Given the scriptural evidence cited above it seems reasonable to infer that associating the dwelling in booths of the Israelites during their long journey through the Sinai desert was rather a late development that was projected retrospectively on the days of Sinai.
It is time now for Joseph to reveal his true identity – his brothers just completed a full regimen of penance; they experienced remorse, confessed their crime, and walked away from another opportunity to reiterate a similar woe.
In the absence of a better option, we may consider the possibility – though not mentioned in the Torah – that Abraham sent off Ishmael his son and his mother to Grar, and the parsimonious provisions should have been sufficient for a quick walk to Grar
When it comes to food God exclusively and quickly weighs in with the first humans on the sustenance of all creatures; all were positively assigned the seeded plant and fruit produce, and “the green plants” on earth (Genesis 1:29).
What is the connection between this week’s Torah portion's permission to Israelites, soldiers in a war zone to abduct an enemy female woman and God’s permission to Noah (following the end of the flood) to kill animals for food?
Our weekly Torah portion demands of us to ‘’love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your might’’ (Deuteronomy 6:5). When we recall the highly dramatic narrative of the Binding of Isaac, it is quite apparent after a cursory reading of the text (Genesis 22) that Abraham loved his God even more than he loved Isaac...
We do not need the story of Bilaam’s donkey (or more specifically she-ass), featured prominently in this week’s Torah portion, to know that it would be a mistake to call a dumb person ‘’an ass’’; an asinine person should rather be called ‘’Bilaam’’…
In Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. words: ‘’…He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it’’. Or as in baseball, three strikeouts and you are out...
This Torah portion Tetsaveh is unique if only because it is the only portion in the Torah (since we have been introduced to Moses at the beginning of Exodus) where his name per se is absent...
