Vayeshev “Vayered Yehuda,” our story begins – literally, Yehuda descended. This is an emotional statement as well as a topographical one. Tamar’s story begins just as we conclude the story of Yehuda proposing that his brothers sell their younger brother Joseph. In both stories, Yehuda acts in an immoral way. The story begins by telling…
Genesis 37:1–40:23 Jacob and His Two Firstborns, Judah and Joseph There is something reassuringly stable and secure in the notion of “dwelling,” the verb that gives this week’s portion its name. It has an air of permanence, of rootedness, unlike more tentative concepts such as sojourning or abiding. The same is true of the Hebrew…
Genesis 32:4–36:42 Jacob and What Isn’t Accomplished by Force As we’ve noted, more than half the weekly portions in the Book of Genesis deal with Jacob, his personal history and his difficult family. It’s no surprise, then, that his character and profile are depicted in much finer detail in the Torah than any of his…
Toledot Genesis 25:19–28:9 Do you remember when Ross Perot, in a debate against Al Gore back in the early 1990s, got flustered by something Gore said, maybe about NAFTA or Perot’s computer company, and at a certain point he started yelling out, “Now you’re lying!” “He’s lying!” Nobody could tell who was right at that…
Genesis 25:19–28:9 Jacob: A Simple Man? The fact is that our father Jacob was a liar in his youth. It’s also true that by the end of the story, he is the most upright patriarch of them all. As opposed to Abraham and Isaac, he never told anyone that his wife was his sister. He…
While my son’s religious yeshiva recently invited mothers to an evening of mother-son learning, my daughters’ mixed-gender school decided to hold an event for women that revolves around “styling.” The flier reads: “Dear community chaverot (meaning either female members or female friends), you are invited to a unique evening on the subject of ‘Style Together’…
Genesis 23:1–25:18 The Strength to Concede Chayei Sarah, The Life of Sarah, is an interesting portion. It’s not unusual to find that a portion of the Scripture dealing with death begins with a word connected to life. Thus “The Life of Sarah” deals with the death of the matriarch at age one hundred twenty-seven; similiarly,…
I spent the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at a mother-son learning event at my son’s yeshivah. Well, it wasn’t officially a Rabin memorial event; it was more like the not-Rabin event. It was advertised as an evening to commemorate the yahrtzeit of Rachel — the matriarch, not the poet. Yes, she’s been dead a…
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