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PARSHA POSTS: VAYETZEI

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Alexander I. Poltorak

Dec 14, 2025, 9:59 AM

G‑d Who Dreams

Divine Dreams - Generated by ChatGPT 5.1

The last three Torah portions—Vayetze, Vayeshev, and Miketz—are saturated with dreams. What if the whole universe is one continuous dream of the Creator? Does G-d dream us into existence? I think so. From Plotinus to Schrödinger The idea that the universe...

Dec 1, 2025, 7:27 PM

From Haran to Healing: The Emotional Journey of Yaakov

The Torah’s description of Lavan offers glimpses into his personality: how his family first interacted with him, and how, over time, those relationships shifted. When Yaakov first meets Lavan, the Torah says that Lavan welcomed him because “you are my...

Dec 1, 2025, 4:53 AM

The Written Torah Scroll You Follow Was Always “Plan B”

Open your own Bible and read the timeline yourself. From the day Adam walked in Gan Eden until the day Moses died in the wilderness (2,658 years according to the ancient Jewish chronology Seder Olam Rabbah), not one complete Torah...

Nov 30, 2025, 6:21 PM

The challenge of being a child of Israel and Jacob

D'VAR TORAH Parshat VaYetze Over the course of my life, I have “left home” multiple times. Fortunately for me, each time I have left a place I called home it has been a positive choice. Like Abraham and Sarah in Genesis...

Andy Blumenthal

Nov 30, 2025, 3:51 AM

Rachel’s Cry: Empathy’s Thanksgiving Lesson

Thanksgiving—a holiday Jews in the diaspora have joyfully embraced—embodies profound gratitude for life's abundant blessings, G-d's unwavering role as our Creator and Sustainer, and the irreplaceable love from family, friends, and community. This spirit mirrors Judaism's sacred command to...

Richard Diamond

Nov 30, 2025, 3:50 AM

We Were There From the Beginning: Jews and the American Revolution

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Before the Lower East Side, Jewish colonists were helping invent the United States - testing whether a distinct minority could be fully at home in a revolutionary republic. When American Jews tell our story, we usually start with the steamship,...

Reuven Chaim Klein

Nov 29, 2025, 10:20 PM

Survivor Series – klitah, pleitah, and seridah

In a standard Chumash, at the end of every Parashah there is a comment from the Masoretes that tells the reader how many verses were in that particular Parashah and provides a mnemonic for easily memorizing that number. In general, these mnemonics consists of...

Nov 29, 2025, 10:20 PM

Jacob Without Illusions

Jacob Without Illusions: An Existential Reading of the Torah Jacob is often presented as a righteous man whose morally ambiguous actions are absorbed into “the divine plan”. In a literal reading, everything he does — deception, flight, manipulation — is...

Nov 29, 2025, 2:30 AM

The Path of Yaakov and the Path of Each of Us

When a Jew opens the weekly Torah portion, he feels that the words speak to him as vividly and directly as they once spoke to Yaakov. Not because the world has remained unchanged, and not because we resemble the...

Nov 29, 2025, 2:29 AM

A few hours before I went into labor with my first child, I told my husband that I was going to go take the last uninterrupted nap of my life. It was said in jest but I could not...

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