Robert Alter parallels the twins Peretz and Zerach with the better known twins Jacob and Esau. In his words, “the name Zerach means ‘shining’ as in the dawning of the sun, and so is linked with the ...

With an Modern Orthodox, Sephardi background, Rabbi Olivier Benhaim has been a student of Torah and of the Jewish way for most of his life. He lived in Israel for close to 10 years, where he studied ...

This week, the Torah opens its curtain on a new act of Jacob’s life and introduces us to Joseph, his beloved son. Though the parasha mostly focuses on the beginnings of Joseph’s epic story, it begins ...

Thus the Torah begins to chronicle an extraordinary series of events that lead by the end of the Parsha to Yosef, alone and forgotten, in the Pharaoh’s prison in Mitzrayim-The Land of the Narrow ...

civilization is half a blink of an eye. I’m the descendant of someone who lived a second ago. We all are. When the eye finally closes No one will remember our buildings or borders We’ve been promised ...

The parsha does not show a clash of good vs evil, but a deep disagreement about leadership and the path by which the people of Israel should take. Throughout all the Torah portions in the Book of ...

In Genesis Chapter 38, the second chapter of our parsha this week, we learn about a particularly challenging episode in the lives of Judah and Tamar, including how Tamar tricked Judah into having ...

Joseph is one of the most complicated and controversial characters in the Torah. Is he doing exactly what God wants him to do so the Israelite people can eventually leave ancient Egypt and be freed, ...