Sefaria Torah Talks: Emily Bazelon, Renowned Journalist and Politics Podcast Host

The question Moses asks, "Why me?" is a question a Moses asks at other moments in the Bible...you could see God's answer here as parental reassurance, as in "Don't worry, I got you. This was my idea."

"Who is stopping your hand from teaching the Torah without adding all these fancy things" is a funny way of asking, "why are you doing this?" It assumes you can't teach the Torah without all the tying onto the crowns, but that isn't actually shown in the text previously...[from the answer that it will be Rabbi Akiva will learn mounds a from the crowns, it shows that] it's not that anyone is prevented from learning the Torah without the extra embroidery. It's that someone will come and derive all this meaning from here, which is a much more logical interpretation...it will be so much better and someone will find all of these hidden treasures in what [God] is adding.

"What is preventing you" is such a question in the present because it feels like something is blocking you [right now], and for the answer to be that [it will be] someone in seven generations from now is strange in a lovely way.

This whole idea of "look behind you" and now you're in this place that is seven generations hence. No wonder Moses was confused...the future is behind you and maybe [he] really doesn't understand what's happening because they're speaking differently. Who knows?

There is something beautiful about the idea that [Moses doesn't understand], given that he's not allowed into the Promised Land -- that we understand him as an icon with great limitations. Here it has a kind of humility to it and a pathos that the person to whom the Torah is given wouldn't be able to understand these future interpretations and, indeed, would be overwhelmed by his lack of understanding. It reminds me of the Four Children at the Seder where there are different problems with wrestling with learning. Here it seems like Moses is the one who can't understand at all.

In this story, it is very much about these absolute axioms. Akiva says, "it's a halacha we got from Moses." Period, end of discussion. And then God has a similar discussion-ending, I would argue, unsatisfying comment...It's very pat.

I think the text has tremendous room in it for modern interpretation which doesn't necessarily come from God. It comes from people thinking about it and adapting it to their own times. And parts of the texts are more adaptable and more suited for our modern world than others. And yet, I do think it's amazing how much there is to wrestle within it...this passage has so many things you could say about it that are totally relevant to how we think today.

The ending we have says, literally, "be quiet." I found that to be really surprising given that chevruta and text study in Jewish tradition is about everyone talking to each other.

Jews in earlier times had to figure out how to be Jewish without expecting reward for it, both because of the minimal presence of heaven and afterlife in Jewish theology and also because there was a lot of persecution going on. And it's an incredibly harsh ending...it requires a kind of zealous faith that you could be the most renowned scholar and still have a terrible human fate, and you had to make your peace with it, and God was not going to say anything reassuring at the end. There's a kind of thud that that lands with that actually, for better or worse, feels in keeping with Jewish history...if you were a member of the Jewish people seeing all of this, it was some way of making sense of it and feeling like it came from God, no matter how difficult it would feel to accept it.

You have to look to the questioning of Moses, as you do throughout other parts of the Bible. The questioners, whether it's Abraham, or Moses, or Jacob -- they're the ones we identify with.