This week we will discuss two parshas, B'ha'alotcha and Shlach.  B'ha'alotcha ends with the interesting story of Miriam and Aharon speaking badly of Moshe, specifically saying nasty things in connection with his Cushite wife. According to Rashi, they were complaining about the fact that Moshe was acting "holier than thou", and that since receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, he had separated from his wife, and adopted a monastic existence.

This week, in Parshat Ki Tissa, we read about the sin of the Golden Calf - a major event in Jewish thought and tradition. This horrible sin, coming, unbelievably, immediately after the Jews received the Torah from God on Mt.

This week, after the drama of the ten plagues, including the last, awful Plague of the First Born, the people of Israel finally leave Egypt and, escorted by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, come to the Red Sea, where they proceed to act in a totally pathetic manner: "And Pharaoh drew near, and the children of Israel lifted up their eyes and behold, Egypt was coming after them, and they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to God. And they said to Moshe: 'What?

The Nile River figures prominently in the Exodus story. Last week, we read how Moshe was placed in a small ark and put on the river in an attempt to save him from the Egyptians; it was from there that he was taken by Pharaoh's daughter and brought into the royal household. This week, as we begin the story of the ten plagues, the action opens on the banks of the Nile:

"And God said to Moshe...go to Pharaoh in the morning, behold, he goes out to the water, and stand before him on the banks of the river, and take in your hand the staff which changes into a snake."

This week, we begin a new book of the Bible: Shemot - Exodus. Nachmanides (1194-1270), also known as the Ramban, in his commentary on the Torah, prefaces this book, as he does the other four, with a short, insightful introduction. In it, he tells us that the Book of Exodus focuses on the exile in Egypt - what he calls the 'first exile' - and the redemption from it. He discusses the definition of that redemption; those elements which would end the exile in Egypt and turn the Israelites into a free people.

 In parshat Va'yishlach, Yaakov returns to Israel and settles there. Almost immediately, we read the following hair-raising story: "And Dina, Leah's daughter, whom she had borne to Yaakov, went out to see the women of the land. And Shechem, the son of Chamor, the Hivvite, the prince of the land, saw her, and he took her, and forced her to lay with him." The story then goes from bad to worse. Shechem wants to marry Dina (we are not told what she thought about all this).

This week, in Parshat Vayetze, Yaakov flees from his murderous brother, Esav, who wants to do him in for stealing the blessing of their father, Yitzchak. Yaakov, at the urging of his parents, sets our to leave Israel for his ancestral homeland, the birthplace of his grandfather Avraham and his mother Rivka - Charan, located in modern-day Iraq.