906 related texts · Page 3 of 19
“From on high He sent fire into my bones, and He crushed them; He spread a net for my feet, He turned me back. He rendered me desolate, suffering all day” (Lamentations 1:13).“From...
Today, we’re going to peek behind the curtain a bit, focusing on a fascinating, and rather human, episode involving Moses, his wife Zipporah, and his siblings, Miriam and Aaron. Th...
Quail fell from the sky in quantities that defy imagination. Rabbi Yoshiyah, quoted in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (a 3rd-century CE halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive comme...
(Numbers 11:33) "the flesh was still between their teeth": They said: The "kosher" one among them ate it and became immediately diarrhetic. The wicked one among them ate it and suf...
(Numb. 1:1:) “Then the Lord spoke unto Moses.” Fortunate are you, Moses!25Numb. R. 1:6; cf. Lev. R. 1:1. Six hundred thousand were present with the priests, the Levites, and the el...
"This is the statute of the Paschal offering." Scripture speaks of (both) the Pesach (Passover) of Egypt and the Pesach for all the generations. These are the words of R. Oshiyah. ...
Rabbi Nathan, citing Abba Yossi Hamechuzi, preserves a remarkable exchange between God and Moses at the Red Sea — one that reveals the extraordinary trust God had placed in His ser...
viz. (Song of Songs 3: "I had almost passed them (Moses and Aaron) by, when I found Him whom my soul loved. I held onto Him and did not let go of Him until I had brought Him to the...
(Exodus 17:4) "and Moses cried out to the L–rd": We are hereby apprised of the eminence of Moses. He did not say: Since they are quarreling with me I will not implore mercy for the...
How seriously should a student revere a teacher? The Mekhilta answers with a statement that sounds almost blasphemous: the fear of one's teacher is to be equated with the fear of H...
"and he bowed down to him and he kissed him": I would not know who bowed down to whom or who kissed whom, were it not written (Ibid.) "And they greeted, a man, his neighbor, in pea...
R. Elazar Hamodai says: He sent him with all the honor in the world, as is seen in his (Moses') response to him, as it is written (Numbers 10:30) "I pray you, do not leave us," tel...
The Torah states that God descended onto Mount Sinai "before the eyes of all the people" (Exodus 19:11), and the Mekhilta draws a startling conclusion from those words: if even a s...
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 tim...
The question of whether Moses wrote the last eight verses of the Torah—the ones describing his own death—provoked one of the most poignant debates in the Talmud. Bava Batra 15a pre...
Pharaoh's daughter did not accidentally find Moses. According to Sotah 12b, she came to the river to immerse herself—not for bathing, but to wash away the spiritual impurity of her...
Seventy Names of Metatron: The book "Seventy Names of Metatron", which Rabbi Yishmael revealed, 23 of which he received when he ascended on high. The book was brought to print by R...
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...
Gog makes his plans in secret. He thinks his strategies are hidden — the alliance-building, the schemes against Israel, the invasions planned in quiet rooms. "On that day, thoughts...
Why does the world hold together? Jeremiah gives the unlikely answer: "If not for My covenant day and night, I would not have established the fixed order of heaven and earth" (Jere...
Esau sees that the women of Canaan displease his father Isaac (Genesis 28:8). So what does he do? He goes and marries a daughter of Ishmael. Adding trouble upon trouble, the rabbis...
We tend to picture Him as all-powerful, which He is, but the ancient texts sometimes paint a more… visceral picture. A picture of YAHWEH, the Warrior God. Think about the Exodus st...
“She has become like a widow.” Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: They did not go to extremes vis-à-vis the attribute of justice, and the attribute of justice did not go to extremes in th...
“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...
“The Lord was like an enemy. He demolished Israel, demolished all its palaces, destroyed its strongholds. He multiplied mourning and moaning in the daughter of Judah” (Lamentations...
“He wore away my flesh and my skin, broke my bones” (Lamentations 3:4).“He wore away my flesh” – this is the community. “And my skin” – this is the Sanhedrin (the supreme rabbinic ...
“There was a Judean man in the Shushan citadel, and his name was Mordekhai, son of Ya'ir, son of Shimi, son of Kish, a Benjamite” (Esther 2:5).“There was a Judean man [ish] in the ...
Abraham's entire family were idol-makers. They carved images and sold them in the streets. But Abraham ran the stall like a philosopher. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a...
Abraham had demolished the idols. Now he turned his mind to the elements themselves. "Fire is more worthy of honor than all things formed," he reasoned, "because even that which is...
A cloud rose from a vast sea. Baruch watched it ascend — enormous, churning, filled with waters both black and bright, shot through with colors, and crowned at its summit by a bolt...
Take Abraham's journey to Mount Moriah, the place where he was commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It’s a story we think we know, but let’s pull back the curtain a little. The T...
The Torah states that God "did not dispel the pillar of cloud in the day, and the pillar of fire at night." The Mekhilta reads this verse carefully and discovers two teachings hidd...
Jewish tradition understands that feeling, and, in a way, provides a "second chance" in the form of Pesach (Passover) Sheni. But what exactly is Pesach Sheni, the "Second Passover"...
In the distant lands of Persia, where fire altars burned day and night in honor of the elements, the Jewish communities faced a peculiar danger that was not from human persecutors ...
In Chapter 36, we get a glimpse into the stark consequences awaiting those who intentionally harm their brothers. It’s heavy stuff. The text minces no words. It speaks of those "ap...
It’s not exactly scripture in the way, say, the Torah is. But it's a crucial historical text, giving us a glimpse into the turbulent times of the Maccabean revolt. And right there,...
We know him as the great leader, the lawgiver, the one who led the Israelites out of Egypt. But what about his birth, his infancy, those perilous first months? The Book of Jasher, ...
Haran, the eldest son of Terah, made his living selling his father's idols to the Chaldeans. His younger brother Abraham refused to worship them. When the Chaldeans came to test bo...
While the Israelites traveled through the wilderness, seven clouds of glory surrounded them on every side. One cloud went in front, one behind, two flanked them on each side, and o...
On the third day, Ezra sat under an oak tree. A voice came from a bush opposite him. "Ezra, Ezra." He rose to his feet. "Here I am, Lord." The voice from the bush was deliberate. U...
The animals came to him two by two, male and female, but he had no companion. So, what did the Divine do? According to the legends, God decided to give Adam a wife. Enter Lilith. U...
Take the story of Joseph, for instance. We all know the highlights: jealousy, betrayal, slavery, imprisonment, and ultimately, triumph. But what about the in-between moments? We pi...
The story of Jacob's burial gives us a fascinating glimpse into those questions. Jacob, also known as Israel, had very specific ideas about where he didn't want to be buried: Egypt...
Complaining about our lot in life seems almost… human. But what does Jewish tradition say about this very human tendency? The Legends of the Jews, that incredible compilation by Ra...
The Legends of the Jews, that incredible compilation by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, gives us a glimpse. It paints a picture not just of events, but of the emotions that pulsed through th...
We often hear about the heroic deeds of men in the Bible, but sometimes, the women – the mothers, sisters, and daughters – are the unsung heroes whose wisdom and courage shape the ...
It wasn't just a lucky break; it was a carefully orchestrated act of bravery and quick thinking by his sister, Miriam. Imagine the scene: Pharaoh's daughter, Thermutis (some tradit...
The stories tell of a journey through multiple heavens, each more astonishing than the last. And in the fourth heaven? That's where things got truly spectacular. Picture this: a Te...
