Words of wisdom by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l
The overall effect is a story with no irredeemable villains and no stainless heroes. Why then is it told at all? Stories do not appear in the Torah merely because they happened. The Torah is not a history book. It is silent on some of the most important periods of time. We know nothing, for example, about Abraham’s childhood, or about thirty-eight of the forty years spent by the Israelites in the wilderness. Torah means “teaching”, “instruction”, “guidance”. What teaching does the Torah want us to draw from this narrative out of which no one emerges well?
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