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Featured

Hearing the Cry: Miriam, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and Moral Courage

Hearing the Cry: Miriam, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and Moral Courage

Jan 9, 2026 By Naomi Kalish | Commentary | Shemot

At times of difficulty, uncertainty, and strife, I often find comfort and courage in stories, especially stories about people who connect and transform or resolve conflict. This week’s parsha, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), gives me such a story of hope in its portrayal of the relationship between two people from groups in conflict.

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Pictures at a Benediction: Envisioning Jacob’s Blessing of his Sons

Pictures at a Benediction: Envisioning Jacob’s Blessing of his Sons

Jan 2, 2026 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Vayehi

what did Jacob’s bedchamber look like when the brothers came to receive their final blessings—and curses? (Gen. 49) I have found numerous artistic renderings, but two in particular caught my attention because of how differently they paint the scene.

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A Song of Hope

A Song of Hope

Dec 26, 2025 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Vayiggash

In a curious foreshadowing of the book of Exodus, in this week’s Torah reading (Gen. 46:8) we read, “Ve’eleh shemot—These are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt . . .” This is verbatim the same report as the opening verse of the book of Exodus. But there, the names are limited only to Jacob’s actual sons, and the full enumeration of their own offspring is absent.

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A Light for One, a Light for a Hundred

A Light for One, a Light for a Hundred

Dec 19, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Miketz | Hanukkah

When I look at the Prato Haggadah in our exhibition at the Grolier Club, I think of the man who once protected it. His name was Ludwig Pollak. Born in Prague in 1868, Pollak became one of Rome’s leading Jewish scholars of classical art. He directed the Museo Barracco, advised the Vatican’s archaeological collections, and […]

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Judah and Tamar: Writing the Story

Judah and Tamar: Writing the Story

Dec 12, 2025 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Vayeshev

One of the most gripping stories in the entire Bible appears in this week’s parashah. Chapter 38, a self-contained unit, interrupts the ongoing Joseph saga to tell the story of Judah and Tamar.

The chapter opens with the somewhat strange statement that Judah leaves his brothers, meets up with Hirah the Adulamite, and there, in Adulam, finds himself a wife of Canaanite stock. He thereby violates God’s warning to the patriarchs to avoid Canaanite women (Gen. 24:3, 28:1). Judah’s wife bears him three sons. He marries off his first son, Er, to Tamar. No information is provided about her lineage. Er dies because he was “displeasing to the Lord” (v. 7).

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