This week’s reading from the Torah, parsha Vayazhev (Genesis/Bereshiet chapters 37 through 40) shifts the story of the line of the patriarchs to Yosef/Joseph, the first-born son of Rachel.

The Bible tells us there was favoritism, and that is just part of the reason his brothers resented him.

The Erev Shabbat reading covers that beginning, and his sale into slavery in Egypt, the house of Potiphar, and then prison. There is far more, too:

There are a number of major themes in the study of Joseph this week, from what he teaches us about dreams, to that issue of favoritism and jealousy, and the results, to a larger question about ‘adversity’, and how it figures in our lives, and His plan.

But in the middle of all that is one of the most notable “chiasms,” (Mark prefers the Hebrew term ‘atbash’ – for “alef-tav, beit-shin” because the first and last, and second and second-to-last name is so descriptive of the Biblical equivalent of an HTML tag)) in the Bible: about Judah and Tamar.

That theme, of what happens “in-between” resonates.

Because we, today, are there too:

The combined two-part teaching is here: