Parshat Vayeshev - The Birth of Paretz

People often refer to the "story of Yehuda and Tamar." But perhaps the story should be understood a bit differently: "the story of the trials and travails of Yehuda."

How does this story connect to the larger picture of Chumash at this time? We look at the end of Chapter 38 – the internal difficulty ends with the story of  the birth of twins to Tamar. The content and language echoes another story where younger replaces the older: its literary parallel is the story of Yaakov and Esav. But when we look closer, we find another parallel - between Yehuda and Yosef, both of whom have exile stories with challenges of a similar nature, and both of whose descendants become kings of Israel.