page_title: Vayishlach
section_title: Modern
hierarchical_section_title: Vayishlach / Further reading / Modern
caption_attribution_description: Ted Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts.
context_page_description: Vayishlach or Vayishlah is the eighth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. In the parashah, Jacob reconciles with Esau after wrestling with a "man". The prince Shechem rapes Dinah, whose brothers sack the city of Shechem in revenge. In the family's subsequent flight, Rachel gives birth to Benjamin and dies in childbirth.
  The parashah constitutes Genesis 32:4–36:43. The parashah has the most verses of any weekly Torah portion in the Book of Genesis. It is made up of 7,458 Hebrew letters, 1,976 Hebrew words, 153 verses, and 237 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it the eighth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, 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 210–32. 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 174–97. 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 207–32. 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 81–88. Southfield, Michigan: Targum Press/Feldheim Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-56871-303-7.
  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 273–96. Brooklyn: Lambda Publishers, 1999. ISBN 965-7108-12-8.
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Letter to Sara von Grothuss. 1812. Quoted in Solomon Goldman. In the Beginning, page 634. Harper, 1949. ("This foolish Dinah who runs about in the land.")
  Rumpelstiltskin. In Jacob Grimm & Wilhelm Grimm. Children's and Household Tales. Germany, 1812. Reprinted in, e.g., The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. Edited by Lily Owens, pages 203–06. New York: Gramercy Books, 2006. ISBN 0-517-09293-X. (power of a true name).
  George Eliot. Adam Bede, chapter 50. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1859. Reprinted, e.g., edited by Carol A. Martin, page 433. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (Dinah tells Adam about Arthur: “He’s of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always felt great pity . . . . That meeting between the brothers, where Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful, notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say, that Jacob was of a mean spirit. But that is our trial: — we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that is unlovely.”).
  Emily Dickinson. Poem 59 (A little East of Jordan,). Circa 1859. In The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, page 31. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1960. ISBN 0-316-18414-4.
  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 2, pages 310–54. 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 49–54. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998. ISBN 0-8276-0650-8. Reprinted 2012. ISBN 0-8276-0946-9.
  Abraham Isaac Kook. The Lights of Penitence, 14:40. 1925. 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 111. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press 1978. ISBN 0-8091-2159-X.
  Nathaniel Schmidt. "The Numen of Penuel." Journal of Biblical Literature, volume 45 (number 3/4) (1926): pages 260–79.
  Alexander Alan Steinbach. Sabbath Queen: Fifty-four Bible Talks to the Young Based on Each Portion of the Pentateuch, pages 23–25. New York: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1936.
  Irving Fineman. Jacob, An Autobiographical Novel. New York: Random House, 1941.
  Thomas Mann. Joseph and His Brothers. Translated by John E. Woods, pages 51–53, 64–65, 69–73, 77, 84–85, 100–0
caption: Kennedy
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