Uriel Simon, who taught Bible at Bar-Ilan University for most of his life, died in Jerusalem on 30 September 2026, at 97. He read the plain sense of the text more closely than almost anyone, and argued that doing so is itself a religious act. Each week this reader sets one passage from the parasha beside his own words about it, on two printable pages: a text, and a teaching.
אם אמנם יש ממשות פשטית בדברים שאמרנו בזה, אזי ברכת אברהם לצאצאיו לדורותיהם היא, במידה רבה, ברכת הניגודים.
If there is real plain-sense substance in what we have said here, then Abraham's blessing to his descendants through the generations is, in large measure, the blessing of contradictions.
Uriel Simon, אברהם המקראי – הברכה שבניגודים
The first weeks follow Simon's essay on Abraham, "Biblical Abraham: The Blessing of Contradictions," from Bakesh Shalom Verodfehu (2002). His Hebrew is quoted from the essay as published on Daat; the English renderings are ours.