The drama of younger and older brothers, which haunts the book of Bereishit from Cain and Abel onwards, reaches a strange climax in the story of Joseph’s children. Jacob/Israel is nearing the end of his life. Joseph visits him, bringing with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. It is the only scene of grandfather and grandchildren in the book….
…And yet the Torah doesn’t begin that way. That is what is odd. It begins with a purely universal set of narratives, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Babel and its builders. And only with the 12th chapter of Bereishit, do we hear the first recorded syllables of Jewish time, “Lech lecha, mayartzecha, umimmolad’techa, u’mibeit avicha,…
…the right person at the right time is a feature not only of leadership, but of human goodness in general. Rashi begins his commentary to Bereishit with the question: If the Torah is a book of law, why does it not start with the first law given to the people of Israel as a whole, which does not appear until…
For each of us there are milestones on our spiritual journey that change the direction of our life and set us on a new path. For me one such moment came when I was a rabbinical student at Jews’ College and thus had the privilege of studying with one of the great rabbinic scholars of our time, Rabbi Dr. Nachum…
…about it. So did the greatest. To feel fear is fine. To give way to it is not. For God has faith in us all even though, at times, even the best of us lack faith in ourselves. [1] Bereishit Rabbah 77:3. [2] He sets this out in his commentary to Genesis 37:2. [3] See Robert Alter, The Art of…
…at night with an angel, that as dawn broke his adversary begged him to let him go. “I will not let you go until you bless me”, said Jacob. (Bereishit 32:27) That is the source of our peculiar, distinctive obstinacy. We may have fought all night. We may be tired and on the brink of exhaustion. We may find ourselves…
…of listening, see parshat Bereishit, “The Art of Listening,” and parshat Eikev, “The Spirituality of Listening.” Where else could God have chosen to give the Torah to the Children of Israel? Why do you think He chose the desert instead? Why is listening important? Why is it “supreme religious art”? Do you find it hard to listen? How can you…
The sequence from Bereishit 37 to 50 is the longest unbroken narrative in the Torah, and there can be no doubt who its hero is: Joseph. The story begins and ends with him. We see him as a child, beloved – even spoiled – by his father; as an adolescent dreamer, resented by his brothers; as a slave, then a…
…it, he will come.” Bereishit begins with God making the cosmos. Shemot ends with human beings making a micro-cosmos, a miniature and symbolic universe. Thus the entire narrative of Genesis-Exodus is a single vast span that begins and ends with the concept of God-filled space, with this difference: that in the beginning the work is done by God-the-Creator. By the…
…as teachers and in specific instances as judges. The key words of the priest are kodesh and chol (holy and secular), tamei and tahor (impure and pure). The single most important passage in the Torah that speaks in the priestly voice is Chapter 1 of Bereishit, the narrative of creation. Here too a key verb is lehavdil, to divide, which…