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The verse in question comes from 1 Chronicles 29:9: “The people rejoiced in their donation, because they donated to the Lord wholeheartedly, and King David too rejoiced with great ...
The ancient rabbis wrestled with this very idea, and they came up with a fascinating little lesson hidden within the stories of our ancestors. Bereshit Rabbah, that incredible coll...
Specifically, Bereshit Rabbah 70 wrestles with a tricky part of Jacob's story. After his dream of the ladder, Jacob makes a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and will keep me i...
The story begins with Akilas, a convert to Judaism – a ger tzedek, as we say in Hebrew. He approaches Rabbi Eliezer with a question, a concern, really. Akilas points to the verse i...
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin, quoting Rabbi Levi, shares a profound idea: God took the conversations of the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and transformed them into the very...
Seems straightforward. But a curious question arises, a question that leads us into a fascinating rabbinic debate found in Bereshit Rabbah 70. The scene opens with an idolater tryi...
There's something to that. In fact, the rabbis saw that connection way back when. We find ourselves in Genesis 29:1, where it says, "Jacob lifted his feet, and went to the land of ...
The Rabbis, masters of drash (interpretive storytelling), loved to find echoes and allusions throughout the Torah. They saw connections where we might only see separate stories. An...
Take the story of Jacob meeting Rachel at the well. It seems straightforward: boy meets girl, asks about her family, gets the scoop. But according to Bereshit Rabbah, ancient rabbi...
