309 passagesc. 2nd-13th century CEHebrew / AramaicCC-BY
Individual passages from Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, shown in source order. Page 1 of 7.
It’s not random. There's a beautiful and intricate choreography to our relationship with the Divine. Consider the dedication of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. The Book of Numbers tel...
When the Song of Songs sings, "King Solomon made for him a palanquin" (Song of Songs 3:9), the sages of Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:2 hear something far beyond a royal carriage. The Ki...
"Go forth and gaze, daughters of Zion, upon King Solomon" (Song of Songs 3:11). The sages of Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:3 read that word tziyyon as m'tzuyanim, the distinguished ones,...
The book of Proverbs throws out one of the great riddles of the Hebrew Bible. "Who has ascended to Heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in the hollows of his hands? Who ...
One small Hebrew word, kalot, "completed", carries an entire wedding, an entire exorcism, and the steadying of the whole world. In Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:5, the sages pry open (Nu...
The opening verse of Numbers 7 says a single thing twice. Moses "anointed the Tabernacle and sanctified it," and then the verse adds, "and he anointed them and sanctified them." Wh...
When the tribal chieftains of Israel brought their gifts to the newly raised Tabernacle, they came with an oddly specific number of things. Six covered wagons. Twelve oxen. One wag...
When the chieftains of Israel rolled up to the Tabernacle with six covered wagons, the Torah uses a strange word for those wagons, tzav. Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:8 turns the word un...
Shabbat Shekalim arrives on the Shabbat before the month of Adar ends, the first of the four special Sabbaths that prepare the Jewish people for Passover. The Torah reading is brie...
When Rabbi Yaakov bar Yuda stood up to teach in the name of Rabbi Yonatan of Beit Govrin, he opened with a verse that reads like a traveler's warning: "The way of the sluggard is l...
Some verses in Isaiah sound like they are narrating a future cataclysm, and the rabbis who sat in the study halls of the Galilee knew a secret about such verses. Sometimes the prop...
A Roman matrona once came to Rabbi Yosei bar Chalafta with a question that sounded innocent and was not. "In how many days did your God create the universe?" she asked. Rabbi Yosei...
A single verse in Proverbs sparked one of the most unsettling debates in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:5. "Tzedakah -- righteousness -- elevates a people; and chesed to the nations is a ...
Rabbi Yudan opened his teaching on Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:6 with a verse from Proverbs: "Choice silver is the tongue of the righteous; the heart of evildoers is worth little" (Pro...
Sometimes, the connection isn’t immediately obvious. Take, for instance, the verses about atonement and taking a census in the book of Exodus. What’s the link? The Pesikta DeRav Ka...
When the Holy One told Moses to count Israel, Moses was bewildered. Had God not sworn that this people would be as numberless as the dust, the stars, the sand of the sea? How could...
The sages reached for an image to comfort a people that had been thinned by loss. Israel, they said, are like sand. Press a hollow into sand at dusk and by dawn the hollow has quie...
When God told Moses that every Israelite must give a ransom for his soul, Moses could not picture it. What coin could equal a human life? But the Holy One reached beneath His Thron...
A single proverb opens the portion: strike a scoffer, and the simple grow wise. The scoffer is Amalek, who attacked Israel at Rephidim the moment the people let their grip on Torah...
Rabbi Tanhum opened with a verse from Job that turns on a single word for ashes, and he heard in it a choice laid before Israel. The Holy One reminds His children of the two rememb...
Rabbi Yudah opened with a warning from the Psalms: do not be like the horse or the mule, creatures without understanding. Then he set out the horse's faults, six in number. It eats...
Rabbi Binai opened with a line from Proverbs: scales of deceit are an abomination to the Lord, but an honest weight delights Him. From this he drew a hard reading of history. When ...
Rabbi Levi opened with a verse from the Psalms that reads like a roll call of judgment: You have rebuked the nations, You have destroyed the wicked, You have blotted out their name...
The psalmist cried, "Return sevenfold to our neighbors what they did into their own bosom" (Psalms 79:12), and the sages asked what wound deserved such a measured repayment. Rabbi ...
"Remember what Amalek did to you" (Deuteronomy 25:17). Rabbi Berekhiah caught the strangeness of the command. You ask us to remember, he said to the Holy One, blessed be He, but fo...
The sages would not let even the name Amalek pass without prying it open. Split one way, they heard "am yalek," a people swarming and devouring like locusts stripping a field bare....
"On the way, as you came out of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 25:17). Rabbi Levi heard in that phrase the sneak of an ambush: Amalek fell upon Israel from the roadside the way a bandit sprin...
"Who chanced upon you on the way" (Deuteronomy 25:18). The single Hebrew word for "chanced" opened three roads of meaning. Rabbi Yudah heard in it defilement, the same root used fo...
"And he smote your tail" (Deuteronomy 25:18). The sages read the phrase as a blow aimed low and shameful, a striking at the most vulnerable part of the body. In the name of Rabbi Y...
"All the faint ones behind you" (Deuteronomy 25:18). The sages asked who these stragglers really were, the ones Amalek picked off at the rear. Rabbi Yudah said they were those who ...
"And you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God" (Deuteronomy 25:18). The verse paints Israel parched and exhausted from the road, and Amalek as a man with no fear of Heaven...
The verse promises a day of rest from every enemy, and the sages heard inside that promise a set of marching orders. The land was not given so that Israel could simply settle and f...
They found fascinating ways to resolve those tensions within the sacred texts. Take, for instance, the perplexing case of Amalek. Who was Amalek? A biblical nation known for its un...
A strange verse stands at the head of this teaching: "a hand is upon the throne of the LORD; the LORD will have war with Amalek" (Exodus 17:16). The sages read it as an oath sworn ...
The portion of the Red Heifer opens with a question from Job: "Who can bring a pure thing out of an impure? Not one" (Job 14:4). The midrash hears a hidden answer in those last wor...
"The words of the LORD are pure words, silver refined sevenfold" (Psalms 12:7). Rabbi Tanhum begins with the gap between divine speech and human speech. A mortal king tours a town,...
Solomon stands at the head of this teaching as the wisest of men, his gift compared to a stretch of sand fencing in the sea. The rabbis pile up his greatness. He outshone the sages...
"A man's wisdom lights up his face" (Ecclesiastes 8:1). The midrash turns this single verse like a gem, finding in it face after face. First it points to the Holy One, who founded ...
"Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among those who call on His name" (Psalms 99:6). The verse brackets three towering figures, and the sages mine it for what set each a...
Rabbi Levi, transmitted by Rabbi Joshua of Sikhnin, names four commandments that the evil inclination loves to challenge. Each one carries an inner contradiction, and each is marke...
Why does the red heifer make sense to no one? The sages teach that the Holy One, blessed be He, told Moses something startling. "To you I reveal the reason of this commandment," He...
Every other sacrifice in the Torah comes from a male animal, yet the red heifer is female. The sages found meaning in that exception. Rabbi Aibo offered a homely picture from a roy...
The sages did not stop at law. They read the red heifer as a map of history, each word of the verse naming a kingdom that would rule and oppress Israel. "A heifer" is Egypt, where ...
Having read the heifer as Israel's foreign oppressors, the sages turn the same verse inward and read it as Israel itself. "A heifer" recalls a people once stubborn as a young cow. ...
If the sun already lights the world, what is the moon for? The sages found the question lurking in the very spelling of Scripture. When the Torah says "let there be lights," Rabbi ...
The covenant between the pieces was more than a vision of fire and darkness. The sages teach that in that dread, God showed Abraham four futures at once: the Torch of Torah, the he...
A single verse from Proverbs frames this whole teaching: hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. The sages trace that ache through one figure...
The Psalmist prays, "Send Your light and Your truth; they shall lead me." Reading the verse as prophecy, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish hears in those two words the names of two brothers....
