page_title: Vayeira
section_title: Modern
hierarchical_section_title: Vayeira / Further reading / Modern
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Wilfred Owen, found in a collection of his poems from 1920.
context_page_description: Vayeira, Vayera, or Va-yera is the fourth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 18:1–22:24. The parashah tells the stories of Abraham's three visitors, Abraham's bargaining with God over Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's two visitors, Lot's bargaining with the Sodomites, the flight of Lot, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, how Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father, how Abraham once again passed off his wife Sarah as his sister, the birth of Isaac, the expulsion of Hagar, disputes over wells, and the binding of Isaac.
  The parashah has the most words of any of the weekly Torah portions in the Book of Genesis, and its word-count is second only to parshat Naso in the entire Torah. It is made up of 7,862 Hebrew letters, 2,085 Hebrew words, 147 verses, and 252 lines in a Torah Scroll.
  Jews read it on the fourth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, in October or November. Jews also read parts of the parashah as Torah readings for Rosh Hashanah. Genesis 21 is the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and Genesis 22 is the Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
context_section_description: Isaac Abravanel. Commentary on the Torah. Italy, between 1492 and 1509. Reprinted in, e.g., Abarbanel: Selected Commentaries on the Torah: Volume 1: Bereishis/Genesis. Translated and annotated by Israel Lazar, pages 104–28. Brooklyn: CreateSpace, 2015. ISBN 978-1-5076-8616-4. And excerpted in, e.g., Abarbanel on the Torah: Selected Themes. Translated by Avner Tomaschoff, pages 289–321. Jerusalem: Jewish Agency for Israel, 2007. ISBN 965-7118-05-0.
  Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno. Commentary on the Torah. Venice, 1567. Reprinted in, e.g., Sforno: Commentary on the Torah. Translation and explanatory notes by Raphael Pelcovitz, pages 86–113. Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1997. ISBN 0-89906-268-7.
  Moshe Alshich. Commentary on the Torah. Safed, circa 1593. Reprinted in, e.g., Moshe Alshich. Midrash of Rabbi Moshe Alshich on the Torah. Translated and annotated by Eliyahu Munk, volume 1, pages 115–45. New York, Lambda Publishers, 2000. ISBN 965-7108-13-6.
  Avraham Yehoshua Heschel. Commentaries on the Torah. Cracow, Poland, mid 17th century. Compiled as Chanukat HaTorah. Edited by Chanoch Henoch Erzohn. Piotrkow, Poland, 1900. Reprinted in Avraham Yehoshua Heschel. Chanukas HaTorah: Mystical Insights of Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heschel on Chumash. Translated by Avraham Peretz Friedman, pages 53–64. Southfield, Michigan: Targum Press/Feldheim Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-56871-303-7.
  Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan, 3:34, 36, 38, 40, 42. England, 1651. Reprint edited by C. B. Macpherson, pages 436–37, 456–57, 460, 486, 500–01, 584–85. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Classics, 1982. ISBN 0-14-043195-0.
  Baruch Spinoza. Theologico-Political Treatise, chapters 1, 2, 8. Amsterdam, 1670. Reprinted in, e.g., Baruch Spinoza. Theological-Political Treatise. Translated by Samuel Shirley, pages 11, 28, 107. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, second edition, 2001. ISBN 0-87220-608-4.
  Chaim ibn Attar. Ohr ha-Chaim. Venice, 1742. Reprinted in Chayim ben Attar. Or Hachayim: Commentary on the Torah. Translated by Eliyahu Munk, volume 1, pages 157–84. Brooklyn: Lambda Publishers, 1999. ISBN 965-7108-12-8.
  Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. 1843. Reprint, London: Penguin Classics, 1986. ISBN 0-14-044449-1.
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Jewish Cemetery at Newport . Boston, 1854. Reprinted in Harold Bloom. American Religious Poems, pages 80–81. New York: Library of America, 2006. ISBN 978-1-931082-74-7.
  Nathaniel Parker Willis. "Hagar in the Wilderness." Cosmopolitan Art Journal, volume 3 (number 3) (June 1859) : pages 107–08.
  Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal). Commentary on the Torah. Padua, 1871. Reprinted in, e.g., Samuel David Luzzatto. Torah Commentary. Translated and annotated by Eliyahu Munk, volume 1, pages 176–216. New York: Lambda Publishers, 2012. ISBN 965-524-067-3.
  Emily Dickinson. Poem 504 (You know that Portrait in the Moon —); Poem 1317 (Abraham to kill him —). Circa 1874. In The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, pages 245, 571–72. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1960. ISBN 0-316-18414-4.
  Edwin Cone Bissell. "Is Genesis 21:9–21 a Duplicate of Genesis 16:5–14?" The Biblical World, volume 2 (number 6) (December 1893): pages 407–11.
  Hermann Gunkel. "The Two Accounts of Hagar (Genesis xvi. and xxi., 8–21.)." The Monist, volume 10 (number 3) (April 1900): pages 321–42.
  Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter. Sefat Emet. Góra Kalwaria (Ger), Poland, before 1906. Excerpted in The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of Sefat Emet. Translated and interpreted by Arthur Green, pages 27–32. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998. ISBN 0-8276-0650-8. Reprinted 2012. ISBN 0-8276-0946-9.
  Wilfred Owen. The Parable of the Old Man and the Young. 1920. In The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. Edited by C. Day-Lewis, page 42. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1965. ISBN 0-8112-0132-5.
  James Joyce. Ulysses, chapter 4 (Calypso). Paris: Sylvia Beach, 1922. (“Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first 
caption: Owen
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