When one reads the story of how Rivkah pushed her son Yaakov to deceive his father into giving him the blessings instead of to Esav, we usually tend to think about the deceit. We overlook other factors. What happens when an unsuitable candidate seems to be heading for a position of such importance that if the wrong or a corrupt…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Lack of Communication
Rivalries, disagreements between Esav and Yaakov echo earlier family conflicts. From Cain and Abel, through Avraham and Lot and then Yishmael and Yitzchak. It will of course be continued between Yosef and his brothers and then between the tribes, even to the point of going to war against each other. In most cases, it is a lack of communication that…
Sibling Rivalry
The Torah this week is all about the rivalry and tension between Yaakov and Esav. They were twins but completely different in appearance, temperament and mentality. The competition between them fills these chapters. As the tension gets worse Rivkah decides she must part the brothers and wants to send Yaakov off to her family to build his life in another…
Mourning
This week’s reading from the Torah starts off by recording Sarah’s death and then goes on to say that “Avraham came to mourn her and to cry over her.” In general, there are two very different processes involved when someone dies. First comes the shock of the loss, the numbness. And then comes the adjustment. The integration of one’s memory…
Laws of Mourning
Surprisingly there are no actual laws in the Torah about mourning. There are references to death, burial and periods of mourning. But none specified in the lists of laws. Our forefathers and mothers died, were buried and in an ambiguous and difficult phrase that might have been referring either to an afterlife or an ossuary “were gathered to their people.”…
A Hittite
Avraham decides he wants to acquire the Cave of Mahpela as a family burial location. It belongs to Efron the Hittite. The Hittite empire was based in central Turkey. Which illustrates that Avraham and his family were not the only migrants then. Relations with the Hittites seems to have been good. Yet the convoluted formal negotiations strike us as strange.…