Posts Tagged: Vayera
Who Is Testing Us?
JNS.org - On Shabbat, we will read the Torah portion Vayera and the poignant drama of the akeidah, the binding of Isaac, which is the...
Lot’s Wife and Remembering the Righteous
You’ve probably never heard of the Sanctuary of Agios Lot, a Byzantine era monastery that is now a pilgrimage site, which consists of church ruins...
Answering the Call: Parshat Vayera
The early history of humanity is set out in the Torah as a series of disappointments. God gave human beings freedom, which they then misused....
Parshat Vayera: The Need to Live With Uncertainty
I have written about the binding of Isaac many times in these studies, each time proposing an interpretation somewhat different from the ones given by...
Parshat Vayera: Sometimes We Must Put Humans Before God
God appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. He...
The Space Between Us
The stories told in Bereishit chapters 21 and 22 -- the sending away of Ishmael and the binding of Isaac -- are among the hardest to understand...
The Miracle of Children
There is a mystery at the heart of Jewish existence, engraved into the first syllables of our recorded time. The first words of God to Abraham...
The Hardest Part of Love is Letting Go
There is a mystery at the heart of the biblical story of Abraham, and it has immense implications for our understanding of Judaism. Who was Abraham...
The Lesson of the Binding of Isaac: We Don’t Own Our Children
"Take your son, your only son, the one you love—Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I...
Answering God’s Call to Responsibility
The early history of humanity as told in the Torah is a series of disappointments. God gives human beings freedom, which they then misuse. Adam...
