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Hayei Sarah: The Role of the Nameless

Literarily speaking, this week's portion may seem a bit of a bust. Gone, at least temporarily, are the intense, symbolic, high signal-to-noise ratio stories that have until now made the Bible such a riveting read. This week, we contend with the long winds of Eliezer of Damascus, servant to Abraham. His story is dry and bizarrely repetitive.Vayera: Did Abraham Keep Kosher? (Do Angels?)

By Moshe Sokolow It was the prophet Isaiah who conferred on Abraham and Sarah the honorific titles of metaphysical first parents, saying: "Listen to me, you who pursue justice and seek God; look toward the rock whence you were hewn and toward the pit whence you were dug. Look toward Abraham, your father, and toward Sarah, who bore you" (Isaiah 51:1-2). Indeed, the relentless pursuit of justice and a persistent, often pernickety, commitment to the traditional religious beliefs and cultural mores modeled by these ancestors have lasted with the Jewish people throughout the ages.Lekh L’kha: The Patriarch’s Perils

This week's reading offers a new sort of narrative. Behind us are the laconic, overtly symbolic, context-free tales of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. Now, with the stories of Abraham, we get for the first time a kind of biographical sketch, a whole series of episodes spanning many chapters and forming a coherent portrait of a life.Noah: The Too-Tall Tower

The builders of the Tower of Babel had their work cut out for them. The alluvial plain of Mesopotamia (formed by the Flood) had no quarries that would yield monumental stone. Instead, they molded and fired bricks and substituted raw bitumen for mortar. Through the power of technological ingenuity, they freed themselves from their environmental constraints. By ordinary standards, and notwithstanding their exaggerated hopes for the height of their planned tower with its "head in the heavens," they would seem to have been in line for applause and congratulations. Nitzavim-Vayelekh: The Last Mitzvah

A well-known talmudic tradition reports that there are exactly 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah. Of the total, 248 are positive (the do's), while 365 are negative (the don'ts).  Not all the sages are in complete agreement on this enumeration, with some arriving at a higher number. But the custom has long been to speak of 613 mitzvot—or, in Hebrew, taryag mitzvot, based on the numeric values assigned to letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Ki Tavo: The Mystery of Goodness

By David Hazony Nearing the end of his farewell address to the Israelites, Moses describes a peculiar ceremony they are to perform after entering Canaan.Shoftim: Judgment Call

"Judges and officers shall you make for yourself in all your gates," we are told at the opening of this week's reading, "and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment." The declaration seems obvious at first blush. Who wouldn't want righteous judges? Yet the Bible—more so, perhaps, than any other text of the ancient world—is singularly attentive to this issue of judges, making it into one of the central demands of the Torah.Devarim: Untimely Farewell

Standing in the desert of Moav, poised to send the Israelites into the Promised Land without his own titanic presence to lead the way, Moses begins his last and greatest speech.