This week’s torah portion, Vayeishev, is filled with life lessons. We not only read the story of Joseph, but also the story of Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. Tamar’s tragedy is evident. She has lost her husband, and she has no offspring to give her life purpose and to secure her status as a widow.  Judah and Tamar are in-laws who have reached a crisis point in their relationship. At first, Judah supports Tamar’s right to marry into her husband’s extended family. However, when Onan also dies, Judah blames Tamar. Judah’s abiding sense of loss and resentment block his reconciliation with Tamar. Thus, Tamar finds it difficult to move on.

How many times have you heard the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same?” As we age, we experience its veracity more and more. So it is with an oft neglected tale in this week’s Torah portion Vayishlach; the silent story of Dinah.

This week we continue the story of a family, but this week is a woman’s story that raises some important ideas for us to consider. In Tol’dot (Genesis 25:19-28:9), we are reintroduced to Rebekah. This portion focuses on her relationships: her relationship to God, her relationship to her husband Isaac, and her relationship to her twins.

This March, I went on the WRJ Centennial Trip to Israel and Berlin with more than two dozen WRJ women from around North America. Some of these women I had met at District conventions, others at Assembly 2011, and  some at my first WRJ Board meeting.

This week’s parashah, Lech L’cha, translated as “Go Forth,” is virtually a watchword of our faith. It is one of the most familiar chapters of the Bible. The Debbie Friedman song inspired by this parashah, L’chi Lach, is sung at sisterhood services and in my memory, at every WRJ District meeting and WRJ event I have ever attended. The parashah begins with these most famous words: God said to Abram, “Go forth from your father’s land, your birthplace, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you:  I will make your name great, and it shall be a blessing. (Genesis 12:1 – 12:2)

Having grown up in Atlanta, I found that Shabbat services in Fort Smith, AR, in the early 2000s were a completely different experience than anything I’d previously known. United Hebrew Congregation (UHC), once home to more than 100 families when my husband was growing up there, had dwindled to a small fraction of that. Services were held in the library/study because the group would have been lost in the sanctuary. Barely a minyan attended; services were led by one of the congregants and music was provided using recordings on a boom box. But the joy of Shabbat and spirit of community were strong, with the Oneg Shabbat doubling as a pot luck dinner and providing an opportunity for everyone to catch up and share the latest in their lives. There was no longer an active sisterhood, although it was remembered fondly as having been a vital arm of the congregation… and my mother-in-law, Isabel Marks, z”l, continued to use the WRJ Art Calendar as her primary means of organization and connection to WRJ long after the sisterhood had disbanded.