2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 43 of 47.
This long sugya begins with a problem of mix-ups. When limbs of one offering get tangled with limbs of another, or unblemished with blemished, what does the priest do? Rabbi Elieze...
The midrash starts from a quiet observation about how the first human was made. The verse says God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, and elsewhere God commands "an altar of ...
A second reading guards the logic of the festival calendar. If the Omer offering on Passover were made from wheat, then the two loaves brought weeks later on Shavuot would lose the...
This brief teaching extends the same generous logic one step further. The first choice for the Omer is fresh, moist grain, newly reaped and still full of its sap. That is how the c...
The barley of the omer was meant to be cut at night, the night after the first festival day of Passover. Yet the Torah's word "you shall offer" opens a wider door. The Sages read i...
The barley brought as the omer was no ordinary grain. Rabbi Judah hears in the little word "if" a hint that this offering, like the Jubilee year, would one day lapse and one day re...
Many offerings are generous about their ingredients. They may be brought from grain grown inside the Land of Israel or beyond it, from this year's crop or from grain stored for yea...
A single possessive word, "your firstfruits," sets off a debate about whose grain pays for the omer. Rabbi Akiva reads it to mean the offering is funded communally, not from any on...
Rabbi Judah hears a promise hidden inside a single word. The Hebrew for the peace-offering, shelamim, shares its root with shalom, peace. So he reads the law of this sacrifice as a...
The Sages offer a second reading of the word shelamim, the peace-offering. Its root carries the sense of being made whole or complete, and here that wholeness is shared out. In the...
Rabbi Shimon hears in shelamim, the peace-offering, the word shalem, whole or at peace within oneself. From this he draws a sharp rule about who may stand at the altar. Only a pers...
How do we know that an offering must be slaughtered with the right intention, for the very purpose it was set apart to serve? The rabbis draw it from a single word. The verse says ...
The Torah, in the law of the peace-offering, names both the male and the female animal. The Sages heard more in those two words than a mere description of the beast on the altar. T...
Before a peace-offering is slaughtered, the owner presses both hands upon its head and leans his weight into the animal. The Torah says "he shall lay his hand," and the Sages read ...
Three times in the chapter the Torah says of the peace-offering, "and he shall slaughter it." Nothing in Scripture is mere repetition, so the Sages set out to find what each uttera...
A single verse about slaughtering the peace-offering "at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting" became the seed of two very different rulings, sprouting in two corners of the law. In...
What is the priest supposed to be thinking as the knife does its work? The Sages mined a single word, "offering," and found in it a whole architecture of intention. A peace-offerin...
The Torah forbids eating certain fat, called chelev, on pain of being cut off from the people. But which fat? Not every layer on the animal carries that weight. The Sages worked ca...
A practical question reached the priests who ate the holy portions: the fat lying over the animal's stomach, is it forbidden chelev or permitted to eat? The ruling, reported by Rav...
The Torah demands that an animal brought to the altar be tamim, unblemished and whole. A blemish you can see, a broken bone or a torn ear, plainly disqualifies. But Rav Achadboi ra...
The Torah's account of the peace-offering reads, at first glance, like a butcher's inventory: the fat upon the flanks, the lobe above the liver, the two kidneys. The Sages refuse t...
The chapter on peace-offerings opens a door and then carefully marks who may not walk through it. "Male or female," says the Torah, and the Sages press hard on those two words. The...
The single word "he" carries an enormous load in this passage. From it the Sages learn that the freewill peace-offering belongs to the individual, not to the community. A private p...
The Torah pauses before the goat. By breaking the flow of the chapter, the Sages teach, Scripture signals that the goat - unlike the lamb - carries no fat tail to the altar. Yet th...
A single short verse forbids two things at once: no fat, no blood. The Sages divide over how heavy that prohibition lies. Rabbi Yehuda reads the pairing as a linkage that multiplie...
How many lashes does a person earn for eating what the Torah forbids? The question sounds severe, even harsh, but behind it lies a careful accounting of where the Torah's prohibiti...
"A soul, when it sins." The phrase troubled the Sages, because the soul is the highest thing in a person, set above the ten organs that serve the body - the tongue for speech, the ...
Who stands within the system of the sin-offering, and who stands outside it? The Sages read the law closely and draw a firm line. The sin-offering, brought to atone for an unintent...
The Torah draws a sharp line between the heart that strays and the hand that knows. "If a person shall sin in error" (Leviticus 4:2): the sin offering is the medicine for the slip,...
How much must a person actually do before the work counts? The Torah says "he does one," and the sages weigh that single word like jewelers. Must you write the whole word, weave th...
This is the rabbinic study hall caught in motion, not in a lecture but in a marketplace. Rabbi Akiva, in the meat-stalls of Emaus while the elders shopped for a wedding feast, fire...
One loaf, two pairs of hands, and one of the sharpest disputes in the laws of the Sabbath. If a single person carries bread into the public domain, the act is plainly forbidden. Bu...
What happens when the holiest man in Israel makes a mistake? The high priest stands at the center of the nation's worship, yet the Torah refuses to place him above the law. "If the...
A court does not become guilty simply because the people stumbled. Two conditions must meet: the judges must have ruled wrongly on a point of law that was genuinely hidden from the...
A man can fall from the highest office, yet the sin he committed while wearing the breastplate does not simply vanish with his title. "And he shall offer for his sin which he sinne...
Order at the altar is its own kind of teaching. Two bulls stand ready, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering, and the sages ask which comes first. The answer splits t...
Strip away every comfortable assumption about high office and you find a sharper truth waiting in this passage. When the anointed priest stumbles into sin, he discovers that heaven...
A friend brings the king a beautiful gift and a fine loaf of bread. Instead of tucking it away inside the treasury, the king gives an order that turns the whole logic of honor on i...
The hand pressed down on the head of the animal is one of the most physical gestures in the whole sacrificial system. The worshipper does not stand at a distance. He leans his weig...
The sages read this like a master craftsman walking an apprentice through every motion of a sacred act, refusing to let a single gesture blur. The blood must be caught in a vessel,...
The care in this passage borders on the surgical. Once the bull is slaughtered, the knife must be lifted upward and away, because the verse insists the priest take of the blood of ...
A single word in a verse can swing in two directions at once, and the sages here debate exactly how far its force reaches. The text speaks of the finger in connection with placing ...
Scripture rarely wastes a word, so when two phrases seem to say the same thing the sages assume each carries its own freight. Here the verse commands the priest to dip his finger, ...
Why does the Torah spell out the lobe and the two kidneys for the anointed priest's bull, yet stay quiet about them for the community's offering? The school of Rabbi Yishmael answe...
How many times does the priest touch the blood of the sin-offering to the altar, and where exactly? The sages read the verses with great care. Rabbi Shimon counts the word for horn...
A single phrase, "at the base of the altar of burnt-offering," sets off a chain of reasoning. The sages first rule out a confusion: the blood goes to the outer altar, not the inner...
The Torah compares the fats of the sin-offering to those of the peace-offering, and the sages refuse to let that comparison pass without testing how far it stretches. A comparison ...
A comparison can run in two directions, and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi notices that the Torah's link between the priest's bull and the peace-offering teaches in both. Like the peace-o...
