1,036 related texts · 11 related myths · Page 3 of 22
The verse in question is God's command to Moses: "Extend your hand over the sea, and the waters will return upon Egypt, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen" (Exodus 14:26)...
It might seem a little.. unflattering At first. But as with so many things in our tradition, there's a depth and beauty to be found when we dig a little deeper. Shemot Rabbah, a cl...
Jewish tradition sees it as an allegory, a story of the love between God and Israel. And within its verses, we find echoes of the Temple, its destruction, and the hope for redempti...
The Torah tells us of an agreement, a covenant, between God and the Israelites. But the details, as explored in Vayikra Rabbah, are far more intricate and, frankly, a little . Rabb...
Our tradition certainly does. In Vayikra Rabbah, specifically chapter 7, we find a powerful thread connecting arrogance and divine retribution, often in the form of fire. It's a po...
You're not alone. Our tradition recognizes this struggle, this internal tug-of-war. And it offers a powerful image to understand it. The text Specifically, it's from section 35. It...
“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...
The story unfolds after the appointment of the seventy elders. Imagine the scene: these men are now elevated to the status of prophets, and the women of the community celebrate wit...
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 serv...
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 ti...
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 p...
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 he...
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...
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...
“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 the tradition turns to The Torah tells us 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...
What exactly is Pesach Sheni, the "Second Passover"? The Book of Numbers, Bamidbar in Hebrew, addresses this very question. Chapter 9, verse 12 tells us that those who were unable ...
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 ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:28) continues the miraculous supply chain it began in the previous verse. The clouds of heaven returned, and went to the garden of Eden, and to...
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,...
Book of Jasher turns to Miriam's Vision. It all starts with Miriam. Yes, Moses' sister, a prophetess in her own right. According to the Book of Jasher, "the spirit of God was upon ...
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. The familiar version gives us the highlights: jealousy, betrayal, slavery, imprisonment, and ultimately, triumph. But what about the in-betw...
