Episode Fourteen: Va’eira

In this episode of Verse Per Verse, Amichai explore Exodus, Chapter Six, Verse Twelve, and the portion of Va’era. This parsha, deals with the choosing of Moses by God to be the spokesperson, and Moses’s ambivalence is this role. Moses says that he has “Aral Sifatayim”. But what do those words mean? A literal traslation is that he has “uncircumcised” lips. These are words that surely need some unpacking. Do the words mean tongue-tied? or with a lisp, or was there something deeper, were his lips “sealed” or truly “uncircumcised”?