1,351 related texts · 28 related myths · Page 2 of 29
Berurya, one of the sharpest minds in all of Talmudic literature, once caught a student studying Torah in a whisper. She kicked him and said: Scripture teaches that Torah must be "...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Yitbarach (May He Be Blessed) Blessed be the name of the King of kings, the Holy One blessed be He, who lives and endures forever and eve...
When a lion roars, every animal in the forest freezes. Even the ones who have never been hunted. Even the ones too far away to be prey. The sound itself is the message: there is so...
Israel in exile speaks like a child who has finally stopped lying. "Master of the Universe, at first I said 'I have not sinned,' and You brought suffering upon me. Now I say: I hav...
"But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me'" (Isaiah 49:14). And God answers, not with proof of presence but with a reminder of what "remembering" actuall...
Jews have always taken dreams seriously. The Talmud devotes pages to their meaning. But not every dream comes with an interpretation, and not every dreamer has a Joseph nearby to d...
The Talmud in Kiddushin 31a tells the story of Dama ben Netina, a gentile merchant of Ashkelon who became, in the rabbinic imagination, the standard for filial honor. The exempla c...
A Jewish man named Nathan traveled to an island and was on the brink of committing a serious sin with a famous courtesan. The room was prepared. The door was closed. He was about t...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:3) performs one of its most characteristic moves, it drops the future straight into the past. The plain verse says, I will bless those who ble...
(Genesis 19:37), in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: "And the elder brought forth a son, and she called his name Moab, because from her father she had conceived. He is the father of the Moa...
“I remember my song in the night; I meditate with my heart, and my spirit searches” (Psalms 77:7). Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon and Rabbi Aivu.58The text of the midrash (rabbinic i...
There's a reason the north feels… incomplete. It's said that in the east, west, and south, heaven and earth meet, creating a sense of wholeness. But the north? GOD left it unfinish...
Sometimes the pieces don’t quite fit At first. Take, for instance, the tribe of Levi. In the Book of Numbers – Bamidbar in Hebrew – we find two seemingly opposing instructions rega...
The verse He says that wherever eleh appears, it acts like a reset button, essentially rejecting what came before. On the other hand, ve'eleh – "and these" – adds to what was previ...
It was a meticulously orchestrated operation, each family of Levites having a specific, divinely appointed task. to some of the details, as revealed in Bamidbar Rabbah 6. One of th...
The Torah tells us in (Numbers 4:29), “The sons of Merari, by their families, by their patrilineal house, you shall count them.” Now, it first appears all Levites were treated equa...
Even the tribe of Levi felt that way once, and their story, preserved in Bamidbar Rabbah (Numbers Rabbah) 15, is a powerful reminder of how God sees and values each of us, even whe...
Originally, it was the firstborn sons who were meant to serve in the sanctuary. But, as Ginzberg tells us in Legends of the Jews, when the Israelites succumbed to idolatry and wors...
When Betzalel finished the choshen, the breastplate of judgment, he did not simply sew a garment. He built a map of the world the House of Israel carries on its heart. In Targum Ps...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:4) turns a floor plan into a theology. Moshe is instructed to place the table of showbread on the north side of the sanctuary and the menorah o...
The Israelites, wandering in the desert, carrying the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, with them. It wasn't exactly backpacking. There were heavy pieces involved. How did they manage it al...
The Torah tells us that Moses took a census, not just once, but several times. This wasn't just idle counting! One specific count focused on the Levites, that special tribe dedicat...
It all starts with the verse, "All that opens the womb of all flesh" (Numbers 18:15). Right away, the text asks a crucial question: does this include animals? The answer, as often ...
(Job 5:19) promises: "From six woes He shall save you, and in the seventh, evil shall not reach you." The midrash asks which six woes. And Solomon in Proverbs provides the list: "S...
It wasn't a random free-for-all. The Book of Numbers gives us a fascinating glimpse into a highly structured encampment around the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. And Bamidbar Rabbah, a c...
They're not mistakes. They're breadcrumbs, little hints that something deeper is going on beneath the surface of the text. And they invite us to pause, to question, to explore the ...
The verse Simple enough. But the Rabbis never let anything sit at face value. They always dig deeper. In this case, they noticed something intriguing about the census of the Levi’i...
The ones that make you tilt your head and ask, "Wait, what? (Numbers 3:46) tells us about redeeming the 273 firstborn Israelites who were "over and above the number of Levites." Ok...
Our journey starts with a seemingly simple verse from (Numbers 4:22): “Take a census of the sons of Gershon as well, by their patrilineal house, by their families.” But within this...
Why priests were priests, Levites were Levites, and the firstborn. well, what was the deal with the firstborn? Our story begins in Bamidbar Rabbah 6, a section of the great Midrash...
Take the census of the Levites in the Book of Numbers, for example. It might seem like a simple headcount, but Bamidbar Rabbah 6 teases out layers of meaning, revealing fascinating...
Maybe it's your stamp collection, each one unique. Or the number of books you've amassed over the years. We count them separately, admiring each one, and then we count them all tog...
It even shows up in our ideas about Gehenna. Gehenna. It’s a loaded word. Often translated as "Hell," it’s really more complex than that. It’s a place of purification, of reckoning...
Their grumbling had some pretty fiery consequences. We find ourselves in the book of Numbers (Bamidbar in Hebrew, meaning "in the wilderness") chapter 21. The Israelites are trekki...
Serah, daughter of Asher, one of Jacob's sons. We find her name nestled in the list of those who went down to Egypt with Jacob to escape the famine. You can find it in (Genesis 46:...
The familiar picture has them as a unified mass, but the ancient texts paint a much more vibrant, organized picture. Imagine a sea of colorful banners, each telling a story, each r...
The Targum Jonathan transforms the consecration of the Levites from a brief ritual into an elaborate purification involving specific quantities of water, a razor over every inch of...
Bamidbar Rabbah turns to Nahshon in Battle. Chapter 2 of Bamidbar (Numbers), starts with this: "Those who encamp to the east, the banner of the camp of Judah, according to their ho...
(Numb. 1:1-2) “Then the Lord spoke unto Moses in the Sinai desert […,] ‘Take a census of the whole congregation.” This text is related (to Ps. 147:20), “He has not done so for any ...
These weren’t just pretty rocks. Oh no. Each of the twelve stones corresponded to one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and according to the legends, they possessed unique properties...
The Book of Numbers – in Hebrew, Bamidbar, meaning "in the wilderness" – is full of intricate details about the Tabernacle, the sacrifices, and the duties of the Levites. And withi...
The ancient sages pondered similar questions when interpreting the very first verse of the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar, which begins: “The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Si...
That feeling, that inherent worth… it's something the ancient rabbis grappled with too. And they found a powerful message about it in the very first verses of the Book of Numbers, ...
One that opens up a whole world of understanding about the special role this tribe played. Our story starts in the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar in Hebrew, which literally means "in th...
It’s a story of sin, substitution, and…redemption. Originally, get this, the b’chorim, the firstborn sons, held a special spiritual role. They were designated to perform sacred ser...
Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of Rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers, explores this very question, specifically in the context of redeeming firstborn sons. The passage hinges...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Sheni Ketuvim In the beginning God created etc. - To declare the might of the acts of creation to creatures, and to make it known to them...
The rabbis counted the wounds and found that five had opened on the seventeenth of Tammuz and five more on the ninth of Av, the two fast days that frame the Three Weeks of summer m...
