30 passagesc. 500 CEHebrew / AramaicCC-BY
Individual passages from Talmud Bavli, Berakhot, indexed for close reading, source verification, and myth source-checking.
Talmud Bavli, Berakhot turns to Creation By Letters. Why these letters? Why Hebrew? Well, one tradition says the world was created with the letter bet, the second letter of the Heb...
The tradition tells us that he did. The scene: Abraham, his father, raises the knife. But according to some accounts, Isaac's eyes weren't fixed on the blade. Instead, they were dr...
On Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av, the Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, something extraordinary is said to happen. While Jews gather at the Kotel...
The Talmud, in Berakhot 3b, offers us a glimpse into King David's bedchamber. No ordinary room,. Above his bed hung a harp. But this wasn't just any harp; it was touched by the div...
Jewish tradition, in its wonderfully audacious way, even imagines God putting on a tallit and tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer). Yes, you read that right. God, wra...
The Talmud claims you are never alone. According to Berakhot 6a, the sage Abba Binyamin taught that if the human eye were granted permission to see demons, no living creature could...
The story I want to share with you comes from the Talmud and it’s about Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, and a truly extraordinary encounter. Rabbi Ishmael goes into the ...
Prayer is often remembered as something we do, a way to connect with the Divine. But Jewish tradition sometimes paints a different picture, one where God, in a sense, prays too. Ho...
Rabbi Meir had a problem. Hooligans in his neighborhood were making his life miserable. His solution was direct, he prayed to God for them to die. His wife, Beruria, one of the sha...
A world without the sun or moon. I know, sounds like science fiction. But the prophet Isaiah, in chapter 60, verse 19, tells us, "No longer shall you need the sun for light by day,...
While Jewish tradition offers glimpses, it often leaves us with more questions than answers. But that's part of the beauty, isn't it? One image that emerges is that the Olam Ha-Ba ...
The Talmud records some of the most intimate prayers ever spoken, personal confessions the great Sages whispered after their formal prayers were complete. According to Berakhot 17a...
Talmud Bavli, Berakhot turns to The Souls Of The Dead On The Sabbath. Every Shabbat, the dead rise. It's a powerful image, isn’t it? Not a zombie apocalypse kind of rising, but som...
the story that the Wall itself weeps? On the night of Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av, the day we mourn the destruction of the Temple, a strange phenomenon is said to occur. Dewdrops f...
If you had something that could smooth out those bumps, flatten those peaks, and make the journey a little easier. Well, according to Jewish tradition, the Israelites had just such...
God is often remembered as formless, beyond human comprehension, but our tradition is full of rich, imaginative descriptions. And one of the most striking is the image of God weari...
Where do dreams come from? The Talmud in Berakhot 55a offers a surprisingly psychological answer: from the dreamer's own mind. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani taught in the name of Rabbi ...
The principle that a dream follows its interpretation is not an abstraction. The Talmud in Berakhot 55b demonstrates it through the life of Joseph. And through a hard rule about ti...
There were twenty-four dream interpreters in Jerusalem, and if you brought the same dream to all of them, you would get twenty-four different answers. According to Berakhot 56a, ev...
Bar Haddaya, the dream interpreter who gave favorable readings to paying clients and devastating ones to non-payers, eventually paid for his corruption with his life. Berakhot 56b ...
The Talmud in Berakhot 57a catalogues an entire symbolic vocabulary of dreams, a dictionary of the unconscious, organized by category, where every image carries a fixed meaning. An...
The Talmud's dream encyclopedia in Berakhot 57b extends far beyond animals and actions. It maps the entire biblical library onto the landscape of sleep. Rabbi Yohanan taught that i...
Jewish tradition holds a beautiful, almost whimsical idea about friendship: that it actually creates an angel. It’s said that each of us has a unique light burning for us in the wo...
We, with our messy emotions and tear-streaked faces, tend to project a lot onto the Divine. But Jewish tradition actually gives us some incredibly vivid, even surreal, images of Go...
Jewish tradition dares to imagine a God who weeps. And perhaps nowhere is that more powerfully depicted than in the legends surrounding the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. ...
A reminder of forces far beyond our control. But have you ever wondered, according to Jewish tradition, why they happen? One powerful image suggests that earthquakes are a direct r...
The familiar picture has him as a solitary figure, but some fascinating stories paint a much different picture – a being both male and female. It's a wild idea. But it comes from s...
The concept of the Yetzer ha-Ra (the evil inclination) is a fascinating one, and its origins are debated. Some say it came into being with Adam himself, while others believe it did...
Rabbi Akiva was caught teaching Torah in public after the Roman Empire banned its study following the Bar Kokhba rebellion. When Pappus ben Yehuda warned him of the danger, Akiva a...
There is a way, a glimpse, perhaps, of the Divine Presence – the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence)? The Shekhinah, a Hebrew word often translated as "dwelling" or "presence," represe...
