Joseph: Mensch or Menace?
With this week’s Torah portion, we enter the final four (Torah portions, that is) of the Book of Genesis.
Tamar’s Staff, Signet Seal, and Cord
This portion can be read as the first of the Joseph stories or the culmination of the sibling rivalry that has plagued the families of Genesis.
Judah: Our Overlooked Patriarch
Among the prominent themes of the Book of Genesis are sibling rivalry, the supplanting of the firstborn by a younger brother, and difficult family dynamics in general. The pattern is repeated with Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and Esau and Jacob.
From the Coat of Many Colors to a Simple Garment: The Unmaking of Joseph
It is said that clothes make the man. But in this week's portion, Vayeishev, they have a great deal to do with the unmaking of Joseph.
She Died unto Me
Four years after my grandfather died, my grandmother remarried. She changed her last name from Dunsker to Hyman, and two months later her second husband died of a heart attack. But she kept the last name Hyman for the rest of her life until she died fifteen years later.
Blessing Our Children
In Va-y'chi, the final parashah from the Book of Genesis, we confront a beautiful and touching deathbed scene, fraught with decades of underlying tension and competition.
The End of Genesis . . . But Only the Beginning of Our People's Story
This Shabbat, we conclude the Book of Genesis with Parashat Va-y'chi. Whenever we finish reading a book, even a book of Torah, it is important to reflect on where we have been, what we have covered since the beginning of the book.
Holding Out for a Hero?
Say My Name, Say My Name
During my first summer at URJ’s Olin-Sang Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) summer camp, I was a mere eleven years old. As the oldest of four children, I had a very clear role and identity in my family, and my social circles in school were also fixed.
Love Yourself When Your Neighbors Won’t
This week's Torah reading, Parashat Balak, helps us consider the effects of persecution on our psyches. In it, we encounter Balaam, a prophet for hire, whom the Moabite king Balak enlists to curse the Israelites. Balaam, however, is unable to fulfill his commission. Balaam recounts:
From Aram has Balak brought me,
Moab's king from the hills of the East:
Come, curse me Jacob, Come, tell Israel's doom!
How can I damn whom God has not damned,
How doom when the Eternal has not doomed?
As I see them from the mountain tops,
Gaze on them from the heights,
There is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations, . . . (Numbers 23:7-9)
Balaam, looking down at the Children of Israel's camp from the heights of the surrounding peaks, sums up the people's history up to that point and well into the future: "There is a people that dwells apart, / Not reckoned among the nations," he sings.