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We start with Asher. Jacob's blessing, "From Asher, his bread is rich, and he will provide royal delicacies," (Genesis 49:20) seems straightforward enough. But the rabbis in Beresh...
The book of Bereshit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic homilies on the Book of Genesis, gives us a peek into just that, focusing on the patriarch Jacob and the sage Rabbeinu Yehuda ...
The sages grappled with this question, and their answers reveal fascinating insights into divine justice and human fallibility. Our story begins, as it often does, in the Book of G...
Specifically, we're looking at Bereshit Rabbah 100, which delves into the mourning of Jacob. The verse in Genesis 50:3 tells us, "Forty days were completed for him, as so are the d...
We often read the Torah focusing on the big picture, but sometimes, it's in the details that we find the most fascinating human drama. Take the story of Jacob's death and burial in...
The Torah portion of Vayechi recounts the death of Jacob and the journey to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah. We read in Genesis (50:10-11): “They came to the threshing floor of A...
Take mourning rituals, for example. The familiar seven-day period of intense mourning, the shivah. Where did that come from? Well, let's dive into Bereshit Rabbah, a classic collec...
The story of Joseph and his brothers, as told in Genesis, is a classic example. But what happens after the happy reunion, after Jacob's death and the grand funeral procession back ...
After years of slavery in Egypt, orchestrated by his own brothers’ jealousy, Joseph rose to become second-in-command to Pharaoh. When famine struck, who should come begging for foo...
