1,517 texts · Page 2 of 32
Rabbi Yossi Haglili employed one of the most powerful tools in rabbinic reasoning — the kal vachomer, the argument from lesser to greater — to settle a question about the Pesach (P...
The Torah specifies that the Passover offering must come "from the lambs and from the goats" (Exodus 12:5). Does this mean both species are required together, or can either one suf...
"shall you take": What is the intent of this? (i.e., it seems redundant.) It is written (Devarim 16:2) "And you shall slaughter the Pesach (Passover) for the L–rd your G–d, sheep a...
R. Yonathan says: sheep for the Pesach (Passover) and cattle for the chagigah. You say this, but perhaps (the meaning is) both for the Pesach? And how would I understand (Exodus 12...
R. Eliezer says: Sheep for the Pesach (Passover) and cattle for the chagigah. You say this, but perhaps both are for the Pesach? And how would I understand "an unblemished lamb, et...
R. Akiva says: One verse states "And you shall slaughter the Pesach (Passover) to the L–rd your G–d, sheep and cattle," and another, "From the sheep and from the goats shall you ta...
Rabbi Yishmael confronted a puzzle in (Deuteronomy 16:2), which says: "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." But the Passover offering is supposed t...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — offered an alternative reading of (Deuteronomy 16:2): "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." Rather than identifying ...
(Exodus 12:6) "And it shall be to you for a keeping": Why does the taking of the Pesach (Passover) precede its slaughtering by four days? R. Matia b. Charash says: It is written (E...
Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar Berebbi posed a rhetorical question that reveals something extraordinary about the Israelites during their centuries of slavery in Egypt. Did Israel not poss...
The Mekhilta makes a striking claim about the moral character of the Israelites in Egypt: they were not guilty of sexual immorality. The proof comes from an unexpected source — a v...
Rabbi Nathan offered a striking interpretation of the erotic poetry of Song of Songs that transformed it into a lesson about the sanctity of marriage. When the verse says "a locked...
The Israelites spent twelve months in Egypt after Moses first appeared before Pharaoh. Twelve months of escalating plagues, mounting chaos, and growing anticipation of departure. D...
One of the most remarkable claims in rabbinic tradition is that the Israelites preserved their identity throughout centuries of Egyptian bondage by refusing to change their names. ...
The Mekhilta identifies one of the hidden miracles of the Egyptian exile: the Israelites never abandoned the Hebrew language. Despite living for centuries among Egyptian speakers, ...
The Mekhilta raises a question that cuts to the heart of the Passover story: why did God command the Israelites to select the Passover lamb four full days before slaughtering it? W...
R. Yehudah b. Betheira says: It is written (Exodus 6:9) "And they would not hearken to Moses (as to G–d's delivering them), for shortness of spirit, etc." Now is there anyone who i...
Moses told the Israelites to take a lamb for the Passover offering, and they were terrified. The Mekhilta preserves their fearful protest: "Will we slaughter the abomination of Egy...
The Mekhilta takes a phrase from the Passover laws — "it shall be to you for a keeping" (Exodus 12:6) — and asks what seems like a technical question with surprising depth. Does "k...
Scripture specified it (the fourteenth day) as mandatory. It is not the second assumption, then, that is to be accepted, but the first. "And it shall be to you for a keeping": Scri...
"And they shall slaughter it": whether on a weekday or on a Sabbath. And how would I satisfy (Exodus 31:14) "Its (Sabbath's) profaners shall be put to death"? With other labors, as...
R. Yonathan said to him: But we still have not heard! R. Yoshiyah: It is written (Ibid. 28:2) "Command the children of Israel and say to them: My offering, My bread … shall you obs...
The Mekhilta asks a practical question about Passover night in Egypt that reveals something extraordinary about how communal sacrifice works. The Torah commands, "The entire assemb...
The Mekhilta uncovers a contradiction in the Torah's timeline that forces a radical rethinking of when the Passover sacrifice actually happened. Deuteronomy commands, "There shall ...
Rabbi Nathan takes on a question that had puzzled scholars of the Torah for generations: what does the Hebrew phrase ben ha'arbayim actually mean? The term appears in the Passover ...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, one of the most brilliant and mystically inclined sages in all of rabbinic literature, offers a reading of the Passover timeline that is as precise as a wa...
Ben Betheira tackled one of the most practical and debated questions in all of Passover law: when exactly should the Paschal lamb be slaughtered? The Torah gives a poetic instructi...
(Exodus 12:7) "And they shall take from the blood": I might think either by hand or by vessel; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 22) "And you shall dip it in the blood which is in t...
On the night that would change everything, God told the Israelites to paint blood on their doorframes. But where exactly? On the inside of the doorposts and lintel, or on the outsi...
The debate over where the Israelites placed the Passover blood continues in the Mekhilta, and Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Yitzchak stake out dramatically different positions — each reve...
"And they shall place it on the two side posts and on the lintel": I might think that if he placed (the blood on) one before the other, he has not fulfilled his obligation. It is, ...
The Mekhilta notices a detail in the Passover laws that most readers skip right past. The Torah says the blood should go on the doorframes "of the houses in which they eat it" (Exo...
"on this night": I might think, the entire night; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 10) "You shall not leave over anything of it until morning, and what is left over of it until mor...
And whence is it derived that in the absence of matzoh and maror one fulfills his obligation with the Pesach (Passover)? From "shall they eat it" (in any event). I might think that...
The Torah's instructions for eating the Passover lamb include a phrase that seems straightforward but contains a legal depth charge: "with matzoth and maror shall they eat it" (Exo...
The Torah uses an unusual doubled phrase when describing how the Passover lamb must not be prepared: "vashel mevushal" — literally something like "cooked, cooked" or "boiled, boile...
The Torah says the Passover lamb must not be "cooked in water" (Exodus 12:9). Water is specified. But Rabbi Yishmael immediately sees the problem: what about wine? What about fruit...
Rabbi Akiva, the towering sage who reshaped all of rabbinic Judaism, offers his own answer to the question of why the Torah only mentions water when prohibiting the cooking of the ...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) and the most authoritative sage of his generation — weighs in on the Passover cooking ...
"uvashel": "bashel" (here refers to flesh that was) roasted (before, the understanding being that it is forbidden to cook it even if it had been roasted previously), as in (Devarim...
The Torah gives strict instructions about Passover leftovers: "You shall not leave over anything of it until the morning, and what is left over of it until the morning, in fire sha...
Rabbi Yishmael cuts through the debate about burning Passover leftovers with a characteristically logical argument. The other sages needed the repeated phrase "until morning" to es...
Rabbi Yonathan builds a towering logical structure to prove that Passover leftovers cannot be burned on the festival — and like Rabbi Yishmael, he argues the Torah did not need an ...
Rabbi Yitzchak enters the debate about burning Passover leftovers with yet another angle of attack, proving the same conclusion through a different logical comparison. His argument...
"And thus shall you eat it" (Exodus 12:11) — the Torah prescribes not just what to eat on Passover night, but how to eat it. Loins girded. Sandals on your feet. Staff in hand. Eat ...
The Torah commands the Israelites to eat the Passover lamb "in haste" (Exodus 12:11). But whose haste? The Mekhilta identifies a surprising ambiguity in this seemingly simple word ...
Rabbi Yehoshua disagrees. In his reading, the "haste" of the Passover meal belongs to the Israelites themselves, not to the Egyptians. And he flips the proof texts to make his case...
Abba Channan says in the name of R. Elazar: This ("in haste") is the haste of the Shechinah. And even though there is no proof for this, it is intimated in (Song of Songs 2:8) "the...
