We take time out from the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Washington, D.C. to take a look at Joseph's method of dream interpretation — using a verb and noun found nowhere else in the Bible.

How Jacob subtly alters Joseph's dream, and what it tells us about him.  All indicated not by the Hebrew words but by the punctuation.

Jacob hopes his wives and children will not be killed — a hope that resonates strongly with Torah law.  Plus, the unusual expression he uses to say so, and how his actions conflict with his words.

Jacob makes a deal with God.

Does he get what he was promised?

Rebecca tells Jacob he must run away to Mesopotamia to avoid being killed by Esau, whose blessing he has stolen.  But the word she uses brings up a host of associations that connect us back to Abraham -- by way of the Song of Songs.

When Abraham's servant is seeking a wife for Isaac, he asks Rebecca for a drink of water — using an extremely strange Hebrew verb.  Just one of two puzzlers this week on Torah Talk.

Abraham's adopted home town in Canaan seems to be Beersheba.  This week, in between the disinheritance of Ishmael and the binding of Isaac, Genesis pauses for a couple of paragraphs to explain how Beersheba got its name.  But (like New York, New York or Walla Walla, Washington) it seems that Beersheba was named twice.....

Abraham is warned that his descendants will be slaves in a land not their own — but he is promised that he will go to his grave peacefully before that happens.

Two others in the Bible got the same promise, but the promise was not kept....

The genealogy of Seth in Genesis 5 has some remarkable similarities to the one of Cain in Genesis 4 — including, as we find out this week, a relationship between Noah and the generation parallel to him among the descendants of Cain.

The first "source" document mentioned in the Torah itself — in Genesis 5 — interacts with the word toledot that structures the entire book.