Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth…(Genesis 28:14). The ancient Aramaic translation of Onkelos adjusts this straightforward verse and reads: Your descendants shall be many like the dust of the earth…Why add the word “many”? R. Jacob Zevi Meklenburg explains that it is impossible for the number of people to equal “the

And there was a famine in the land besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham, and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. Why mention that this famine is besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham? Netziv explains that God brought a famine in

And Abraham said to his servant, elder of his household, who ruled over all things that were his, “Put your hand, pray, under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the LORD, God of the heavens and God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the

On the day of the Binding of Isaac, we are told: And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took his two lads with him, and Isaac his son…Rashi praises Abraham who acted with alacrity and woke early to fulfil God’s impossibly difficult commandment. The Brisker Rov is reported to have

And the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house to the land I will show you. Why did God not show Abraham the land beforehand? Rav Gifter explained that the land of Israel is a place where God reveals things to people, for the land itself

And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives came into the ark…of the clean animals and of the animals that were not clean and of the fowl and of all that crawls upon the ground two each came to Noah into the ark…The Torah describes the animals coming into the ark

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

Ecclesiastes directly touches our deepest questions about purpose, meaning, love, work, life and death. A recent study argues that the book is one long meditation on the life of Adam, the first human being. For example, the most famous passage of Ecclesiastes reads: There is a time for birth and a time for death; a

This year, the first day of Sukkot coincides with Shabbat. Two commandments animate the festival of Sukkot – living in the Sukkah and shaking the arbat minim – four species. On Shabbat we continue to live in the Sukkah but take a pause from shaking the arbat minim. To explain this difference, many reasons are

Maimonides opens the Laws of Repentance as follows: If a person transgresses any of the mitzvot of the Torah, whether a positive command or a negative command - whether willingly or inadvertently - when he repents, and returns from his sin, he must confess before God, blessed be He, as the Torah states "If a