In Vayishlach, this week’s Torah portion, the third patriarch’s name gets changed during a famous encounter. Or does it?

Explore the significance of Jacob's dream in the Torah portion Vayetze, featuring the intriguing stairway to heaven.

(RNS) — The Jewish attitude toward foreign-born people, who often have risked their lives to come here, legally or otherwise, is one of mercy and concern. (RNS) — No one knows who wrote the Jewish ...

This week’s Torah portion, Shemot, begins with a list of those who made their way down to Egypt from Canaan. While the Torah goes into detail about their dramatic stories back home, we know very ...

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I attended a memorial for a beloved colleague recently, and his widow remembered how at funerals he would invite people not to look at the birth and death dates on memorial plaques and grave markers, ...

Parashat ‘Emor’ contains 63 commandments, presented in a particular order. One exception stands out: the commandment of pe’ah, which, puzzlingly, appears in the middle of the section discussing the ...

When Ari Shell reads his Torah portion at his bar mitzvah on Saturday, Jan. 17, he’ll be stepping into Jewish adulthood with ...

This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. I was thrilled ...

In most of our synagogues, upon conclusion of the public reading of the Torah, the scroll is lifted for all to see, and the congregation recites: "And this is the Torah that Moses placed before the ...

The first word in our portion re’eh is one of the most powerful terms found in the Torah. In fact, God is described as a ro’eh on three different levels. The first time the word is found in the Torah, ...

(RNS) — No one knows who wrote the Jewish rabbinic text known as Sefer Hachinuch, or “A Book of Guidance.” The author, a 13th-century rabbi, modestly signed his work “A Levite of Barcelona.” But the ...