← Identity/Crisis
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- [00:00]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I think the Hartman Fellowship has impacted
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Yuda Kurtzer
me as a Jewish leader more than
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
any other Jewish program that I've done
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Yuda Kurtzer
because it's sort of broadened my horizon
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
on what exactly it means to be a Jewish teen. You know, you're at Hartman when people are laughing and joking, but also the next second they're talking about some serious rabbinic texts.
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Narrator/Announcer
The Hartman Teen Fellowship is an opportunity for teens who want more from Jewish learning. More depth, more connection, more ideas worth wrestling with.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
You really get the opportunity to engage
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Yuda Kurtzer
with your peers and run with content
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Narrator/Announcer
with Hartman's top faculty fellows. Dig into Jewish life, their relationship to Israel, their own leadership development. There's just so much that could be
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
going on that you can be put into any conversation and you know there's
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Yuda Kurtzer
a space for you. Apply now for Cohort 5 of the
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Narrator/Announcer
Hartman Teen Fellowship, open to current 9th through 11th graders at shalomhartman.org teens. That's shalomhartman.org Teens.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
There's no better place than being at
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Yuda Kurtzer
the Hartman Teen Fellowship. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Identity Crisis, a show from the Schellen Hartman Institute, creating better conversations about essential issues facing Jewish life. I'm Yuda Kurtzer. We're recording on Monday, March 23, 2020. So, classic question. What makes a piece of art, literature, music, film? What makes it Jewish? This is a contentious question, a fundamentally unresolvable one for Jewish communities like ours here in America, who thrive as assimilated members of a broader society. It's not sufficient to say that an artist is Jewish. I think in our great episode that we did last year on Christmas music, we talked extensively about how Jewish musicians and composers played a major role in the making of the Christmas canon. It's not sufficient to look at the Jewish themes in a piece of art because, yes, of course, there are Jewish ideas and texts that inform many contemporary art and media pieces. But many of them, and not just the Hebrew Bible, have far broader appeal than just for Jews or the Jewish community. Even particularistic elements of Jewish culture are now considered part of the mainstream. Seinfeld and Kirb made constant reference to Jewish customs and idiosyncrasies that could play for a laugh with non Jewish audiences who understood such references to not really be Jewish exclusively anymore, but part of the American multicultural tapestry of identities that we all now share. And Jewish art definitely can't be defined as the stuff that's uniquely consumed by or targeted towards the Jewish community. That would mean that the only authentically Jewish art is the kitschiest. And I, for one, would not Want to hinge this category on the Maccabees. So a few months ago I was at a movie theater with my daughter Sally and as part of the coming attractions we saw the preview for an awful looking animated movie about King David which had a weird emphasis on a baby lamb. Sally was confused. I think she was trying to figure out is that ours? Is that for us? The David movie is produced by a Utah based outfit called Angel Studios, producing family friendly and values based content. The producers themselves are Mormon, but the target audience is more broadly Christian. This is King David in the Old Testament sense more than in the Hebrew Bible sense. It was not for us, in other words though sure, why not? We can watch it. By the way, Angel Studios biggest hit so far is a movie called the Chosen. I got very excited about this until I realized it was about Jesus Christ and not about Danny and Ruvane. But a few decades earlier a big movie tested this question of is it Jewish? Very differently. The Prince of Egypt was one of the first projects of DreamWorks SKG, the studio formed by the mega trio of Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen in 1994. Apparently actually the Prince of Egypt was discussed at one of the very first meetings of these three moguls, all of them Jewish. It was a project that Katzenberg wanted to do at Disney and couldn't get approval for. It emerged finally four years later with a star studded cast. I'll list a bunch of them. Val Kilmer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Glover, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Ralph Fiennes, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren. And also included, less known to American audiences, but beloved to many Jewish audiences, Ofra Haza, an iconic Israeli singer who I think of as Israel's Whitney Houston, who by the way recorded that version that you heard at the top of the show of the movie's Oscar winning song as a chart topping pop hit together with Mariah Carey. Mariah and Whitney teaming up to sing this song would be like if Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo teamed up to do it today, by the way, they did about two years ago. You can find their version on YouTube. Prince of Egypt was critically well received and did pretty well at the box Office. Made over $250 million, but it has aged extremely well and is a bit of a cult classic. This is definitely the case at the Hartman offices here in New York. We get weirdly excited about some episodes and I have to say this is one of them. So is Prince of Egypt Jewish? Well, it was made by a lot of Jews. It's pretty authentic to a lot of the version of the story in the Torah and the Midrashim, although we're going to work on that today. Without any obvious Christian interpretive overlays that often appear in mass media about the Hebrew Bible, the movie couldn't possibly have been made for Jews, since we are a pretty small market. But it has lived on pretty powerfully in the contemporary Jewish cultural canon. Maybe the most Jewish thing about it, though, is that it evokes something deep about the Exodus, or rather about the afterlife of the Exodus. It seems like a way of telling the story of the Exodus that speaks to our evolving sensibilities and entails storytelling in evoking memories laced with both trauma and exhilaration. It includes prayer, and it is a prayer. The Prince of Egypt feels Jewish because in some strange sense it reminds us about what Passover is supposed to be about. Not just its ideas, but its performance. So I would say in response to my own question, I don't know if Prince of Egypt is Jewish, but I think it is ours. I'm excited to do a deep dive into the Prince of Egypt today, not because it is part of the news cycle, but it is part of the time of year where we talk about the Exodus. So this is part of our and maybe your listeners preparation for Pesach. And I'm really excited to do this conversation today with a preeminent scholar of Bible and Biblical interpretation, Rabbi Professor Bert Vasotsky, who has an incredible bio, which I'm not going to read all two pages of it, although we'll link to it in our show notes. Winner of many prizes, boards of governors of major organizations and institutions, honorary degrees, a major leader in interfaith work, a longtime scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he still serves as the Appleman Professor Emeritus of Midrash and Inter Religious Studies. So there's a lot there. But most important for our purposes, Rabbi Wasotsky was an actual consultant to the producers of the Prince of Egypt to help them get this story as right as possible. I'm hoping today is a learning session helping us to understand the Prince of Egypt as text, but maybe even more importantly to understand the Exodus as text in its afterlife as part of this film. So first of all, thanks for coming on the show today. Thanks for being here. I understand that as a non podcast listener, this may be your first podcast. So in that case, mazel tov.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Actually, surprisingly, it's not my first podcast, but it might be the first one I listen to.
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Yuda Kurtzer
That's a win so maybe just start by telling us the backstory of how it came to be that you were a consultant to this project now, 30 plus years ago.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, as all good things, it started with a Torah study group. I, for many years at jts, ran a group that we self importantly called the Prophets. And it was a mixture of rabbinics and Bible scholars. And Reuters Cynthia Ozyk was among them. It was really, really fascinating to hear what happened when ideas clashed. I thought at first that I would learn how Midrash was created when writers approached the text. What actually happened though was I learned the of the text, the meaning in context, because the writers were very nervous about elaborating too much. They actually felt that the Torah text was sacred. So what was called the Genesis Seminar had five years to work its way through. We did pretty much a chapter of the torah per session. 50 sessions got us through the 50 chapters of Genesis. Just towards the end of our cycle of five years, I got a call from Bill Moyers. And Bill said, I would like to do discussions like this on the air, on public television. We've never done Bible on television. And then he revealed a secret. He had never done groups on television. He was always one on one. So he very graciously invited me to come on and do a Genesis seminar on TV. And there we were 10 Sundays in a row, studying select stories of Genesis with a group of people very carefully selected for balance. There was a Jew, there was a Muslim, there was a Catholic, there was a Protestant, there was an Evangelical Protestant, et cetera. And we had a really good time doing aired in 1996. And while it was airing, I was home one afternoon and I got a call and a woman's voice said, is this Rabbi Vysotsky? I said, yes, it is. She said, would you hold for Jeffrey Katzenberg? So I said, sure. And while I was holding, I was thinking, which of my friends is playing a trick on me? And Katzenberg came on and said, is this Bert Vassotsky? And I said, yes, it is. Is this actually Jeffrey Katzenberg? And he said, yeah, yes, it's really me. It's no joke. I said, how can I help you? He said, I don't know if you know, but we formed a studio, Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen. And we wanted our very first project to be the story of the Exodus. We wanted to start with something incredibly powerful that spoke to the American ethos.
- [10:38]
Yuda Kurtzer
Oh, cool.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I said, huh? I'm in. I said, now what? He said, now you come to la. Well, as it turned Out. They brought me back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Always first class to LA because they were so paranoid about sending a cassette of what they had filmed lest someone get their hands on it and pirate it, that they'd rather fly me first class than spend whatever it was, 79 cents to send a cassette across the country. So I spent a lot of time in LA between 96 and 98, and we made a movie. I once made the terrible faux pas of referring to that film as a cartoon.
- [11:21]
Yuda Kurtzer
Oh, yeah. No, it's not.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yeah. Jeffrey was not happy with that. He said, it's an animated feature.
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Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [11:28]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
He said, okay, it's an animated feature.
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Yuda Kurtzer
And by the way, you know, it has been listed since then as one of the best animated films of all time because of the creativity of the animation. There was something very different about the nature of the animation. It pushed against some of the trends that are already emerging in Hollywood around animation.
- [11:47]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Katzenberg was liberated from Disney when he left, and he realized he could do things he never would have been able to do at Disney, including, I suggested to him at one point, I said, you know, Jeffrey, at Disney, everything was white, Snow white, white, white, white. I said, the Hebrews in Egypt were people of color. And when you watch the film, you'll see that among the slaves there are lots of people of color. And he just was at the opportunity, kind of the mantra was not Disney and created, I think, an extraordinary work as a result.
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Yuda Kurtzer
I want to get to the America line in a second because I think that's super interesting. But before that, it's just interesting to note that this phenomenon of the kind of encounter of writers and culture makers with text, the way you were describing as the seminar first at the seminary and then on pbs. Effectively, it's interesting. It kind of is a little bit ahead of the same phenomenon that took place in Israel over the past 20 to 30 years, where culture makers, primarily musicians, have been studying Torah a lot and it has become kind of de rigueur for them to do their one Jewish album. Some musicians completely turned around their careers to kind of use Jewish themes in their work. But it feels as though there was a kernel of that taking place here among Jewish culture makers as well.
- [13:08]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I have a very good friend who's also an emeritus professor of Midrash named Avigdor Sinan. And Sheenan was professor of Midrash and Agada at the Hebrew University. And as it happens, Avigdor was here for a trip to see his in laws. And I said to Jeffrey, we have an incredible opportunity. One of the great scholars of biblical interpretation is in the States from Israel. So he flew me and Avigdor out. What I didn't know was it was Sinan's birthday weekend. So it was like the greatest birthday gift. And Sinan commented on it and was thoughtful about it, but he went back to Israel and told his friends, you gotta see this. So he brought that news back to Israel, and because he was an influential professor, teacher, had tons of students, much beloved that I think it became a thing. So he should get credit for that.
- [14:01]
Yuda Kurtzer
That's incredible. So I want you to pick up on that comment that you made earlier about this as, like, a great American story or something that was meant for the American canon. It's hard not to read into that. You know, Jews in prominent roles in Hollywood are narrating their own stories, the stories that are ours, in an idiom that makes them American, as part of what feels like a larger ideological and political project of signaling to the general public the Jewish story is the American story and vice versa. So how conscious do you think that is? Even if it's not conscious, is that a fair read of what might have been taking place at the time?
- [14:40]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, yes and no. Jeffrey was very conscious of this. I think everybody at SKG was nervous that people would think it was too Jewish, so they were cautious to link it to the American ethos. The American ethos of rebellion against an enslaver, be it the British in the American Revolution or overweening politicians in the day. They were really, really careful lest it be too Jewish. When I would talk about a passage with Jeffrey, I sometimes lapsed into my own idiom, and I would say, this is a great Midrash. And every time I would say that, he would blanch. He would say, it's not Midrash. It's not Midrash. This is Hollywood, Bert. We are doing entertainment. We are doing significant entertainment. It's about something important, the Bible. But it's not Midrash. Lest it think it's too much.
- [15:41]
Yuda Kurtzer
What does that mean? What do you make of that? I mean, first of all, part of me is like, midrash is entertaining.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think you're right. He didn't thoroughly understand what Midrash was. But I think what freaked him out was that it would have put the film, which they were gonna lead with, right into the Jewish camp. And it was the one thing they were so nervous about because they were the three most prominent Jews in Hollywood.
- [16:06]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, yeah. And I understand that you were one of the consultants, but there were consultants from other faith traditions. To what extent was that a collaborative project or how much of it was? Let us make sure that we don't get it wrong in a bunch of different places, especially since my understanding is that several Muslim countries banned the film from being shown because of the language of Moses as depicting a prophet. Yeah.
- [16:28]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Jeffrey, when he was with Disney, had done a film called Aladdin, and he got roundly critiqued, appropriately so because of the stereotypes of the Arabs, the Muslims, the. The genie itself. And he was really nervous about not committing that sin again. So he wanted to differentiate himself very, very clearly from that ilk. So he was kind of in a very awkward position. I laugh every time I remember this. The film was already in the can. They were already well advanced. It was maybe a couple of weeks before opening day, and unusual for Hollywood, they opened this film worldwide, not just in the States, worldwide, all on the same date. And I get a call from Jeffrey, and he says, bert, I've been thinking about this, and I'm nervous about the Aladdin problem. Well, here's my question. This story about the Exodus, does it have to be Egypt? And I said, yeah, Jeffrey, it kind of has to be Egypt, but if it'll help you, it was Egypt then, not Egypt now. Oh, yeah, good. Then. Now, now then. Excellent. I'm a little bit parodying Geoffrey because he couldn't have been more gracious and more really, really concerned that he was quote, unquote, true to the biblical story. Not verbatim true, but like a midrashes might say true.
- [18:00]
Yuda Kurtzer
Right. I mean, you could have gone the route of Michael Walzer's line at the end of Exodus Revolution, where he says, wherever you are, it's probably Egypt. Right. It could have been anywhere. But the original story does actually take place in Egypt. To what extent were you concerned, as a scholar of Bible and of biblical interpretation, that you were going to be connected to a project that would, quote, unquote, get it wrong or misrepresent pieces of the story in ways that you would have felt. You know, The Torah has 70 faces, but it doesn't have 71. Right.
- [18:30]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So first, let me come back to the consulting thing, though. I was one of the chief consultants, as was a scholar at Clark University, Everett Fox. Everett had put out a translation, a wonderful translation of the Torah called the Five Books of Moses, cleverly. And it was just a real solid read. And that became kind of the cortex for us. And then there was a lawyer who had worked for the ADL for a while. A woman named Sivya Schwartz Gutsug, who DreamWorks hired to do community outreach. So the three of us really made an effort to bring in everybody and their uncle that we knew, particularly non Jews, to come on out to Hollywood. Let's have a. You know, let's have a road trip. But to get everyone on board and make sure that people were okay. For me, I was concerned. I was concerned, A, that it could be complete kitsch, B, that they would really, dreadfully get the story wrong. But I had seen the storyboards. You go into the studio and you literally could walk around the studio. And I'm looking at the storyboards and everything looks right. But there was one thing that kind of mystified me a little bit. I said, jeffrey, on top of. And underneath each of the storyboards is a thread. It's either red or blue, and it's going up and down. What's that all about? And he said, ah. The one on top is the background hue of the actual film itself. I said, it makes a difference. He said, oh, yeah. And the difference is the bottom thread. The hue in the background affects the mood of the viewer. And we are charting where and what we want the viewer to feel every six seconds. So I was like, wow, really? And he said, really? We are concerned that we make a film that effectively makes the viewer utterly sympathetic with the Israelites leaving Egypt, because that's everybody's story.
- [20:35]
Yuda Kurtzer
It makes me kind of want to do that exercise with the Torah itself. How conscious is the Torah of the emotional state of us as readers throughout the story? How anxious are we supposed to be every single time that Pharaoh comes and says, I will not let your people go?
- [20:52]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So I do want to say that we have our own thread above and below the words of the Torah, and we call that ta mehamikra, the trup, the Masoretes in the Middle Ages. Kind of signal to us how we should divide up the verses, what the mood was. Is this gonna be a pas? Right? You can really indicate emotional valence with the tame hamikra. And I think they did.
- [21:18]
Yuda Kurtzer
I have a thousand questions on that, but that's not our episode. I'm gonna listen to a couple of the key clips from the film, and then I wanna do a little bit of midrashic work together about the choices that are being made and how that sings with how we might ordinarily read the text and how the midrashim. Another layer of interpretation. I agree, Jeffrey Katzenberg. It's not midrash, but how the midrashims themselves may have informed the choices in the film. So the first we're going to listen to comes right near the beginning. And it is a piece when Ofra Chaza, who plays Yocheved, Moshe's mother, places baby Moses in the water. And actually, this is a piece in the film which actually takes place in Hebrew itself. She speaks in Hebrew, which is already a kind of a move. So let's listen to a short piece of this.
- [22:12]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
My son, I have nothing I can give but this chance that you may live I pray, pray we'll meet again if they will deliver us.
- [22:33]
Yuda Kurtzer
Okay, so first of all, let's talk a little bit about the Hebrew. What was the choice involved with that? That seems kind of nuts.
- [22:39]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
It's kind of overwhelming. I think, first of all, they wanted an Israeli singer.
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Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [22:43]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
They wanted the accent, they wanted the voice. And I think she suggested that they open in Hebrew. As it happens, it's not just those couple of lines. In another one of the songs, they refer to God as Elohim, God on high. And then at the Exodus itself, they actually sing Micha Moham.
- [23:00]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, we'll get to that. We're gonna do that clip, too.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I mean, so we're talking about at least a half dozen lines of biblical Hebrew being sung in a Hollywood animated feature.
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Yuda Kurtzer
Although this particular phrase is semi biblical Hebrew, it's an interesting move to actually put it in a kind of hybrid of some biblical language. Al Terav Altehat has biblical.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yes, it does.
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Yuda Kurtzer
Echoes. Right. But not from this context. But the very phrase itself is spoken by a modern Israeli woman who doesn't know biblical Hebrew, but only knows modern Hebrew. It's very striking to listen to.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yes. May she rest in peace. She was a wonderful collaborator. You know that. Yaldi Harach v'. Hatov. It just. You could hear any Israeli mother or grandmother saying that.
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Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, my sweet, my soft child.
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yes. It really caught people's attention.
- [23:47]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. So let's talk about some of the interpretive choices that are being played out here. Even the term deliver us, one of my colleagues pointed out in preparation. Deliver us as a kind of rendering of all of the different verbs that appear in the biblical story. All of those. Right. Which we use throughout the. We should put in the Haggadah. What do you think is the choices there? And I also just. It's worth naming that God is referred to as a he in this account. And I'm wondering whether that ever came up in any discussion of, like, God's gender as appearing in the story.
- [24:21]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
It did not.
- [24:22]
Yuda Kurtzer
Hollywood today would have made a different choice.
- [24:25]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I think it was not quite as burning an issue in those days. And I embarrassedly say I didn't raise it. That was not one of the questions they asked about God's gender, but God's role. And God is Deliverer, I think maybe came and, you know, there's a recording of one of the songs that's almost done in gospel style. And I think Deliver Us is gospel.
- [24:54]
Yuda Kurtzer
Let's actually listen to that right now, because one of the recordings that came out on the soundtrack afterwards was this exact song of the lullaby that Yocheved sings, performed by Amy Grant, who's a Christian musician. So let's hear a short clip of that right now and we can finish the point. Hush now, my baby Be still, love,
- [25:16]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
don't pray Sleep like you're rocked by
- [25:21]
Yuda Kurtzer
the stream
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Sleep and remember, my love I and I'll be with you when you dream so you can hear it.
- [25:36]
Yuda Kurtzer
Right. The music is the same, by the way. It's still kind of faintly Middle Eastern music. It's in the minor key.
- [25:42]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
It's not indeed. The bridge right after this is very Middle Eastern with a little pipe.
- [25:49]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, that's right. It's now a little bit country and it's a little bit Christian. So you're saying that you think that that is supposed to imply something about the gospel.
- [25:55]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
It's kind of informed, the choice of Deliver Us.
- [25:58]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. Anything else about what's happening, rightly or wrong, here in that sense, or interpretively is probably a better phrase. With respect to the fact that the story of the family drama about Yocheved and placing the baby in the water actually is very sparse in the biblical text and the central role that it plays here. Any thoughts about that?
- [26:16]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I would say that for me, the visuals are brilliant. The crocodiles, the hippopotamus shows up. And then again it goes to soft music. And until eventually, Pharaoh's wife, which is definitely different than the biblical narrative, discovers baby Moses. And then you have. Why do they do that? I asked him explicitly, I said, you know it's Pharaoh's daughter, don't you? Yeah, he said, I do. He said, but I've been told that in the Muslim tradition, it's Pharaoh's wife. I said, and you wanna rely on that? He said, well, I wanna rely on that for a very good Hollywood reason. I said, what's that? He said, I want the brothers, right? The Egyptian brother and Moses who are gonna be in competition with each other. I want it to be a buddy movie. Right. And once he said that, like, you can see it throughout the film. It's a buddy movie. When Moses looks back, calls to Pharaoh, it knows his brother is drowning in the sea. That's the pathos of every buddy movie we've ever seen, whether it's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or any other one you want to name.
- [27:23]
Yuda Kurtzer
Let's spend another minute on that because it is the biggest interpretive conceit of the movie is to position Pharaoh and Moses as separating brothers. There's something so interesting about it because from the standpoint of the book of Genesis, that's the right story.
- [27:36]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Right.
- [27:37]
Yuda Kurtzer
It's always the rupture between the two brothers, which by the way, is not caused by them, it's caused by larger forces. The promise of God to the father almost requires of the father to choose between the two sons. Right. But it's supposed to carry, we think, into the story of Exodus. So as a scholar of Midrash, it sounds like you were like, okay, well, I guess it's a Hollywood movie so they can do whatever they want. But did you feel that this captured something that's useful in how we think about the story of the Exodus itself?
- [28:05]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, for me, because I'm deeply engaged in inter religious dialogue, I liked that we could rely on the fact that there are Muslim traditions about this. In other words, we look at the story and we know the words in the Torah. But as a Midrashist, I also understand that there's an Oral Torah, and Oral Torah often departs from the contextual meaning of the text, the pshat of the text, and goes somewhere else. And I think he had good cause to go somewhere else on this. So I had no interest in fighting this one. I thought it was a good call.
- [28:38]
Yuda Kurtzer
I think as a viewer of the film, I think what it has done is it's helped me in the story of the Exodus in trying to understand more deeply the extent of the emotional relationship between Moses and Pharaoh as interlocutors throughout the Exodus, where it's not Moses is a random Hebrew child who grew up in the house of the Pharaoh, but actually had an intimate relationship with Pharaoh that actually you don't get from the text itself, but it could, it should be there.
- [29:11]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
And yet the narrative in the Torah is stumm. It's like quiet about that. You don't see it. And bringing that out, drawing that out, I think is terribly important. That Moses wasn't just some shmo who God chose. Moses was almost literally from childhood, raised in the house of Pharaoh. He knew what the stakes were. He knew how to approach Pharaoh, he knew how to contest Pharaoh. And that, I think, sometimes gets lost in the reading of the text. We simply do when we read it in shul.
- [29:46]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. And it also helps in the film. One of the things they do very well is that Moses election, which we'll talk about now, actually creates a massive crisis of his own identity for him. Right. Which you get echoes of when Moses sees the Israelite being beaten by the Egyptian taskmaster. The decision to identify with the Israel over the taskmaster shifts his whole positionality in the story. And it's about a reclamation of identity, but in good Hollywood form that becomes inflated as self discovery. You can't be more American and modern than a person who finally identifies with who they really are engages in that process of self discovery.
- [30:23]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
And their self identity is, I stand with the downtrodden, with the oppressed, not with the oppressor. Even though I was raised with the oppressor and might even look by my dress like the oppressor, I stand with the downtrodden. And those are my people.
- [30:39]
Yuda Kurtzer
And those are my people. Yeah. So one of the more, I guess, contestable or kind of big question choices of the film comes around the scene of the Burning Bush, which we're going to listen to a little bit here, because that's the moment when God becomes revealed in the story, both in terms of God's voice and some visuals. I can only imagine the theological discussions that go into, how is Hollywood going to disappoint? Depict this. Let's listen for a moment to the clip from the Burning Bush episode in the film.
- [31:04]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
You've chosen the wrong messenger. How?
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Yuda Kurtzer
How can I even speak to these people?
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Who made man's mouth?
- [31:12]
Yuda Kurtzer
Who made the deaf, the mute, the seeing or the blind?
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Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Did not I now go,
- [31:32]
Yuda Kurtzer
O Moses, I shall be with you when you go to the king of Egypt.
- [31:40]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
But Pharaoh will not listen. So I will stretch out my hand
- [31:49]
Yuda Kurtzer
and smite Egypt with all my wonders. Tell me what's going on here with the choices that the film is making on who voices the voice of God, the multiplicity that's going on here.
- [32:08]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Therein lies a tale that inadvertently illustrates precisely the question I think you're asking. Originally, they invited everyone who had a speaking part in the animated feature to read God's lines, and they were gonna mix them into this eerie voice. I mean, you can hear a little bit of their intention with the woo woo music that's in the background. But despite the best capabilities of Hollywood soundmen, every time they tried to do. Didn't work. And they were utterly mystified. Why couldn't they mix these voices? I pointed out to them that in the midrash. The midrash suggests that the voice that Moses heard had to be appealing to him, not frightening, and that it was, in fact, a voice that sounded like his father. And Jeffrey said, no, I don't want to do Father. Okay, good.
- [33:06]
Yuda Kurtzer
We did that with Star Wars.
- [33:08]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
No, Father. Moses, I am your father. So they tried every which way to get this voice. And finally Val Kilmer said, why don't I just do it? You can put on special effects. Let me do it. And he did, and it worked. So that's what we have. But essentially you have now Moses echoing his own voice.
- [33:32]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. Say more about that. It feels very significant, actually, and not crazy to imagine that the voice of Moses and the voice of God are actually the same voice. It's an interesting shiur. It's an interesting theological question of God speaking in a language that people can relate to and understand. Maybe it's our own voice, right?
- [33:50]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, I mean, the voice of God is a perennial riff in midrashic and even biblical literature. What was the voice we heard at Sinai? What was the voice that spoke and brought the world into being? What is the valence of that voice? How do you depict it? And I think that's a fair question. To the extent to which we say that we are created in God's image and likeness, we don't usually think about the fact that image and likeness may also include sound, that we sound like God. I say that. And as soon as I say that in the back of my head, I have memories of my childhood. Rabbi speaking on Rosh Hashanah. And it was like hearing the voice of God. It was like, oh, my. You know, just this powerful, beautiful elocution that I would have followed anywhere. And I think that's partly what they're driving at there. And I think that's partly what motivated Val Kilmer.
- [34:47]
Yuda Kurtzer
That's so interesting. I mean, there are theological problems with this, one of which is, you know, even the very idea of human beings being created in the image of God. If you take the evil version of that idea, which is so essential to the Book of Genesis, you have human beings creating themselves as God. Right. So idolatry and our belief that we are created in the image of God feel like two sides of the same coin. You can actually make yourself into God. If that's the voice that Moses is hearing, maybe it helps to explain some of his Own self doubt. Am I hearing God? Or am I hearing my own voice inside my own head that's telling me to do things that are risky and dangerous.
- [35:26]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
But I think you're onto something about my own voice in my own head. Because the Bible makes clear to us that Moshe had a speech impediment. He was kaved peh, whatever that means. Heavy of tongue. And yet in the film, he speaks perfectly clearly. And we discussed this at Dreamworks and Jeffrey said, I can't put a stutterer. I just can't do that. As he stuttered his way through the sentence, he said, like, I just, I can't do that. He's gotta be understandable to every listener, from the smallest kid to the oldest adult. So the voice that's in Moses head, I'm certain, as certain as a midrashes can be, that when Moses thought, he did not think in stutters, he thought clearly and he thought much as he heard. The voice of God is a very, very clear voice. So the fact that it's depicted that way, Good on Jeffrey.
- [36:22]
Yuda Kurtzer
How did the midrashim make sense of Moses doubt throughout the story of his own lack of conviction? I mean, I think the human hubris which is so clear in the prophets is that when God speaks to you, it's a language of certainty. Jeremiah says, I had self doubt because they were beating me up. But when God spoke to me, what could I do? I had the voice of God in my ear. But Moses goes to a very different level. It's like Moses doesn't really want to go, and he keeps not wanting to go and he keeps getting rebuffed. How did the midrashim make sense of Moses? Own seem to be built in resistance.
- [36:56]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I think that the midrashim pick up from scripture the same way that the film does, which is they provide Moses with a support system of his brother and then his sister and that support system and ultimately his wife as well. That allows him the ability to say, I'm not alone in this. I can go on and I can do a task that I would rather not. But my family, literally my family are urging me to do this. And I can't let them down.
- [37:29]
Yuda Kurtzer
So let's actually listen to the pivotal point in the story. I think my favorite scene in the whole movie. We'll listen to a little bit from the 10 plagues. It's just amazing animation. Let's listen to a bit then. I have a couple of questions to ask.
- [37:41]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Okay. You, who I call brother, how could you have come to hate me so Is this what you wanted?
- [37:49]
Yuda Kurtzer
I said the storm.
- [37:51]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I said the. Then let my heart be hardened and never mind how high the cost may grow this will still be so I
- [38:00]
Yuda Kurtzer
will never let your people go.
- [38:05]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Thus said the Lo. The said the Lord, I will not
- [38:11]
Yuda Kurtzer
let your let my people
- [38:17]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
go.
- [38:27]
Yuda Kurtzer
So, by the way, from a standpoint of the story, that very phrase, all I ever wanted is something that appears earlier in the film when it's described Moses desire to simply be a prince of Egypt. And then in this, it gets repeated musically by Pharaoh, this time voiced by Ralph Fiennes. By the way, Ralph Fiennes had a real bad run of evil. Remember, he was the commandant in Schindler's List in 1994. And then he graduates from that to Pharaoh, like working back the timeline and I think to your point, illustrating that actually his intimacy with Moses is greater than Moses intimacy with Miriam and Aaron, who are strangers to him by this point in the story, which really gets elevated in the telling of the story in the Prince of Egypt.
- [39:09]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So I want to say that the overarching problem with the plagues in the film Prince of Egypt was how to not depict them. Yeah, Hollywood would have been brilliant at giving us Dom Svardea, Kenny and blood frogs. Just. And Katzenberg realized that this was a film that a lot of kids were gonna watch, and he was loath to give them nightmares. He said, I could do a really good job here, but I won't. I don't want this to be the scene that everybody's gonna have in their nightmares. It just can't be. So he mixed them into one fairly short scene the length of that song. I give him again, credit for his sensitivity to, you know. Again, I'm thinking of that thread going up and down to the emotions of his viewers. He was very careful to make the plagues, if you will, anodyne. Even though in both the plain reading of the text and almost all of the midrash on the text, the plagues were spectacular.
- [40:17]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, it's actually really interesting because you tend any Seder that has little kids at it these days, especially in America, which the Seders I know better. The plagues are considered a site of tremendous entertainment.
- [40:29]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, yeah, because you can have 10 finger puppets.
- [40:31]
Yuda Kurtzer
Finger puppets. My bubby used to kind of surreptitiously collect a whole bunch of plastic frogs and then unleash hell on the table and throw them out. The first time she did it, everyone was so stunned. It was like great comedy. It is great. This is not comedy. I mean, this is A horror film.
- [40:47]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
And he understood that. He understood that he could not and should not treat it as comedy, that it was awful, that it was terrible in all the kind of biblical terms. Terrible, awesome, frightening. He wanted to depict it all, but he wanted to get through it kind of in one breath. Like we would say the sons of Haman, you know, like, just let's do it in one breath and then we'll move on. And that is what he did.
- [41:09]
Yuda Kurtzer
I think the other thing that's happening in the move that the script makes, if you watch it carefully, you'll notice that they're out of order as well. Right. So I was watching it again last night in preparation.
- [41:19]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I didn't notice that.
- [41:20]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, no, it's cool, actually. You see it dances between the end. Animals dying and then the frogs. You don't see the river turn into blood, you just see them drinking water and it turns into blood and they spit it out. One of the things that I like about that as a midrash. Sorry, Jeffrey Katzenberg, as a midrash, is that it helps to also illustrate the chaotic sensibility when it's narrated in the Bible. These are just events that take place in sequence. This one happened and then it was finished, and then this one happened.
- [41:49]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So I want to ask you as a rabbi.
- [41:51]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [41:52]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
From the first plague of blood to the killing of the firstborn, how much time elapsed?
- [41:58]
Yuda Kurtzer
Oh, man, I'm being tested.
- [42:00]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I feel you are. Because the Bible doesn't tell you how much time elapsed, but the rabbis do.
- [42:06]
Yuda Kurtzer
Oh, yeah. What do the rabbis say?
- [42:07]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
They say it took place in one year.
- [42:09]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
And I'm thinking like, wow, that was one hell of a year. But I think they understood it was smart to put a timeline on it to understand what a nation could go through of horrors.
- [42:22]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. It feels relatable. We lived through a plague that in retrospect will feel like a short period of time, but felt quite long. We've lived through wars.
- [42:29]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
You're talking about COVID Yes.
- [42:31]
Yuda Kurtzer
We've lived through a five year period of time where these were actually happening in sequence.
- [42:34]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Right, right.
- [42:35]
Yuda Kurtzer
But you might feel, hopefully, please, God, ten years from now, all of these will have ended. You might feel like, oh, my God. There was this window of time where everything was chaos. And the film captures that of like, this was just a chaotic period of time. I have no idea how much time passed. When you're in the middle of it, it feels interminable. After each plague is done, Pharaoh's ability to say, I guess we're done with that, and then we can move on. Becomes logical. Like, it's over now, we've moved on and never mind. That's right. One other line in the text that I want to just pick up on is when Pharaoh says the phrase, let my heart be hardened, which takes away the power of the text, that it's actually God doing the hardening of Pharaoh's heart.
- [43:17]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
But that's a moral conundrum. The fact that Exodus tells us God hardened Pharaoh's heart and says it more than once. So I always try to figure out what's going on there. And in my humble opinion. And here I don't do humility usually, but here I am humble because I'm offering an interpretation that's not grounded in midrash. I think what God is doing to Pharaoh is removing his free will. He's hardening Pharaoh's heart. And that essentially attacks Pharaoh's humanity. It's as though God says, you pretend to be God. I'm going to make you less than human. You will have no volition any longer. I'm going to harden your heart. You won't be able to decide what to do. And that kind of treks for me as a reading of the story.
- [44:07]
Yuda Kurtzer
And you don't read that as unfair?
- [44:10]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Unfair to whom?
- [44:11]
Yuda Kurtzer
To Pharaoh.
- [44:12]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I don't think that fairness comes into how we treat Pharaoh.
- [44:15]
Yuda Kurtzer
I'm not saying Pharaoh's a good guy. I'm not trying to do a referendum on that. But the moral conundrum arises where if God is doing all of the work of removing Pharaoh's free will, then it's hard to blame Pharaoh for all that comes next.
- [44:29]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
All that comes next. But all that came before. We can certainly.
- [44:31]
Yuda Kurtzer
But all that came before.
- [44:32]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
And there's a lot of all that came before. You know, we sing in the Haggadah, a line from Psalms Shvok, Hamatchal Hagayim, which we always sing to the tune of Glory, glory, hallelujah.
- [44:48]
Yuda Kurtzer
I'm going to do that. That's good. But pour out your wrath.
- [44:52]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Pour out your wrath on the Gentiles. And, you know, I come from a tradition where we almost always have non Jews at the Seder, so it's kind of an awkward line to read. But the rest is Asherlo Yaduchah, who do not know you. And I think that's a real reading of how to react to Pharaoh.
- [45:10]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [45:11]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Pharaoh will not recognize God as an equal, which is crazy.
- [45:16]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah. I think Shvoch Hamachah is a very important piece of the Seder, because you have to make space in all of this language of freedom in the hope for a kind of eschaton when everything is resolved.
- [45:28]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Well, that's why we sing Eliyahu Hanavi.
- [45:30]
Yuda Kurtzer
Then you have to make space for anger too.
- [45:32]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Right.
- [45:32]
Yuda Kurtzer
And that's also a part of the story. The Israelites are allowed to be furious at their treatment. They're so much like, how could the Israelites have taken the gold and silver from their neighbors? You know, like, come on, Yehudah.
- [45:43]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I think you're right. Anger is essential there. And we maybe as American Jews, as moderns, we're afraid of anger. We get nervous about it. And there has to be a point, maybe a limited point in the seder. And again, we immediately shift into singing Eliahu Hanavi and Kumbaya.
- [46:03]
Yuda Kurtzer
All right, one last clip, which is really the climax of the film and one of the most famous scenes, which is right after the actual exodus. And again, the time frame in a film is gonna be compressed, Right? The time between when they leave and when they cross over the Red Sea. Sea. And actually the violence against the Egyptians is underplayed.
- [46:20]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yes, very much so.
- [46:21]
Yuda Kurtzer
In fact, Pharaoh gets saved. Right. We can talk about that in a moment. But let's just listen to this short piece about the crossing of the Red Sea the first time, where that song that we heard at the outset, There Can't Be Miracles, is sung. And we're going to listen to a clip here.
- [46:35]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
There can be miracles when you believe when you believe Hope is frail it's hard to kill it's hard to kill who knows what miracles you can achieve? You can achieve when you believe Somehow
- [47:02]
Yuda Kurtzer
you will,
- [47:06]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
you will. I get teary eyed every time.
- [47:46]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, it's incredible.
- [47:48]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So first of all, that's a good bit of Hebrew Exodus, chapter 15, the song the sea, selected but brilliantly rendered. And I dare say it changed the way synagogues treat that passage when we get to it on Shabbat Shira. But the thing that I want to talk about is what they sing afterwards. There can be miracles if you believe. Because that was not the original lyric. Oh. The original lyric was, you can do miracles if you believe. And Everett Fox and I, who talked to each other about our role as advisors, both said, oh, that's just. You can't say that we're not the ones doing the miracles. So unbeknownst to Geoffrey, we colluded. And separately we said, you know, Geoffrey, that's really problematic. You're not doing the miracles. God's doing the miracles. What about if you changed it to God will do miracles. I don't know too much God. That's gonna make people really uncomfortable. How about there can be miracles? We said done. So that's how that lyric got written. But it started out with something which was a very different theology, if anything, an anthropology. And we changed it so that it would be more in tune with, I think, the biblical narrative and the point of the story.
- [49:07]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah, I really appreciate hearing that, because to me, actually, I say this at our seder every year, the whole premise of the Exodus was if you're willing to take the risk in the midst of a totalitarian society, where you're being oppressed of trusting in God. Prior to the Exodus, the whole. The main act of faith takes place prior to the Exodus. There's no kunz in faith after the Exodus. But the Israelites take a lamb, slaughter it, paint its blood on the doorposts, make their faith visible to their neighbors, and it is because of that act of faith that the miracles take place for them. So in that sense, this is a direct rendering by the end of the story of, oh, yeah, when you believe there can be miracles that are performed.
- [49:47]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
But it's also consequential. It's first believe in God and then uvu Moshe avdo. Then once you believe in God, you can believe that Moshe can lead you out, but the first thing you need is that belief.
- [50:01]
Yuda Kurtzer
So let's conclude with the last piece, which I alluded to before, which is Pharaoh getting saved in the story here, which I believe is a midrashic echo, because doesn't Pharaoh wind up being identified with who is it? Og?
- [50:18]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yeah, there are midrashim like that.
- [50:19]
Yuda Kurtzer
But that Pharaoh lingers as a kind of witness of the Exodus to later in history, when he keeps resurfacing as kind of an enemy of the Israelites.
- [50:27]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
So on one hand, I have to be careful because I was absolutely flabbergasted, wowed, that Jeffrey Katzenberg had read everything there was in English on the Exodus narrative, including, like, Ginsburg's legends of the Jews, including all the notes in the footnote volumes. He was thoroughly versed in this. But again, I think that Pharaoh surviving, that goes back to the Bunny movie that they wanted that, you know, across the sea, when I think it's Ralph Fiennes says Moses, and you see him just lingering there on the rock, watching all of his troops destroyed.
- [51:07]
Yuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [51:07]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
I do want to say one midrashic note, though. As they went through the sea, I pointed out to Jeffrey that the midrash is very clear where it says that the water was walls right and left, that each tribe had its own path through the sea, its own kind of private path with walls. And then the midra says, and furthermore, lest someone from one tribe worry about their cousin in another tribe, God put windows into the walls so you could look through and see, oh, there's Yonkel, he's okay. And Katzenberg mirrored that in an odd way. He had these kind of walls that you could see through the water, as it were. And there's a beautiful scene where you're looking through the wall of water and this huge fish goes by and you realize like, wow, that's a miracle. So I think they captured it. Well, I do a lot of scholar in residence in synagogues around the country over many, many years. And in the 25 years I think it is since Prince of Egypt, maybe a little more, I am seeing more and more families who either on Seder night or before Seder or during Khol Ham Wad, they watch Prince of Egypt. That has become part of their ritual of celebrating Passover and I'm really proud to have had some small, small part in it.
- [52:36]
Yuda Kurtzer
Thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been a delight. I not only learned more about this movie that I love and that you played such an important role in, but also learned some Torah together.
- [52:44]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
Yeah, pretty great. Always good.
- [52:46]
Yuda Kurtzer
Amazing
- [52:48]
Rabbi Professor Bert Vassotsky
to everyone listening indeed.
- [53:01]
Narrator/Announcer
Here are some other things that are happening at the Shalom Hartman Institute. The newest issue of Sources, the journal you turn to for informed conversations and thoughtful disagreement about the issues that matter to our Jewish communities, launches online this week. This issue, the Ever Learning People, asks how learning can shape belonging, responsibility, peoplehood and Jewish life in a democratic world. Read, share and subscribe to our print edition at. The link in the show notes subscribers can expect copies to hit their mailboxes in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to our guest, Rabbi Bert Fisotsky. Identity Crisis is produced by Tessa Zitter and its executive producer is me, Maital Friedman. This episode was researched by Gabrielle Feinstone and edited by Josh Allen with music provided by so called transcripts of our show are now available on our website. Typically a week after an episode airs, we are always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes. So if you have a topic you would like to hear about or if you have comments on this episode, please write to us@identitycrisicellumhartman.org for more ideas from the Shellum Hartman Institute about what's unfolding right now. Sign up for our newsletter in the show Notes and subscribe to our podcast Everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time and thanks for listening.