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What's your favorite weekly Torah section, and why?
There are 54 weekly sections ("parashiyos" or "sedras") in the Torah.1 Which of these is your favorite, and why?
Answers I seek: Please don't answer with a section name with no explanation as to why. I, too, can answer 54 answers, one with each name. Without an explanation, such an answer is not informative. While you're encouraged to post your own reasons, they ideally should be ones that make the section special to other readers and not just yourself. For example, if you indicate that Vaera is your favorite because it has 121 verses and you like perfect squares, that may be relevant to another reader who likes perfect squares. But if you say Vaera is your favorite section because it has 121 verses and you like the number 121 — well, for Typical Reader X, Vaera is no better than any other section: all sections have a number of verses that may be someone's favorite number.
(This topic has come up in conversation several times in the past few years in my home and I am curious to learn the views of those outside my own home.)
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This is according to the usual count. Some have combined "Nitzvaim" and "Vayelech" into one, which would drop the count by 1. Others have split "Mishpatim" into two (the second being "Im kesef"), which would raise the count by one. You may answer the question according to any of these or similar definitions that you like. ↩
1 answer
I don't have a particularly favorite parsha, but there are a few sections I like especially:
"""World-building""" (for lack of a better term at the moment, hence the triple quotation marks...) sections - sections such as the genealogies in Beresheet and the mifkadim in Bamidbar. I find that sections like these really anchor the Torah to reality, as though the Torah is saying: guys, this is real stuff that happened to real people and still has meaning today - "Lo bashamayim he" - it is not in the heavens. I also love those sections because they feel like a hidden trove of knowledge about things in the past - with just a bit more digging, you can discover amazing secrets of times long-passed.
The blessings to the tribes in Vayechi and V'zot Habracha - a little similar to the previous example, the blessings are interesting because they reveal key info about the qualities of the tribes we may not have known otherwise, for example, the quickness of Naftali (compared to a running deer).
Finally, Devarim, mainly because it's my bar-mitzvah parsha, but also because it's filled with the kind of details I like - info about surrounding nations and names of places, but it's also one of the parshas that features the interesting story of Menashe wanting to get the Gilad specifically. It also features Moshe's regret at not being able to enter Israel and also talk of passing on the torch to Yehoshua - you can sense that things are about to change greatly for Am Yisrael.
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