Yehuda HaNasi: With Yehoshua ben Chananyah, you smuggled your teacher, Yochanan ben Zakkai, out of a besieged Jerusalem in a coffin. He proceeded to create the yeshivah at Yavneh and the rabbis who would defy Rome. You helped to save the ...
Posted on 18 December 2018, By Nahum Gordon
At the core of Parashat Vayechi are Jacob’s dying blessings for his sons. Actually the word ‘blessings’ here is a misnomer, or at the very least a deep irony, as most of Jacob’s words contain some extremely blunt feedback. Jacob...
Posted on 18 December 2018, By Matt Plen
This week’s parashah is rightly famed for the speech in which Judah stands before the fearsome Viceroy of Egypt to plea for the safety of Benjamin. It contains the moment where the Viceroy finally reveals, “I am Joseph”, and the fam...
Posted on 11 December 2018, By Rabbi Jeremy Gordon