Kol Ramah

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yishlach [Genesis 32:4-36:43] is, as the French might say, an embarrassment of riches. There are Jacob’s plans for seeing his brother again after 20 years, the mysterious encounter with the malakh, often translated as angel, which will acquire for Jacob a new name and a physical disability which will everafter affect the way his descendants eat, the meeting with Esau, the rape of Dinah, the putting away of the idols at Beit El, and the detailed genealogy of Esau, inclusing the list of 12 successive kings, which exposes perhaps as well as any Torah text, the limitations of Mosaic authorship of the Torah. Along the way is the the death of Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, the birth of Benjamin and the death of Rachel [which occasions its own name change], and the death of Isaac. And even this list is incomplete! As befitting such a rich parashah, our conversation was free-wheeling, skipping from topic to topic, seamlessly we hop