Posts so far for parshat Vayeizei

• Was Lavan Right To Move The Sheep? (2006)
  
• Speculation about Lavan and Yaakov's arrangement, specifically which sheep were to belong to Yaakov, and reasons for moving the sheep far away.
• Twelve Boys and Only One Girl (2005)
• Cross-listed to Vayishlach. I discuss the possibility that Dinah was not the only girl, but was named because of the Incident With Dinah a bit later. But then scientifically, the possibility that the Avot in general did not have girls because, apparently, the longer before one has a child, the less likely one is to have a girl.
  
• Triple Etiologies for Place Names (2005)
• Cross-listed to Vayishlach. Triple Etiologies for Peniel, Machanayim.
  
• Who Named Levi? (2004)
• I take on Anchor Bible smoothing emendation of the text, discussing whether קרא is passive ("he was called"), past tense third person singular ("he," meaning Yaakov or "He" meaning Hashem), or a final possibility that it is really קראה. Speiser in Anchor Bible chose a local optimum, emending it to "she," based on Samaritan and LXX. I show that firstly, this is a harmonizing emendation, to Samaritan and LXX which go for harmonizations are not necessarily evidence of another textual tradition; that actually no emendation of the unvocalized Masoretic text is necessary to get at "she"; and finally, that the emendation only finds a local optimum, and if we want to emend the text, we should emend the other קראה to match this קרא, as passive, based on a global usage.
  
• Binyamin's Name (2004)
• Binyamin's name in Hebrew and Aramaic. For Vayishlach, but a note at the end which ties this in to Vayeitzei, in terms of Gal-Ed.
  
• An Amharic Hebrew Congnate for Vayeitzei/Vayishlach (2004)
  
• The Stone Pillow (2004)
  
• Kissing Cousins (2004)
  
• Dual Etymologies for Names (2003)
  
• An Interesting Midrash In Targum Yonatan on Bereishit 28:12 (2003)
  
• Rachel the Wrestler, Yaakov the Wrestler (2002)
  
• Kefitzat HaDerech: Going Somewhere Fast, But Where? (2002)
  
• An alternative to the Rav's explanation of Targum Yonatan on Bereishit 32:3 (2002)