Rabbi Weinreb’s Parsha Column, Vayigash “Wagons, Calves, and Responsibility”

I have been blessed with many fine teachers. She was one of the best. Her name was Mrs. Lachmann. I no longer recall her first name. She taught an advanced course in world literature at the college I attended, and she insisted that we call her Mrs. Lachmann, although, as I later discovered, she had earned a doctorate with honors at a very prestigious European university The course was an elective, and I was motivated to take it because of my fondness for literature, which I developed quite early in my childhood. I was already familiar with some of the authors of our assigned readings, all of whom were 19th century Russian or German writers, and assumed that the course would be an easy one for me.