…Genesis 18:1–2 Thus Parshat Vayera opens with one of the most famous scenes in the Bible: Abraham’s meeting with the three enigmatic strangers. The text calls them men. We later discover that they were in fact angels, each with a specific mission. The chapter at first glance seems simple, almost fable-like. It is, however, complex and ambiguous. It consists of…
Sitting in his hotel room in New York on the morning of 16th November 2016, Rabbi Sacks suddenly had a thought about a connection between the late Leonard Cohen’s song “You Want It Darker”, the current state of the world and this week’s parsha of Vayera. So he took out his phone to record his ideas… Here is a rather…
I have written about the binding of Isaac many times in these studies, each time proposing an interpretation somewhat different from the ones given by the classic commentators. I do so for a simple reason. The Torah, and Tanach generally, regard child sacrifice as one of the worst of evils. Child sacrifice was widely practised in the ancient world. In…
…is disapproved of biblically: see Deut. 13:13-19, 1 Samuel 15:13-26, Esther 9:10, 9:15-16. [2] The Midrash is critical of Dina: see Midrash Aggadah (Buber) to Gen. 34:1. Midrash Sechel Tov is even critical of her mother Leah for permitting her to go out to Shechem. [3] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 9:14. [4] Arama, Akeidat Yitzchak, Bereishit, Vayera, Gate 20, s.v. UVeMidrash. [5] Sternberg, Meir. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative:…
…Esau’s clothes and takes his blessing from their father Yitzchak, who is now blind. In between these two stories is a narrative about Yitzchak and Rebecca going to Gerar because of famine, very similar to the story told about Avraham and Sarah in chapter 20 of Genesis (Parshat Vayera). The Core Idea In Genesis 21 we read about an argument…
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…
There is a mystery at the heart of Jewish existence, engraved into the first syllables of our recorded time. The first words of God to Abraham were: “Go out from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house . . . And I will make you a great nation . . .” In the next chapter there is another promise:…
The stories told in Bereishit chapters 21 and 22 – the sending away of Ishmael and the binding of Isaac – are among the hardest to understand in the whole of Tanach. Both involve actions that strike us as almost unbearably harsh. But the difficulties they present go deeper even than that. Recall that Abraham was chosen “so that he…
The Torah does not have a word for ambivalence (the nearest is Elijah’s question to the Baal-worshipping Israelites: “How long will you waver between two opinions?”). It does, however, have a tune for it. This is the rare note known as the shalshelet. It appears three times in Bereishit, each time at a moment of crisis for the individual concerned….
“God appeared to Abraham in Elonei Mamrei, as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.” The eighteenth chapter of Bereishit is structurally difficult to understand. It can be divided into three parts: 1. God appears to Abraham as he is sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the…