Jacob
Dispel Darkness with Light and Love
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz Many scholars place Joseph’s descent to Egypt at around 1500 BCE. The Maccabees dedicated the Temple in year 165 BCE. These two events were separated by more than one thousand years and seem entirely...
As Good as a Share in the World to Come
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz Learning Torah with my ten-year-old son is a challenging experience. He asks the obvious questions that are disturbingly difficult to answer. “Abba, did God promise all of Israel to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” he...
The Hidden Message of the Sciatic Nerve
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz Babies are, for the most part, born perfect. Their skin is pearly smooth and everything is pristine and in it's right place, except for their teeth. I remember that when my children were small, I would wake them...
The “Key” to Jacob’s Marriage with Rachel
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz I once went to a distant town and needed to stay at a hotel. I found one possible location and entered. I approached the front desk and asked the clerk, “How much does it cost to stay here for the night.” He...
What Benjamin Netanyahu Can Learn from Jacob About Forming a Government
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz Israel just held its fifth election in three years. For a while now, Israel has been struggling to find a leader who can form and maintain a coalition made up of different parties, each with their own interests...
Finding Your Place
I was complaining to a friend that I had never traveled and never seen the amazing sites around the world. He suggested a road trip to Las Vegas. ‘“I work hard for my money and hate gambling,” I said. “Not for the gambling,” he responded....
What Only a Father Can Do
Father’s Day is a delightful blend of a secular and religious holiday, combining consumerism with the Biblical mandate to “Honor thy father.” But is it artificially amplified? Are fathers really that important? Mothers are clearly...
Jacob’s deathbed vision of Shiloh; a glimpse of Messiah
Before dying, Jacob blesses his sons in a burst of prophetic vision, blessing Judah as the father of the Davidic dynasty by saying, “The scepter shall not depart from Yehuda, Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet; So that tribute...
Counting Jacob’s Blessings
Before he leaves the world, Jacob blesses his sons (Genesis 49). Similarly, Moses also blesses the tribes before he dies (Deuteronomy 33). But the two sets of blessings are very different. Not all of Jacob’s blessings are positive. It is,...
Did Joseph sin by having his father’s body embalmed?
After Jacob died, Joseph ordered his physicians to embalm his father. This is shocking to many as embalming is forbidden by Jewish law, and the only other mention of embalming in the Bible was performed on Joseph just a few years later...
