FAMILY REUNION Much of the country is gearing up for annual festive season celebrations. Media outlets discuss menus and the tricky dynamics of family members and friends who have not been together for some time. Family dynamics of a different kind emerge in this week’s parasha. When Joseph has revealed his identity to his brothers,...
HIS FATHER’S VALUES Our patriarch Jacob was one of the wisest and holiest men in the world in his time. Yet, for all his closeness to G-d and spiritual insight, his son Joseph had disappeared and he had no idea what had really happened to him. Was he still alive or had he been torn...
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model of a world of three dimensions of space (width, length, and height) with time being an independent quantity, was superseded by an intertwined four-dimensional world of...
