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
One reason religion has survived in the modern world despite four centuries of secularization is that it answers the three questions every reflective human being
In a parsha laden with laws, one in particular is full of fascination. Here it is: If a man has two wives, one loved, the
