[Seriously, my first exposure to this story is through what used to be called “Negro Spirituals”; the lyrics went like this:  “Jacob dreamt he saw a ladder reachin’ to the sky;  angels comin’ up and downin’;  climb up chil’lun climb!” I’m not sure if race sensitivity has changed what is considered as offensive language from “Negro […]

[From the very first careful and in-depth reading of the narratives about the twins Esau and Isaac, the twin who caught our attention was Esau, not Isaac.  We know that Rabbinic as well as Christian commentators tend to stereotype him as a man who gives in to his carnal desires, and because of the Edomites […]

[This chapter begins with a strange ‘deja vu’ except the first two times, the experience was related to Abraham . . . now almost exactly the same experience happens to 2nd generation Yitschaq.  It is this kind of repetition that sometimes makes you wonder if the copyists of the Hebrew Scriptures might have made mistakes, […]

[Unbracketted commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H.Hertz which is a collection of rabbinic and non-Jewish scholarly interpretation of the Torah books. When commentators go beyond the plain meaning of the text, you wonder what is the agenda for doing so; usually it’s the religious perspective that gets in the way of objectivity.  This is […]

[At the bottom of this page, the image of a book might interest you —- well, not so much the image but the title of the book!  For the longest time, we have agreed with the attribution to Abraham as the patriarch to whom three major monotheistic world religions trace their roots: Judaism, Christianity, Islam […]

[Unbracketed commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; the translation/commentary is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, with additional commentary from RA/Robert Alter.—Admin1.] —————————————————————- Genesis/Bereshith 24 1 Now Avraham was old, advanced in days, and YHVH had blessed Avraham in everything well stricken in age. See XVIII,11. 2 Avraham said to his servant, the elder […]

[Until we started reading Rabbinic commentary on the Torah, we missed the connection between the previous chapter and this one. Supposedly, the reason Sarah dies (aside from old age) is because of the heartbreak she–as any mother of a one and only son–goes through from knowing that Abraham will dutifully fulfill the most shocking instruction […]

[Once again, prepare for a lonnnnggggg read—-parts of the TORAH need more explanation than others; and definitely this chapter is crucial to the understanding of what the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham was TRULY about and . . . sorry to have to keep correcting Christian teaching, but this is not a prefiguration of the […]

[Finally, the child of promise is born, and we’re not talking about you-know-who.  Just the thought of Sarah having a firstborn son at her age, that’s the true miraculous conception and birth! The most ideal age for childbearing is said to be from teens and before the age of 30; in fact birth defects are […]