PEACE IN OUR TIME? Cast your minds back to the period before 7th October. Jewish press around the world contained reflections on fifty years since the Yom Kippur war. Israel was no longer threatened with an existential threat from without. Considerable progress had been made on normalising relations with the Gulf States, and an agreement...
WHOLESOMENESS Jacob sent lavish gifts to his brother Easu. He fought with an angel and was injured. He met his brother and the encounter was not as traumatic as he feared. The Torah then tells us: “Jacob arrived in the city of Shechem, shalem or complete.” (Bereishit 33:18) The Talmud, quoted by Rashi, homes in...
EINSTEIN AND THE MESSIAH A century ago, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in which he developed further his ideas of space and time. The classical model of a world of three dimensions of space (width, length, and height) with time being an independent quantity, was superseded by an intertwined four-dimensional world of...
ESAU’S CLOTHING There is a glaring question at the heart of this week’s parasha. Rebecca instructed Jacob to dress up as his brother, Esau and ‘steal’ the blessings from his father, Isaac. If Rebecca thought Esau was unworthy of receiving the blessing, why didn’t she communicate directly with her husband? There were good grounds for...
SARAH’S STRENGTHS The first verse of our parasha seems unnecessarily repetitive in its use of the word, ‘years.’: “And Sarah’s lifetime was one hundred years, twenty years and seven years, the years of Sarah’s lifetime.”(Bereishit 23:1) Our major commentator, Rashi (d. 1105) makes an observation that, at first glance, strains credulity. He says: The repetition...
