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B’shallah: Earning Eternal Enmity

At the very end of this week's portion, the newly freed Israelites are attacked by Amalek. After the attack is rebuffed, and after Joshua, the Israelites' commanding officer, inflicts casualties on the aggressors, Moses declares (Exodus 17:16): "God will wage war against Amalek from generation to generation." Who were the Amalekites, and how did they earn God's eternal enmity?Bo: The Point of the Exodus

Nothing God does in the Bible is as self-consciously over-the-top as the Exodus. This week's reading shares the most intense moment thus far in the lives of the already harried Israelite slaves.Va’era: Rhyme and Reason in the Ten Plagues

By Moshe Sokolow This week’s Torah portion features seven of the ten plagues that are to strike Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the land of Egypt itself.  Their variety invites the question of whether they in general, and their sequence in particular, are random or reasoned.Sh’mot: Six Women and Moses

In a series of crucial moments in the Torah, the deepest instincts of salvation come to the fore and powerful, unthinking truths prove to be the path not only to righteousness but to redemption. These are moments that often appear to contradict ideas of universal right and wrong; in them, the affirmation of self obliterates fairness and equanimity, love trumps law, and saving your child or your future is the only right worth knowing. They involve the intervention of women.Vayigash: Three Heroes, Three Paths

This week, the life stories of three great biblical figures—Judah, Joseph, and Jacob—all come to a head, as each of these individuals learns to rely on his strengths to help him overcome his weaknesses.Mikeitz: A Concatenation of Coincidences?

One of the recurring puzzles in biblical theology concerns the balance between reliance upon divine intervention, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the assumption of personal initiative. As we near the denouement of the saga of Joseph, we have an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into this conundrum.Vayeishev: Judah, Not Reuben

When two figures in the Bible face a similar situation but respond to it differently, pay close attention: there's a lesson in the difference. A few weeks ago, I pointed this out in connection with Abraham and Lot. Another example occurs in the book of I Samuel, where King Saul and King David provide contrasting object lessons in the admitting of fault—in David's case, fault for having a man killed in order to take his wife. Still another occurs in this week's reading, where Reuben and Judah, sons of Jacob, present similarly parallel but morally divergent instances.Vayishlah: Face to Face

The Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon is said to have compared reading a text in translation to kissing a bride through her veil. This week's Torah portion affords a good opportunity to look at some of what we may be missing through the veil of translation.Vayeitzei: The First Israelite

This week's reading throws us directly into the meandering stories of Jacob, grandson of Abraham, the last and most defining of Israel's patriarchs. The great 19th-century commentator Samson Raphael Hirsch once wrote that, as an archetype, the figure of Jacob embodies the diverse qualities of his twelve sons, who gave their names to the Israelite tribes. The kingly wisdom of Judah, the dedication of Levi, the scrappy resourcefulness of Joseph: in later generations, each tribe could see Jacob as its special forefather.Toldot: Why Can’t Esau be More like Jacob?

Rebecca had a difficult pregnancy. "The children agitated within her, causing her to exclaim: If this is so, wherefore am I? So she went to inquire of God" (Genesis 25:22). Talmudic legend supplies the cause of the agitation: whenever she passed by an idolatrous temple, Esau would stir in her womb; whenever she passed by a study hall for Torah, Jacob would rouse himself. As the biblical text informs us, she learned from God that the twins she was carrying would become antagonists until, ultimately, the elder would come to serve the younger.