Rabbi Chanoch Waxman
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The end of the Parshat Vayetzeh contains significant motifs that parallel the beginning of the parsha. This structure highlights a contrast between Yaakov...
Prof. Jonathan Grossman
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Reviewing the continuum of the birth of Yaakov's sons, we note that it is interrupted twice. First, after the birth of Leah's first four sons, a difficult...
Rabbi Elchanan Samet
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Why is it that the well serves as a choice site for meeting future wives in three biblical stories (Yitzchak, Yaakov and Moshe)? What is the role of the...
Part 8 - Linguistic Phenomena in the Biblical Text
Rabbi Amnon Bazak
Classical commentators raise different exegetical possibilities that seem to resemble proposals for emending the text. However, they do so within the...
Rabbi Elchanan Samet
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Parashat Vayetze is unique in that it consists of a single Masoretic parasha, i.e., one paragraph of 148 uninterrupted consecutive verses. Though...
Rabbi Zeev Weitman
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The story of the birth of Yaakov and Esav, their upbringing, the stolen blessing, and Yaakov's departure to Haran can be seen as two separate narratives,...
Rabbi Ezra Bick
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The question of why Yitzchak wanted to give Esav the berakhot (blessings) is one of the most widely discussed by commentators on Bereishit. This article...
Part 7 - Textual Amendments
Rabbi Amnon Bazak
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An examination of several proposals to amend the biblical text shows that while the amendment might make sense on a superficial level, they miss various...
Part 6 - Textual Witnesses and Textual Amendments
Rabbi Amnon Bazak
The Masoretic text is the most complete and most accurate extant testimony for the Tanakh, nevertheless, there are many other ancient textual witnesses,...
Part 5 - Development of the Masoretic Text
Rabbi Amnon Bazak
The Masoretic version is indeed accepted as authoritative, but since the Tanakh is such a remarkably complex work, including tens of thousands of details...
