Weekly Parasha

Every week, the Jewish people reads the same page. From one end of the world to the other, whether in a synagogue in Casablanca or in a living room in Paris or Jerusalem, the same section of the Torah is opened, read aloud, and discussed. It is one of the oldest and most tenacious habits in Jewish history: a reading that begins again without end and yet never says quite the same thing twice.

That is what the weekly parasha is. An appointment. And like every true appointment, it changes with the person who comes to it. The verse you read ten years ago is waiting for you in the same place; it is you who are no longer the same, and that is why it will tell you something else.

A Reading That Begins Again Every Year

The annual cycle leads from the creation of the world, at the opening of Bereshit, to the last words of Devarim, and then immediately starts over. Nothing is ever truly concluded. The scroll is rolled back and we set out again from the beginning, as if the Torah refused to let us believe we were finished with it.

The lectures gathered on this page follow that cycle. They start from the text itself — a verse, a difficulty, a word that catches the eye — and work back to the question that this detail raises. This is not a summary of the story: it is a way of learning how to read.

What You Will Find in These Lectures

Each study draws on the text and on the commentators who carried it before us: Rashi first, then the midrashim, the medieval masters, and the long, unbroken tradition of interpretation. But the goal is not erudition for its own sake. A parasha studied well always ends up speaking about us: about our hesitations, our family quarrels, our relationship to keeping our word, and what we pass on without knowing it.

The tone is deliberately accessible. One can study seriously without being solemn, and we often understand better once we have smiled. That is the spirit of these lectures: depth, humor, and love for a text we will never finish discovering.

Where to Begin

You can follow the parasha of the current week and join the cycle wherever it happens to be — that is the most natural way. You can also choose a parasha that speaks to you — Bereshit for creation, Lech Lecha for setting out, Shemot for the exodus from slavery — and begin there. There is no wrong point of entry: the reading will come back around in any case.