For Friday Night

Do we have the power to change our own lives? Or are we entirely the product of our environment? A timely lesson from Rebecca.

Jewish teaching sees the life of the individual as expressing an inner struggle. One part of the person relates to Nature--untamed, uncontrolled, like natural forests and unclaimed fields. The other part has a Divine quality, expressing G-d Who created nature in order to make it His dwelling...

Esau was the bad guy, right? So why did his father, the patriarch Isaac, prefer him over his saintly brother Jacob?

Esau's Hittite wives, although they were in Isaac's home, offered incense to idols. Rashi says the scent of this incense provoked Isaac's blindness.