What would you say is the most important line in the Torah? Now what about the least important line? Well, Maimonides says that there is no difference - every verse in the Torah is equally important. But what does he mean by that? We'll try to find out by taking a line that seems at first to be a throwaway, and digging deeper to find the hidden story behind it.
There's some wild, far-out stuff in the Torah. But this week, things get especially crazy when we run into a bunch of... talking rocks! Now, are we really supposed to believe this stuff? That's the big question we try to tackle this week, with some help from a great 16th-century philosopher, Rabbi Yehuda Loew of Prague.
This week, we reexamine a famous piece of midrash - a story of angels crying - in search of a better understanding of what drives Isaac, the most silent and mysterious of our forefathers.
There is a principle in rabbinic interpretation my friend calls "The Economy of Characters," which takes two separate figures in the Torah and folds them into one. This week, we look at how this works in one story in our parsha, the marriage of Abraham, in his old-age, to a woman (seemingly) named "Keturah.