Sibling Rivalry
Listen to these words that are among the most fateful and reverberating in all of Jewish history: “Joseph recognised his brothers, but they did not
Listen to these words that are among the most fateful and reverberating in all of Jewish history: “Joseph recognised his brothers, but they did not
One of the most fundamental questions about the Torah turns out to be one of the hardest to answer. What, from the call of God
Why is Jacob, the father of our people, the hero of our faith? We are “the congregation of Jacob,” “the children of Israel.” Yet it
What kind of man was Jacob? This is the question that cries out to us in episode after episode of his life. The first time
Even before they were born, Jacob and Esau struggled in the womb. They were destined, it seems, to be eternal adversaries. Not only were they
Abraham—the Sages were convinced—was a greater religious hero than Noah. We hear this in the famous dispute among the Sages about the phrase that Noah
There is an image that haunts us across the millennia, fraught with emotion. It is the image of a man and his son walking side-by-side,
So familiar are we with the story of Abraham that we do not always stop to think about what a strange turn it is in
I once had the opportunity to ask the Catholic writer, Paul Johnson, what had struck him most about Judaism, during the long period he spent
There are festivals that give rhythm and structure to the Jewish year. Examining them carefully, however, we see that Sukkot is unusual, unique. One detail—which
(This article was published in The Huffington Post on Oct. 6, 2011) Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It
With Ha’azinu, we climb to one of the peaks of Jewish spirituality. For a month, Moses had taught the people. He had told them their