“Jacob answered Pharaoh: ‘The years of my sojourn [on earth] are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life spans of my fathers during their sojourns.” (Genesis 47:9) Read more...

Parashat Vayigash , our Torah portion for this week, opens with a still disguised Joseph playing yet another trick on his bewildered brothers who have shown up in Egypt looking to purchase food many years after having sold him off as a slave to a caravan of Egypt bound merchants. While Joseph, now viceroy of the mighty Egyptian Empire, immediately recognized his long lost brothers, they fail – time and again – to recognize this tyrant who insists on torturing them with his absurd requests. Read more...

Vayiggash is perhaps best translated as to "come-closer." The verb is most often used in the Torah to depict a lessening of physical distance between one party and another. But it can have a psychic component as well, signaling imminent rapport and rapprochement, or its opposite - the possibility of failure - and thusly all the heightened tension that comes with drawing too near. Read more...

People never believe me, but it is always the most innocent of Rashi's commentary (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) that are the most revolutionary. When I quote Prof. Moshe Idel, in his book Kabbalah- New Perspectives, as saying that when Rashi says, "kif'shutow" (literally, "the literal meaning") he is actually masking secrets of the Kabbalah, then I at least get the rise of an eyebrow. Some are willing to even entertain the notion since I'm now supported by a renowned scholar. Read more...

"Vayigash eilav Yehuda" - "And Yehuda approached him." (Breishit/Genesis 44, 18) These three words create the world of transformation. Yehuda (Judah) doesn't approach "Yoseph" (Joseph) but rather approaches "him". You may ask if this truly makes such a difference, am I not trying to see in the Torah more than is there. Read more...