page_title: Vayetze
section_title: Modern
hierarchical_section_title: Vayetze / Further reading / Modern
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Celia de Freine
context_page_description: Vayetze, Vayeitzei, or Vayetzei is the seventh weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 28:10–32:3. The parashah tells of Jacob's travels to, life in, and return from Haran. The parashah recounts Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven, Jacob's meeting of Rachel at the well, Jacob's time working for Laban and living with Rachel and Leah, the birth of Jacob's children, and the departure of Jacob's family from Laban.
  The parashah is made up of 7,512 Hebrew letters, 2,021 Hebrew words, 148 verses, and 235 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it the seventh Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in November or December.
context_section_description: Isaac Abravanel. Commentary on the Torah. Italy, between 1492–1509. Reprinted in, e.g., Abarbanel: Selected Commentaries on the Torah: Volume 1: Bereishis/Genesis. Translated and annotated by Israel Lazar, pages 185–209. Brooklyn: CreateSpace, 2015. ISBN 978-1507686164.
  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 148–73. 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 183–207. New York, Lambda Publishers, 2000. ISBN 965-7108-13-6.
  Saul Levi Morteira. “The Dust of the Earth.” Budapest, circa 1623. Reprinted in Marc Saperstein. Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews,” pages 377–92. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2005. ISBN 0-87820-457-1.
  John Donne. “Song: Go and catch a falling star.” England, early 17th century. (“Get with child a mandrake root”).
  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 78–80. Southfield, Michigan: Targum Press/Feldheim Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-56871-303-7.
  Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan, 3:34, 36; 4:45. England, 1651. Reprint edited by C. B. Macpherson, pages 437, 460, 676–77. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Classics, 1982. ISBN 0-14-043195-0.
  Moshe Chaim Luzzatto Mesillat Yesharim, chapter 4. Amsterdam, 1740. Reprinted in Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Just, page 53. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1966. ISBN 0-87306-114-4.
  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 234–72. Brooklyn: Lambda Publishers, 1999. ISBN 965-7108-12-8.
  George Eliot. Adam Bede, chapters 3, 21. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1859. Reprinted, e.g., edited by Carol A. Martin, pages 31, 220. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (Seth tells Dinah, “It’s a deep mystery — the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest he’s seen i’ the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year for her, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for th’ asking. I often think of them words [in Genesis 29:20], ‘And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her.’” Separately, Miss Liddy works on a needlepoint of “Jacob and Rachel a-kissing one another among the sheep,” as reported in Genesis 29:11).
  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 272–309. New York: Lambda Publishers, 2012. ISBN 978-965-524-067-2.
  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 43–48. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998. ISBN 0-8276-0650-8. Reprinted 2012. ISBN 0-8276-0946-9.
  Abraham Isaac Kook. The Moral Principles. Early 20th Century. Reprinted in Abraham Isaac Kook: the Lights of Penitence, the Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems. Translated by Ben Zion Bokser, page 162. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press 1978. ISBN 0-8091-2159-X.
  Rufus Town Stephenson. “The Jacob's Ladder in Homer.” The Classical Journal, volume 30 (number 9) (June 1935): pages 515–30.
  Alexander Alan Steinbach. Sabbath Queen: Fifty-four Bible Talks to the Young Based on Each Portion of the Pentateuch, pages 20–22. New York: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1936.
  Millar Burrows. "Th
caption: de Fréine
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