Moving from the origins of the world at large in Genesis 1–11, the spotlight focuses on the origins of Israel. First to appear is Abraham, to whom God promised the land of Canaan and the progeny that would ultimately become the nation of Israel. God’s promise is not easily fulfilled but is threatened by episodes of famine, childlessness, and family strife during the lives of Abraham and his wife Sarah. The narrative continues through the stories about Isaac and Jacob, and their wives, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and about Joseph and his brothers. Jacob is the progenitor of the twelve tribes, the nucleus of what will become the people of Israel. The ancestors’ movement in and out of Canaan culminates in the Joseph story, when the entire family of Jacob settles in Egypt. The sustained focus on life and relations within the family in the formative generations of the nation, as distinct from the heroic battles of epic literature, is one of the notable features of these narratives.
The towering life of the towering city
Is burning in white fires.
And in the streets of the Jewish East side
The whiteness of the fires burns even whiter.
I like to stroll in the burning frenzy of…
Shterenberg is famous for a series of paintings he did in 1917 and 1918, which are sometimes known as “hungry still lives.” A single object, such as a herring or a loaf of bread, is the focus of the…
[ . . . ] And when a woman must go out, she should not push through the men and should keep her distance from large groups of men, since this is a great lewdness, and she should not go out…