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We Don’t Have the Big Picture

And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Avraham, saying, Behold Milka, she also has born children to thy brother Naĥor; ῾Uż his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Qemu᾽el the father of Aram, and Kesed, and Ḥazo, and Pildash, and Yidlaf, and Betu᾽el. And Betu᾽el begot Rivqa: these eight did…

by iWe

Meat, Milk – and Sodom?

Here is a question. As shown here, many events in Genesis anticipate or inform later commandments. Given that pattern, Avraham’s act of serving a calf together with its mother’s milk (Genesis 18) appears to prefigure the prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk. Why this particular connection? The act takes something whose natural…

by iWe

Why Does G-d (Only) Intervene When He Does?

If you read only the last four books of the Torah, you find it full of instruction: commandments, blessings and curses, retribution, justice, and mercy. Almost nothing happens without critical observation from G-d, Moses, or the people. Genesis is strikingly different. G-d seems to refrain from judgement, as much as possible. There are course corrections—G-d…

by iWe

Avraham and Wealth: A Moving Target

A lot of painful things happen in the first book of the Torah. In Avram’s life alone we see successive hardships and strained relationships—with his wife, with Hagar and Ishmael, with Pharoah and Avimelech —culminating in the Binding of Isaac. Genesis can be read through many lenses: the growth of relationships between brothers, between men…

by iWe

The Creation of the Family

Noah and his family — along with the animals — enter the Ark “with all their households” (G. 7:1). When they leave more than a year later, the language shifts. “Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that stirs on earth came out of the ark by families” (G. 8:19). This is the first…

by iWe

Curse Those Who Curse You

Three times the Torah tells us a variation of the words spoken by G-d to Avram: I will bless those who bless youAnd curse the one who curses you Blessings make a person bigger, greater in ways that matter. But curses do the opposite; they shrink a person. When we look at the growing wave…

by iWe

Serious Question: Is Creating AI Divine?

Across human history, nearly everything we make eventually decays. Roads crack, buildings crumble, airplanes rust. The one exception we have long recognized is children—beings we bring into the world who can, in turn, bring forth their own descendants. But this is not unique to humans: Plants, animals, and every living thing have done the same…

by iWe

Basic Lessons

I have often … quarreled with those who feel that Western Civilization was born from the Greeks, and that the role of what I consider as the foundational text – the Torah – is really incidental. I suspect this is primarily for two reasons: 1: Most people read the text as a storybook or even…

by iWe

All About Eight in the Torah

The number eight is the human bridge. Seven belongs to the created world—the week in which heaven and earth were finished. But the number eight is the day, the act, and the substance by which people take what already exists in nature, and invest it in a relationship that nature cannot offer – the relationship…

by iWe

Science’s Big Lie

Normal Judeo-Christian religion does not have a beef with science. Sure, we would like scientists to be guided by a moral code (e.g. don’t inflict people with toxins or viruses to see what happens – this is far more common than you might think), but we don’t generally have a problem with gaining knowledge about…

by iWe

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Quick Index to all the commandments that come from Genesis