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It all boils down to a pot of stew. Genesis 25:29 tells us, "Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came from the field and he was weary." Simple enough. But within that weariness, and with...
We find a fascinating, and perhaps unsettling, answer in Bereshit Rabbah 63, a section of the ancient Midrash that delves into the lives of Abraham and Isaac, and the troublesome f...
We often hear it as a simple transaction: Esau was hungry, Jacob offered food in exchange for the birthright, end of story. But, as always, the Rabbis see layers upon layers, depth...
Take the story of Jacob and Esau and that fateful bowl of lentil stew. We often think of it as a simple transaction, a hungry Esau trading away his birthright for a quick meal. But...
Let’s look at Isaac, the son of Abraham. The book of Genesis tells us, "There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was during the days of Abraham, and Isaac went...
Jewish tradition certainly sees patterns in the past, especially when it comes to times of hardship. We find a fascinating example of this in Bereshit Rabbah 64, a collection of ra...
Our ancestor Isaac certainly did. The Torah tells us that Isaac went to Avimelekh, king of the Philistines, in Gerar (Genesis 26:1). But where exactly was Gerar? Bereshit Rabbah, t...
But did he just follow the big commandments, the obvious ones? Or was there something more? Genesis 26:5 tells us that Abraham "heeded My voice, and observed My commission, My comm...
Jewish tradition recognizes that life throws curveballs. But it also offers a comforting perspective: time can be a healer. Our story today comes from Bereshit Rabbah (Genesis Rabb...
