Hollywood film star Val Kilmer passed away yesterday in Los Angeles after a bout of pneumonia. He was 65 years old. While Kilmer made a name for himself as Iceman in “Top Gun,” Jim Morrison in the 1991 biopic “The Doors” and the title superhero in the 1995 Batman movie, he’s remembered in the Jewish community for voicing Moses in the beloved 1998 animated movie “The Prince of Egypt.”
Though Kilmer was not Jewish (despite an unsubstantiated claim in a 2000 episode of “Inside the Actors’ Studio” that he had some Sephardi Jewish ancestry, he was actually Christian Scientist) it’s fair to say that “The Prince of Egypt” would not be the same powerhouse retelling of the Exodus from Egypt without his voice. As PJ Grisar wrote for The Forward today, “Kilmer imbued his Moses with a sensitive strength, resolute in his challenge to Ralph Fiennes’ Pharaoh.” For millennials and zillennial Jewish kids, this sensitivity made the prophet no less a powerful character, but it did make him more tangible. This wasn’t just some mythic old man from the Torah that was hard to conceptualize or relate to. Val Kilmer’s Moses brought Jewish ritual and tradition outside of the Hebrew school classroom to an emotional plane that was both easier and more meaningful to access.
Notably, Kilmer did not provide Moses’ singing voice — that role went to actor Amick Byram. He did, however, voice God in the movie in an uncredited performance. In the scene where Moses comes across the burning bush, Kilmer plays the God of the Hebrew Bible perfectly. God is quick to unleash forceful, destructive anger. But God also has a gentle side. After admonishing Moses for questioning what he’s been told to do, God comforts Moses with reassurance in a sweet, silky smooth voice.
As other celebrities began to share their memories of Val Kilmer after the news of his death broke, Ralph Fiennes pointed to “The Prince of Egypt” in his own remembrance. “Val Kilmer rest in peace,” he wrote on X accompanied by an image of what was presumably part of the movie’s press kit. 
Kilmer went on to play Moses two more times, once in a, in his own words, “mortifying-at-best” 2004 musical version of “The Ten Commandments” and again, according to The Forward, in “a hip-hop gospel simply called ‘Moses.‘” Neither of these performances had quite the same staying power as “The Prince of Egypt,” but how could they? “The Prince of Egypt” is a grandiose and inimitable gift to the Jewish community.
May Val Kilmer’s memory be for a blessing.
