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Rabbi Berekhya said: The Holy one blessed be He recorded the redemption of Israel in the Torah, as it is written: “If a stranger who is a resident among you shall prosper…” (Leviti...
Rabbi Ḥiya Raba and Rabbi Shimon ben Ḥalafta were walking in the valley of Arbel and they saw the breaking of the dawn’s light. Rabbi Ḥiya Raba said to Rabbi Shimon ben Ḥalafta: So...
That is what is written: “Say to God: How awesome are Your works” (Psalms 66:3). How terrifying are Your wonders. [Those slated to be] killed, kill those who would be their killers...
The Book of Esther opens with a single verse that the rabbis of Esther Rabbah read as a cry of anguish: "It was during the days of Ahasuerus" (Esther 1:1). But to understand why th...
A single verse from Deuteronomy captured the entire emotional arc of Jewish exile. "In the morning you will say: Would that it were evening, and in the evening you will say: Would ...
God told Israel three separate times: do not go back to Egypt. According to Esther Rabbah, they violated every single warning and paid for every single one. Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai ...
God made a promise embedded in the Torah's harshest chapter of curses, and the rabbis of Esther Rabbah turned it into one of the most powerful statements of divine loyalty in all o...
The prophet Amos described a man who fled from a lion, only to be attacked by a bear, and when he finally made it home and leaned against the wall, a snake bit him (Amos 5:19). The...
The Hebrew Bible contains a hidden signal that tells you, in a single prefix, whether a king's reign brought joy or catastrophe. Rabbi Yitzhak discovered it buried in the grammar o...
King Saul was told to destroy Amalek completely. He did not. Centuries later, according to Esther Rabbah, the Jewish people paid for that moment of misplaced mercy with a genocidal...
Cyrus, king of Persia, began with one of the most generous decrees in biblical history. He ended with one of the most foolish. Esther Rabbah traces exactly where his words went wro...
Ahasuerus was a hypocrite. Not in the casual sense of the word, but in the specific, devastating way that Esther Rabbah defines it: a ruler who kills his wife for his friend, and t...
From the very first moment of creation, God assigned every major figure in history a specific role. Esther Rabbah preserves a remarkable list, attributed to Rabbi Berekhya, that re...
The rabbis of Esther Rabbah made a stunning claim: every time the Hebrew word vayhi ("it was") appears in the Torah, it signals disaster. Rabbi Tanhuma, Rabbi Berekhya, and Rabbi H...
The exile of the Jewish people under Ahasuerus was not an accident. According to Esther Rabbah, it was prophesied in detail centuries before it happened, embedded in verses from Is...
