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October 27, 2023

Why Abraham’s First Stop in the Promised Land Was at a “Place Ordained for Calamity”

The contradictions of Shechem.

This week’s Torah reading of Lekh-l’khah contains the Torah’s first reference to the city of Shechem—a place that comes up in multiple incidents throughout Genesis, and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Babylonian Talmud, it is “a place ordained for calamity,” because of several tragic events that took place there. Tamar Weissman takes a careful look at this assertion, and Shechem’s paradoxes:

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October 27, 2023

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