Archives: Bereshit

Embalming Jacob – A Lesson to Diaspora Communities

The book of Genesis ends with death in Egypt. First Jacob dies, then Joseph. Following the Egyptian custom, they were both embalmed. The Torah makes no mention of how the embalming was carried out, which parts of the body were removed or which embalming fluids were used. Indeed it gives no detail at all, other than the fact that they were each embalmed.

This is a little surprising. Embalming was not a Hebrew custom; no other corpse in the Bible is subjected to the process. There is little doubt that the only reason they were embalmed was because they lived in Egypt, yet the whole subject is dealt with very casually: ‘Then Joseph ordered his servants, the doctors, to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed Israel’ (50,2). Continue reading

The Book of Creation

A passing remark in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b) states that two rabbis created and ate a three year old calf. They did this by studying something called The Book of Creation, Sefer Yetsirah in Hebrew. One might wonder why, having gone to the trouble of performing such a feat, the two rabbis simply ate the calf. But the Talmud tells us nothing more about it.

This brief reference is the earliest mention of Sefer Yetsirah. Several hundred years were to pass before it was mentioned again. When it did resurface, in the tenth century, it was presented by its commentators as a scientific treatise on the creation of the world. Continue reading

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