The portion of Terumah marks an apparent shift in the Torah's concerns. After the exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandmets on Mount Sinai, and the communication of a wide range of commandments in Parshat Mishpatim, we suddenly become interested, almost to the exclusion of anything else, in the building of the משכן - Tabernacle - the portable Temple which accompanied the Israelites through the desert.

After the giving of the Ten Commandments in last week's parsha, Yitro, we move on to Parshat Mishpatim,  which contains with a veritable potpourri of legal material. The range is tremendous. There are laws about slaves, assault, rape, witches, and murder. There are laws about bad behavior towards parents, various types of property damage, lying and bribery, theft, the Sabbatical year, Shabbat and the three pilgrimage festivals, loving the stranger, judging fairly, kashrut, conquering the land of Canaan, and much, much more.

Parshat Yitro contains the giving of the ten commandments, the center-piece of the entire Torah. Interestingly, the giving of the Torah is prefaced by the arrival at the Israelite  camp of Moshe's father-in-law, Yitro. Accompanied by Moshe's wife and two sons, who had stayed in their native Midian rather than joining Moshe in Egypt during the ten plagues, Yitro is reunited with his now very successful son-in-law and his newly-freed people.  We are told that Yitro has heard of the exodus and the victory over Egypt.

This week we begin the second book of the Torah, Shemot - Exodus - after completing the Book of Bereshit - Genesis.  The Torah tells us how the Jewish people have transitioned from a relatively small family to a nation: in Genesis, we were dealing with Avraham, his children, and his grandchildren. The stories all centered around this small group of people who, by the end of Bereshit, number only seventy, and the interactions they have, which are the kind of things you would expect within a family - sibling rivalry, misbehaving children, and stressed-out spouses.

We are now at the end - the end of the Book of Genesis, the end of the story of Yosef and his brothers, the end of Yaakov's life - and Yosef's - the end of the period of the patriarchs, and the end of Jewish life in the land of Israel - for the time being.

I have always been bothered by the approach taken by Rashi on the verses at the start of Parshat Va'yigash. In last week's parsha, Miketz, Yosef seized his younger brother Binyamin, on the pretext of punishing him for having stolen Yosef's goblet (Yosef had actually framed him, by planting the goblet on him as a pretext to arrest him and keep him in Egypt). Yosef has told his other brothers to go back home, to Canaan.

In Parshat Vayishlach, Yaakov's beloved wife Rachel dies while giving birth to her second son, who will be called Binyamin. Of the four mothers of the Jewish people, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah, Rachel is seen in some ways as the most "motherly" - unlike the other matriarchs, she is not buried in Hebron in the Cave of Machpela with her husband, but is buried alone, on the road, not far from Jerusalem, near Bet Lechem. It is from there that our tradition sees her weeping for her exiled children, and praying for their return to Zion.

Parshat Toldot begins with Yitzchak and Rivkah married, and having trouble having children: ויעתר יצחק לה' לנכח אשתו כי עקרה היא - "And Yitzchak beseeched God concerning his wife, for she was barren". God responds to his prayers, and soon Yaakov and Esav are born, and the couple's troubles really begin.

Our portion of the week, Vayeira, contains a number of very dramatic events. I would like to focus on some of the most striking, and look at Avraham's response to them.