the children of Israel out," Rashi says "And even if I am of importance, what merit do the Israelites have that a miracle should be wrought for them, and I should take them out of Egypt?"

(11:02) Passage from Exodus
As Zornberg notes, Moses' encounter with God took seven days according to midrashic commentary on a line found in Exodus 4:10, "…neither from yesterday nor from the day before yesterday, nor the time You have spoken to Your servant." Later on in the same verse, Moses protests, "I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue." Zornberg calls attention to the fact that the same word in Hebrew, kaved, is used to describe Pharaoh's heart. Rashi comments:

We learn [from this] that for a full seven days the Holy One, blessed be He, was enticing Moses in the thorn bush to go on His mission: "from yesterday," "from the day before yesterday," "from the time You have spoken"; thus there are three [days], and the three times [is mentioned] are inclusive words, adding up to six, and he was presently in the seventh day when he further said to Him, "Send now with whom You would send" (verse 13), until He became angry (verse 14) and complained about him. All this [reluctance] was because he [Moses] did not want to accept a position higher than his brother Aaron, who was his senior and was a prophet, as it is said: "Did I appear to the house of your father when they were in Egypt?" (I Samuel 2:27); ["your father" means Aaron. Similarly,] "and made Myself known to them in the land of Egypt" (Ezekiel 20:5); "And I said to them, 'Every man cast away the despicable idols from before his eyes'" (Ezekiel 20:7), and that prophecy was said to Aaron. – [from Exodus Rabbah 3:16]

(12:11) Passage from Exodus
In the book of Exodus, the Hebrew Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh translates to mean "I will be who I will be." The phrase as it appears in Exodus follows:

Moses said to God, "When I come to the Israelites and say to them 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh." He continued, "Thus shall you say to the Israelites, 'Ehyeh sent me to you.'" And God said further to Moses, "Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you:

This shall be My name forever,
This My appellation for all eternity.

(12:45–14:00) Music Played
"Bloch: Meditation Hebraique" from From Jewish Life, performed by Paul Marleyn and John Lenehan

(13:23) The Ten Plagues of Egypt
The ten plagues God set upon the land of Egypt included blood (7:20-21), frogs (8:2), lice (8:13), wild beasts (8:20), cattle disease (9:3-6), boils (9:10), hail (9:23), locusts (10:14), darkness (10:22-23), and death of the first-born (12:29).

(19:43–21:25) Music Played
"Lullaby for Clarinet, Piano and Strings" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(19:56) Reading from Tanhuma Pekudei
One of the more mysterious passages of Exodus — chapter 38, verse 8 — revolves around the making of a basin and pedestal, which God commands Moses to make so that his brother Aaron and his sons can wash their hands and feet before entering the sacred space: "He made the laver of copper and its stand of copper, from the mirrors of the women who performed tasks at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting." In the following midrash from Tanhuma Pekudei, edited in the fifth century, the rabbis weave this mysterious verse into a striking interpretation about the nature of the Israelites' liberation from Egypt:

You find that when Israel were in harsh labor in Egypt, Pharaoh decreed against them that they should not sleep at home nor have relations with their wives. Said Rabbi Shimeon bar Chalafta, "What did the daughters of Israel do?" They would go down to draw water from the river and God would prepare for them little fish in their buckets, and they would sell some of them, and cook some of them, and buy wine with the proceeds, and go to the field and feed their husbands … And when they had eaten and drunk, the women would take the mirrors and look into them with their husbands, and she would say, "I am more comely than you," and he would say, 'I am more comely than you." And as a result, they would accustom themselves to desire, and they were fruitful and multiplied, and God took note of them immediately. Some of our sages said, They bore two children at a time, others said, They bore twelve at a time, and still others said, Six hundred thousand … And all these numbers from the mirrors … In the merit of those mirrors which they showed their husbands to accustom them to desire, from the midst of the harsh labor, they raised up all the hosts, as it is said, "All the hosts of God went out of the land of Egypt" (Ex. 12:41) and it is said, "God brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt in their hosts" (Ex. 12:51).

(23:06–24:25) Music Played
"Ya Ribon" from Acoustic Passion, performed by Vida

(25:30) Citation from The Particulars of Rapture
Krista recites a line from Zornberg's book, The Particulars of Rapture. Read an expanded version below:

If the stories of the future are to be multiple, responsive to time and place and temperament, then the midrashic narratives exemplify this diffraction of the original narrative at its most radical. Essentially, I suggest, they raise both philosophical and psychological questions: about metaphysical truth and about the nature of self. The notion that knowledge of reality is singular, absolute, static, and eternal is tested in these midrashic narratives of the foundational events in Jewish history. The midrashic versions convey a plural, contextual, constructed, and dynamic vision of reality. The "Platonic ideal" in the history of philosophy is described by Isaiah Berlin: it posits

…that all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place, that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place, that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another—that we knew a priori. This kind of omniscience was the solution of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

As against this view, which obtained in Western philosophy till the late nineteenth century, the midrashic literature presents a heterogeneous, even—consciously and ambivalently—a heretical multiplicity of answers. Exodus as a narrative that consistently deploys the "omnipotence effect," to use Meir Sternberg's term, is significantly diffracted by the many counter-narratives that the midrash generates from within the triumphal and unequivocal master story. "What really happened in Egypt?" becomes a less important question that "How best to tell the story? Where to begin? What in the master story speaks to one and therefore makes one speak?"

(26:30) Reference to Passover Seder
The holiday of Passover (Pesach), the Festival of Freedom, is one of three major festivals of the Jewish year. On the nights preceding the first and second day of Passover, a seder, a ceremonial meal, is held with foods that symbolize the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and rituals that tell the stories of ancient Jewish history. The Haggadah, the storytelling book read at the seder, includes rabbinic commentary, hymns, prayers, and stylized questions and answers. In the On Being show, "A Program for Passover and Easter," listen to Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso discuss this religious ceremony and its meaning.

(27:45) Idea of Panic Haste
The moment of Passover when the children of Israel and Egypt were being killed, Zornberg says, was not a moment of ecstasy but of pressure. The Hebrew term used to describe this feeling of fear and anxiety is chipazon, or "panic haste, which she explains in The Particulars of Rapture:

This chipazon is an essential aspect of Exodus: a loss of control, an experience of passionate feeling that brings them to taste angst, with the matza in their mouths. This taste, the sense of being driven out before they are ready to go, is their confrontation with the "strong hand" of God. The experience of anticipation, of the "missed beat," is almost a sense of contingency. At the same time, the narrative of redemption, told before the fact, removes the sense of contingency. The effect is an ambiguous one: an experience of being driven out by forces that include the Egyptian haste in expelling them, their own internal anxieties, and, possibly, the "leap" that is the chipazon of God's presence; and at the same time of enacting the narrative that God has already told them.

(31:27–32:53) Music Played
"Shabbes" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(31:38) Reading from Exodus
Read side-by-side passages of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt from three translations of the text.

The Egyptians came in pursuit after them into the sea, all of Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and horsemen. At the morning watch, the Lord looked down upon the Egyptian army from a pillar of fire and cloud, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. He locked the wheels of their chariots so that they moved forward with difficulty.

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Hold out your arm over the sea that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians and upon their chariots and upon their horsemen." Moses held out his arm over the sea, and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal state, and the Egyptians fled at its approach. But the Lord hurled the Egyptians into the sea. The waters turned back and covered the chariots and the horsemen — Pharaoh's entire army that followed them into the sea; not one of them remained.

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said: I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.

(32:50) Song of Praise
The song Zornberg references is commonly known as Moses' Song:

I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and might;
He is become my deliverance.
This is my God and I will enshrine Him;
The God of my father, and I will exalt Him.
The Lord, the Warrior—
Lord is His name!
Pharaoh's chariots and his army
He has cast into the sea;
And the pick of his officers
Are drowned in the Sea of Reeds.
The deeps covered them;
They went down into the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the foe!
In Your great triumph You break Your opponents;
You send forth Your fury, it consumes them like straw.
At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up,
The floods stood straight like a wall;
The deeps froze in the heart of the sea.
The foe said,
"I will pursue, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil;
My desire shall have its fill of them.
I will bare my sword—
My hand shall subdue them."
You made Your wind blow, the sea covered them;
They sank like lead in the majestic waters.

Who is like You, O Lord, among the celestials;
Who is like You, majestic in holiness,
Awesome in splendor, working wonders!
you put out Your right hand,
The earth swallowed them.
In Your love You lead the people You redeemed;
In Your strength You guide them to Your holy abode.
The peoples hear, they tremble;
Agony grips the dwellers in Philistia.
Now are the clans of Edom dismayed;
The tribes of Moab—trembling grips them;
All the dwellers in Canaan are aghast.
Terror and dread descend upon them;
Through the might of Your arm they are still as stone—
Till Your people cross over, O Lord,
Till Your people cross whom You have ransomed.

You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain,
The place you made to dwell in, O Lord,
The sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.
The Lord will reign for ever and ever!

Everett Fox notes in The Five Books of Moses that the opening lines of Moses' Song appear a few verses later, after its conclusion:

Now Miryam the prophetess, Aharon's sister, took a timbrel in her and, and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and with dancing. Miryam chanted to them:
Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.

The final two lines are known as Miriam's song, which many scholars believe is the original form of the song. And, as Fox writes, "Of equal interest is the characterization of Miryam as a 'prophetess.' But there may be a structural reason for her appearance as well: the enterprise of deliverance from Egypt began with a little girl at the Nile, watching through the reeds to make sure her baby brother would survive; it ends with the same person, now an adult, a 'prophetess' celebrating the final victory at the Sea of Reeds."

(34:21–35:55) Music Played
"Shabbes" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(36:03) Reference to Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille is the director of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner.

(38:25) Midrash on God Stopping the Angels from Singing
In A Passover Haggadah, Elie Wiesel writes that he enjoys telling the story of the angels singing at the Passover Seder, even though the midrash isn't considered part of the traditional narrative:

The second story is no less provocative. It can be found in the Midrash, in the passage about the Red Sea crossing. The Children of Israel are saved at the last moment, while their oppressors drown before their eyes. It is a moment of grace so extraordinary that the angels themselves begin to sing, but God interrupts and scolds them: What has come over you? My creatures are drowning in the sea and you are singing? How can you praise me with your hymns at a time when human beings are dying?

Zornberg goes into greater depth in The Particulars of Rapture about this familiar passage taken from the Megilla 10b:

In an extraordinary version of the famous midrash, the angels refrain from celebrating the Egyptian defeat because they see the anguish of the Israelites all night long. In the better-known version of the midrash, it is the drowning Egyptians, "the work of My hands," that God pities and prevents the angels from celebrating. That version of the midrash is, of course, beloved of humanists for its universalist vision of God's concern. In the version we are now considering, however, there is an assertion about the Israelites' experience of that night. Terror, anguish, the knowledge that their lives tremble on the verge—these are the modes in which the Sages convey the experience of those ominous corridors.

(37:45) Line from Wallace Stevens Poem
The title of Zornberg's book comes from a poem by Wallace Stevens, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction":

Two things of opposite natures seem to depend
On one another, as a man depends
On a woman, day on night, the imagined

On the real. This is the origin of change.
Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace
And forth the particulars of rapture come.

(39:15) Citation from Vlacav Havel/Mandelstam
Zornberg says that a similar state of moral apathy and suffering that afflicted the Israelites can be seen in modern times and is described by writers living in totalitarian states:

Nadezhda Mandelstam, for instance writes of the

sickness—lethargy, plague, hypnotic trance or whatever one calls it—that affected all those who committed terrible deeds in the name of the "New Era." … They … imagined that time had stopped—this, indeed, was the chief symptom of their sickness. We had, you see, been led to believe that in our country nothing would ever change again.

She writes of the persecutors; but the "sickness" of which she writes, the belief that "nothing would ever change again," was the fate of all those trapped within the system that she describes. To be able to think in any other way becomes almost a definition of freedom, of good health.

What Stalinist Russia has in common with the Egypt that oppressed the Hebrew slaves is adumbrated in Vlacav Havel's classic essay, The Power of the Powerless. Havel, one of the signatories of Charter 77, writes of the "post-totalitarian" state, a modern phenomenon, set in the historical contingencies of contemporary society. His description, in its very banality, its lack of overt sadism, evokes a core-reality of all states where the truth for that is gezera—the cut-and-dried "way it has to be."

The system reveals its most essential characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being ever more completely and unreservedly itself … the social phenomenon of self-preservation is subordinated to something higher, to a kind of blind automatism which drives the system … [and which] will always triumph over the will of any individual.

(40:13–41:00) Music Played
"Highwire" from Tsirkus, performed by the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band

(40:40) Four Established Questions of Seder
The Passover (Pesach) Seder begins with the mah nishtanah; the youngest child asks a series of four established questions, which are meant to convey why the night of the seder is different from all other nights. The first two questions deal with symbols of servitude — matzoh (unleavened bread) and maror (bitter herbs) — and the final two deal with symbols of freedom — dipping foods and reclining while eating.

(41:30) Cleansing of Hametz
Hametz is fermenting dough that is made from flour and used as a raising agent for bread. For most temple sacrifices, hametz was prohibited from being used as a meal offering. During the festival of Passover, leaven is forbidden. Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky writes a wonderful article describing how the physical act of cleaning for the Passover celebration transcends the physical and elevates the soul.

(46:54 –48:56) Music Played
"Shir Hamaalet" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(47:32) Reading from Primo Levi
Poets, civil rights activists, and world leaders have found meaning in the story of Exodus and written about it over the centuries. The poem, "Passover," was excerpted from Collected Poems by the late Italian writer, Primo Levi. The following poem has become a fixture of many seders in America and has been included in The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah:

Tell me: how is this night different
From all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover
Different from all other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide
So the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew;
Under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us;
Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction,
The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences
In which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed,
Evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting
Far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine
The mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange the questions:
The wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course,
Today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth.
Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat,
And crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger.
This year in fear and shame,
next year in virtue and in justice.

(48:57–50:49) Music Played
"Lullaby for Clarinet, Piano and Strings" from Klezmer Soul, performed by Kol Simcha

(50:50–51:45) Music Played
"Highwire" from Tsirkus, performed by the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band