Multiple Beginnings
Dec 5, 2009 By David Marcus | Commentary | Vayishlah
Attentive readers may note that our Parashat Va-yishlah does not start at the beginning of its chapter (Genesis 32), rather it starts four verses down with the words “va-yishlah Yaakov malachim lefanav” (Now Jacob sent messengers ahead of him). The actual chapter starts with the words “vayashkem Lavan babboqer” (Early in the morning Laban arose) (see the enumeration in Etz Hayim), and some printed Hebrew editions, such as the Koren Tanakh before 1992, and English Bibles, such as the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Translation, start the chapter with the next verse, “veYaakov halach ledarko” (Now Jacob went on his way). From these three beginnings we see that there are various ways of starting the story of Jacob’s meeting with Esau, the story with which our parashah commences.
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The Painful Truth
Dec 25, 2009 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Vayiggash
Sometimes the midrash takes up a difficult verse and offers an interpretation that is even more opaque. This week’s Torah portion contains an example of this. We are told that initially Jacob refused to believe the brothers when they told him that Joseph was still among the living. However, “when they recounted all that Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to transport him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived” (Gen. 45:27).
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How to Read a Text
Nov 28, 2009 By Walter Herzberg | Commentary | Vayetzei
Michael Fishbane’s book Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology is a scholarly work that I find compelling, especially in those instances where the author places emphasis on experiencing the act of biblical interpretation, which “is understood to foster diverse modes of attention to textual details, which in turn cultivate correlative forms of attention to the world, and divine reality.” In other words, paying close attention to the details in the Torah is the path to deriving meaning from the Torah.
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Avraham the Avatar
Oct 7, 2009 By Carol K. Ingall | Commentary | Vayera
Although many of us recognize the word avatar as a representation of the self in computer games (a “mini-me,” or so my granddaughter tells me), in fact the term originates in Hindu mythology. An avatar is a personification or embodiment of a divine principle. While we traditionally refer to Avraham as avinu, our father, perhaps we would get a more nuanced view of this biblical hero by imagining Avraham as an avatar.
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Our Lying Patriarch
Oct 21, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Toledot
The evidence stared at us: a hot pink eye embedded in dark skin. “Which one of you did this?” my mother demanded. I, of course, knew the secret, having mashed the Bubbilicious bubble gum into a crack in the dark-stained paneling of our family room some hours earlier. My little sister, trying to be helpful, asked with what I knew to be complete innocence: “Well, what kind of gum is it?” Which was all our mother needed to hear to jump to a conclusion that brought her investigation to its end and my sister to her inevitable reprimand.
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The Power of Paradox for the Religious Life
Jan 15, 2016 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Bo
There are a few texts that have helped me get through dark and difficult periods in my religious life, first amongst them being several paragraphs by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik buried in a footnote in his essay Halakhic Man. At another stage of my life long since gone, I yearned for a simple faith in God. I yearned for a transcendent framework that might help me feel closer to a God that too many times felt too far away. I had believed that a sense of wholeness and integration were possible goals for the religious life.
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Noah’s Repetition and Contradiction
Oct 24, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Commentary | Noah
Read the Noah story—the whole thing, from the very end of Genesis 5 and not just from the beginning of the parashah—and you will immediately sense that there is a problem. Why are there so many repetitions, tensions, and outright contradictions? Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)? Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?
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Connecting to an Ancient Text
Oct 31, 2009 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
A wondrous quality of Torah study is that you can link the parashah to nearly any time, place, or subject. This puzzle is enjoyed by rabbis every week—how can I connect the ancient text to our contemporary context? I embrace this challenge, yet sometimes it makes me wonder: how much are we gleaning from the text, and how much are we interpolating?
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