Synopsis The Joseph narrative in Genesis is stitched together with dreams—his own, the courtiers’, Pharaoh’s—yet the story itself unfolds according to the grammar of sleep.
The story of Joseph and his brothers, described in the Torah portion of Vayeshev, presents many problems. Classical biblical commentators interpret the conflict between Joseph
And afterwards she bore a daughter, and called her name Dinah. (Genesis 30:21) In my previous essay, “The Conflict Between Joseph And His Brothers—A Gender
The confrontation between Joseph and his brothers is one of the most troubling stories of the Bible. Joseph and his brother—twelve sons of Jacob—were the
In physics, we seek Grand Unification, also known as the Theory of Everything. The Standard Model describes three out of the four fundamental forces: the
In the Torah portion Miketz, Pharaoh has two dreams. He wakes up agitated and calls on all the wise men of Egypt to interpret his
The story of Joseph’s incarceration ends with his successful interpretation of the dreams of the Pharaoh’s chief butler and the chief baker. He ingeniously interpreted ordinary
And now thy two sons, who were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim
This week, we read in the Torah portion Vayigash (Gen. 44:18–47:27) about Joseph revealing himself to his brothers and Jacob coming to Egypt with his family. This
I grew up in Russia and was raised on the metric system based on decimal arithmetic. When we immigrated to the U.S., I had to
There is a continuous thread about the mastery of time that weaves through the last chapters of the book of Genesis (Bereshit) and continues through
In the Torah portion Vayeishev (Gen. 37:1–40:23), we read about Joseph interpreting dreams of the Pharaoh’s chief butler and the chief baker: And the chief butler told
