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This week’s parashah /portion is Vayishlach (Bereshit/Genesis 32:4-36:43) . It contains within three important central events in the narrative of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Bereshit /Genesis. First, Jacob prepares to reunite with his brother Esau decades after he had stolen his blessing and his birthright. The night before the reunion Jacob wrestles with a man/angel. At sunrise, before, before leaving Jacob, he blesses him and gives him the name Israel, meaning one who has struggled with the divine. Not long after this we read the disturbing incident of the rape of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter. She is raped by Shechem, the regional prince,  who then asks to marry her, because he supposedly loves her.  Jacob and his sons agree to this on the condition that Shechem and all the men of his community agree to be circumcised. While they are recovering, her brothers Shimon and Levi lead an attack and slaughter Shechem and all the men of his community. They do so supposedly in d...

This week we conclude the reading of the Book of Bereshit /Genesis with Parshat Va’yehi (Genesis 47:28-50:26). The name and first word of the parashah/ portion means, “he lived.” This refers to Jacob, who is on his deathbed. He had been brought down to Egypt to live with his beloved son Joseph, whom he thought dead for over 20 years. Now, after 17 years in Egypt he is ready, at the age of 147, for his life to end. He gathers his twelve sons around his bed (daughter Dinah has long since disappeared from the narrative. But that is for another time), as well as Manasseh and Ephraim, Joseph’s sons by his Egyptian wife Osnat. When he blesses his two grandsons, he crosses his hands, thereby giving the preferred blessing of the elder child to the younger. And so, this family tradition that blessed Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau and Judah over his elder brothers continues on to the next generation. It has always struck me, and many others, how Dinah disappears after ...

This week's parashah/ portion is Va'yishlakh ( Bereshit / Genesis 32:4 – 36:43). The parashah begins with Jacob wrestling through the night with the stranger/divine being/angel (take your pick) and his reunion with his brother Esau. It then continues with one of the most disturbing narratives in the Torah, the rape of Jacob's only daughter Dinah. In this narrative (Gen. Ch. 34) Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, “goes out to see the women of the land.” Then, Shekhem, the son of Hivite, chief of the country in which they were dwelling (also called Shekhem) “saw her, and took her and lay with her by force.” We then read that he is in love with “the maiden” Dinah and he demands that his father get her for him as a wife. Hamor negotiates with Jacob for Dinah. Jacob has already heard of Dinah's rape, but says nothing. His sons, who had been working in the fields, are incensed by the fact that Shekhem had “committed an outrage against Israel by lying ...