It is time now for Joseph to reveal his true identity – his brothers just completed a full regimen of penance; they experienced remorse, confessed their crime, and walked away from another opportunity to reiterate a similar woe.
Beginning with the Pharaoh in this weekly Torah portion, Miketz, we see how good and effective leaders appoint the right people to serve national causes in a way that is divorced from any partisan or prejudiced considerations. The Pharaoh is a trailblazer in setting this exemplary pattern of governance
Abraham, Jacob and Elkana failed in various degrees to understand the agony that their respective wives endured due to their bareness, or to offer prayer of hope and faith, even as all three resigned themselves to the status quo, while not attempting to debunk the idea that their wives’ infertility expressed God’s will.
in the he classical Levitical text on a gift (mincha) to God (Ch.2) the plant-based tribute serves not only as alternative to animal offerings, but even as superior to the latter. Notably, Isaac does erect an altar for God in Beersheba, but like in the majority of altar-building by his father Abraham, no animals are slain there (Genesis 26:25).
In the absence of a better option, we may consider the possibility – though not mentioned in the Torah – that Abraham sent off Ishmael his son and his mother to Grar, and the parsimonious provisions should have been sufficient for a quick walk to Grar
women were not at the ‘’mercy’’ of their husbands when it came to their initiative-taking in the realm of marital intimacy; Sarai (in this weekly Torah portion) being the trailblazer of this reality...
Inundating the earth would also bring devastation to all land and winged animals, none of which was deemed “evil” or “bad’’, like man proved himself to be, and thus, the very reason for the flood. Ergo, God charges Noah – a “righteous and above-reproach-man” – with building a gigantic ark for the preservation of every such species.
