פָּרָשַׁת וַיֵּשֶׁב

Parshat Vayeishev tells us how Yosef came down to Mitzrayim. Yaakov loves Yosef, the son of his old age, more than his brothers, and makes him a fine woolen tunic; Yosef brings bad reports of his brothers and tells them dreams in which they bow to him, and they hate him. Sent by his father to find them, Yosef is seized, stripped of his tunic and thrown into a pit; on Yehudah's word he is sold to a caravan going down to Mitzrayim for twenty pieces of silver. The brothers dip the tunic in blood, and Yaakov, believing Yosef torn by a wild animal, mourns and refuses to be comforted.

The Torah then tells of Yehudah, whose two elder sons die married to Tamar, and who withholds his third son from her. Tamar veils herself at the crossroads; Yehudah lies with her and leaves his seal, cord and staff as a pledge. When she is found pregnant and sentenced, she produces the pledge, and Yehudah admits she is more righteous than he. She bears twins, Peretz and Zerach; from Peretz comes the royal line of David. In Mitzrayim, Yosef prospers in the house of Potifar, whose wife tries to seduce him; he refuses to sin against Hashem, flees, and is falsely accused and imprisoned. In prison too Hashem is with him and the warden trusts him with everything. He interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker exactly — the butler restored, the baker hanged — and asks the butler to remember him. But the butler forgets him, and the parsha ends with Yosef still in prison.