Wholly Jacob

Wholly Jacob

Dec 16, 2016 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Vayishlah

Among the thrills in superhero movies is seeing the good guy take a pummeling and then stand unscathed in the next scene, ready again for battle. “Nobody else could survive that punishment,” we gush. The indestructible superhero comes to mind while reading of Jacob’s return to Canaan after living under Laban’s thumb, then wrestling with a mysterious man, then encountering Esau—a man who’s had twenty years to stew in a fratricidal rage.

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Who We Are and Where We’re Going

Who We Are and Where We’re Going

Nov 20, 2010 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Vayishlah

Can we ever break free from the troubled darkness of our past?

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An Infinity of Interpretation

An Infinity of Interpretation

Nov 27, 1993 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayishlah

There are ten passages in the Torah where dots appear above the letters of one or more words. The technique derives from the rabbis, who borrowed it from the early grammarians in Alexandria, and is intended to arrest the reader’s attention. In this week’s parasha, we meet an especially interesting example.

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Legislating Intimacy

Legislating Intimacy

Dec 1, 2001 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayishlah

Judaism is not an ascetic religion. It makes no virtue of mortifying the flesh. At the end of Shabbat, a day devoted to the renewal of body and soul, we ask God not only to forgive our sins, but also to increase the number of our children and our financial assets.

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The History of Jewish Foreign Affairs

The History of Jewish Foreign Affairs

Nov 19, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayishlah

The meeting of Jacob and Esau after a separation of twenty years is preceded by a slow and suspenseful build-up. The Torah’s exquisite narrative skill does not allow the story to rush headlong to its climax. For our part, we would much prefer to hurry through Jacob’s extensive preparations, at least till we reach his night-long bout with an unknown adversary, which ends in the bestowal of a new name on Jacob: “Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed (Genesis 32:29).”

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Grappling with the Rape of Dinah

Grappling with the Rape of Dinah

Nov 30, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayishlah

At first blush there is nothing redeeming about chapter 34 of Genesis. it is a story of rape and revenge full of deceit and brutality. Jacob has returned to the land of Canaan, found his brother Esau to be without grudge for past slights and settled near the city of Shechem with the intent to stay. While on a visit to the city, Dinah, his one daughter, is abducted and raped by the son of the country’s ruler, who then falls in love with her and wishes to marry her.

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A Wounded Leader

A Wounded Leader

Dec 13, 1997 By Allan Kensky | Commentary | Vayishlah

For the past nine years, one of my assignments in the Rabbinical School has been to lead a year long, twice-weekly seminar in professional and spiritual development for our first year students. Our overarching theme for the year is the life-cycle of the Jew. We discuss and examine the major life-cycle rituals. We explore some of the larger societal issues of each turning point in the life-cycle with an eye towards their impact on the individual and their challenge to the contemporary rabbi. Students study rabbinic sources and halakhic texts on the life-cycle, gradually integrating these texts into their emerging rabbinic personality.

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The Comfort of a Forgotten Poem

The Comfort of a Forgotten Poem

Dec 5, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayishlah

Jacob’s life with his beloved Rachel is cut painfully short by her death in childbirth. After a long absence and before he has a chance to build a permanent home in the land promised by God, he loses the treasure acquired abroad. It was a relationship marked by love and adversity. Seeing Rachel for the first time at the well in Haran filled Jacob with the strength to remove unaided its heavy stone covering (Genesis 29:10-11). The intensity of his affection is conveyed by the fact that Jacob worked for Laban, his father-in-law, for fourteen years to win the right to marry her. And his resolve is undiminished by the fraud committed by Laban, which saddles Jacob with Leah, Rachel’s older sister, as his first, unsought-for wife. Rachel is the more comely of the two, and the Torah tells us unabashedly that Jacob “loved Rachel more than Leah (Genesis 29:30).”

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