1,517 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, shown in source order. Page 17 of 32.
This exchange in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves a debate between two students of Rabbi Yishmael, Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Yoshiyah, over how Scripture establishes that the ...
The passage of the Mekhilta works through the laws of the manna and what they teach about sacred days. The verse states, "Six days shall you gather it, but on the seventh day, the ...
The Torah states that a kidnapper "shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:16), but does not specify the method of execution. The Mekhilta identifies the method as strangulation. But how...
"You shall not cook", the Torah explicitly prohibits cooking meat in milk. But what about eating the cooked mixture? The verse says "cook," not "eat." Does the absence of an explic...
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...
When God split the Red Sea for the Israelites, the miracle did not stop at a single body of water. The Mekhilta asks a pointed question: what about the waters in pits, cavities, ca...
This passage, appearing in Mekhilta Tractate Nezikin 5:18, restates the teaching of Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) that appears earlier in the same tractate: "There is 'death' at the...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael records a sharp legal debate about the prohibition against cooking meat and milk together. The rabbis use a technique called kal va-chomer, reasoning ...
Whence do you derive (the same for) the upper and the lower waters and the depths? From (Psalms 77:17) "The waters saw You, O G–d; the waters saw You and quaked. The depths quaked ...
Rabbi Akiva offered his own proof that eating meat cooked in milk is forbidden, using a different a fortiori argument. His starting point was not the Passover offering but the thig...
The Mekhilta raises a fascinating question about the relationship between laws that existed before the giving of the Torah at Sinai and those that were introduced at Sinai itself. ...
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 ...
"You shall not steal", this is the eighth of the Ten Commandments. But what kind of stealing does it prohibit? The Mekhilta argues it refers to kidnapping, not theft of property. T...
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 ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, the early halakhic midrash on Exodus from the school of Rabbi Yishmael, presses on a single word in the Decalogue. The Ten Commandments declare "Thou...
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...
(Exodus 21:17) states: "And if one curses his father and his mother, he shall be put to death." The Mekhilta asks why this verse is needed at all, since (Leviticus 20:9) already sa...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael presents a step in a larger legal argument about why meat cooked in milk is forbidden to eat. The passage uses a technique called refutation, counteri...
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...
"And if one curses his father and his mother", the Mekhilta notices that this verse uses "and," connecting father and mother together. Taken literally, this might mean the death pe...
The Mekhilta continues its analysis of how the prohibition against eating meat cooked in milk is established in Torah law. The argument proceeds by comparing meat and milk to other...
Issi ben Guria demonstrated that eating meat cooked in milk is forbidden through a verbal comparison between two passages. The word "holiness" appears in (Deuteronomy 14:21), where...
The Mekhilta asks yet another question about the verse "And if one curses his father and his mother." From (Leviticus 20:9), which says "every man who curses," we would know only t...
The Mekhilta has established that eating meat cooked in milk is forbidden. But what about deriving other forms of benefit, selling the mixture, using it as animal feed, or extracti...
The Torah commands, "And if one curses his father and his mother" he is liable for a grave sin (Exodus 21:17). The Mekhilta noticed that the verse as written only clearly applies w...
The phrase "if one curses his father and his mother" raises yet another question: with what name must the curse be spoken? Rabbi Achai taught that the offender is liable for the de...
R. Chanina b. Iddi works here by careful comparison of language across the Torah, the method the Sages call a verbal analogy. He observes that Scripture pairs commands about sweari...
What happens if your father is a judge? The Torah prohibits cursing judges: "Elohim you shall not curse" (Exodus 22:27). It also prohibits cursing leaders: "And a prince in your pe...
The Mekhilta is working out why the Torah forbids cursing one's father, and it does so by comparing him to other figures the Torah protects from a curse. Scripture warns against cu...
Rebbi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, examines one of the most famous dietary laws in the Torah: "You shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (Exodus 23:19). This prohibition appears thr...
"You shall not cook a kid". But the Torah speaks of cooking a kid specifically in its mother's milk. What about cooking it in the milk of an animal that is not its mother, say, an ...
The Mekhilta pushes the meat-and-milk prohibition further. What about cooking an animal's flesh in its own milk? Not the mother's milk, not a sister's milk, but the milk the animal...
Can goat's milk be used to cook sheep's flesh? The species are different, goats and sheep. But both are domesticated livestock. The Mekhilta extends the prohibition through yet ano...
"You shall not cook a goat in its mother's milk", the Mekhilta derives from this verse that the cooking prohibition applies specifically to meat and milk, and not to other combinat...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael closes its treatment of the civil laws with a careful extension of the prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother's milk. The opening verse, the ...
The Mekhilta examines a small but practical question about the very first Passover in Egypt. Scripture commands (Exodus 12:7) "And they shall take from the blood" of the lamb to pl...
The verse reports, "And the children of Israel came in the midst of the sea on the dry land" (Exodus 14:22), and the Mekhilta records a famous dispute over what happened in the mom...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael interprets one of the most powerful lines in the Song at the Sea: "And in the greatness of Your grandeur You break those who rise up against You" (Exo...
(Exodus 16:28) "And the L–rd said to Moses: How long will you refuse to keep, etc.": R. Yehoshua says: The Holy One Blessed be He said to Moses: Moses, say to Israel: I took you ou...
(Exodus 21:18) introduces the laws of personal injury: "And if men quarrel." The Mekhilta asks why this section exists at all. The Torah already states in (Exodus 21:24) the princi...
The Mekhilta offers a parable to explain a seeming contradiction in Jewish prayer practice. A king has two sons. He enters the younger son's room at night and says, "Wake me at sun...
This teaching from the Mekhilta, the early halakhic midrash of the school of Rabbi Yishmael, reads the Song at the Sea with a magnifying glass. When Israel sang of their enemies at...
The Mekhilta offers a parable that illuminates the logic behind the order of events at Sinai. A king of flesh and blood enters a new province. His servants immediately urge him: "M...
"And if men quarrel", this verse mentions men. But does the law of personal injury apply only to men? What about women who injure others or are injured? Rabbi Yishmael argued that ...
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...
Thus said the Holy One Blessed be He: What reward will accrue to the sons of Benjamin, who went down first into the sea? The reposing of the Shechinah in his portion (i.e., the Tem...
R. Yehudah says: It is not written "the pupil of the eye, but "the pupil of His eye", the "eye" of the Holy One, as it were. Similarly, (Malachi 1:13) "And you say (of an offering)...
Before God gave a single commandment at Sinai, He made a remarkable statement that the Mekhilta preserves as a kind of divine negotiation. "I am the Lord your God," He declared. Th...
