10,602 related texts · Page 105 of 221
The benoni (בינוני)—the intermediate person—is the central figure of the Tanya, and chapter twelve defines him precisely. The benoni has never sinned. Not once. Not in action, not ...
Chapter eighteen of the Tanya reveals the deepest source of every Jew's connection to God: an inherited love that predates individual experience. The Tanya has just argued that eve...
The Tanya's twentieth chapter asks a question with a startling answer: why will even the most secular, disconnected Jew choose death rather than worship an idol? This is not theore...
"The Torah and the Holy One, blessed is He, are altogether one," says the Zohar. Chapter twenty-three of the Tanya explains what this means in practice—and the explanation transfor...
Chapter thirty of the Tanya instructs: "Be humble of spirit before every person" (Avot 4:10)—and it means every person, including the worst person you can imagine. How is this poss...
"You shall love your fellow as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). Hillel the Elder called this the entire Torah, with everything else being commentary. Chapter thirty-two of the Tanya ex...
The First Temple and the Second Temple were not the same. Not in their physical structure, and not in the quality of divine light that dwelled within them. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of ...
Everything has a purpose. And that purpose has a purpose of its own, each one higher than the last. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov uses this insight to explain why you must judge every p...
When God told Abraham, "Go to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), He was deliberately vague. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this vagueness as a divine instructi...
"He blessed them on that day, saying: may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh" (Genesis 48:20). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev uses Jacob's blessing to explain a peculiar tea...
Why does God sometimes tell Moses to "go to Pharaoh" (lekh el Par'oh) and other times to "come to Pharaoh" (bo el Par'oh)? Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev discovers two entirely ...
"You will prostrate yourselves from a distance" (Exodus 24:1). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this verse not as a physical instruction about how far to stand from Mount Si...
"And Judah approached him" (Genesis 44:18). The verse says Judah "approached him"—but does not specify whom. Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk takes the ambiguity and runs with it: the t...
"And you shall plate it with pure gold" (Exodus 25:11). The Talmud (Sukkah 45b) reads the verse about the Tabernacle's acacia wood—"standing up" (Exodus 26:15)—to mean that the woo...
The longest and most carefully guarded section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh catalogs the divine names—the Shemot (שמות), the names of God through which creation was brought into being ...
Buried in the middle of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh is a detailed astronomical and calendrical section that reads more like a scientific manual than a mystical text. It catalogs the move...
The fourth heaven of Sefer HaRazim is dominated by a single spectacular image—the chariot of the sun, pulled across the sky each day by angels of fire. This is not a metaphor. The ...
Shimush Tehillim (שמוש תהלים), the Magical Use of Psalms, is a remarkable text that transforms the Book of Psalms from a collection of prayers and poems into a practical manual of ...
Before David was chosen (as king) every Israelite was kasher for kingship. Once David had been chosen, the other Israelites (i.e., those not in his line) were excluded. As it is wr...
Know that the Shechinah is not revealed outside the land. For it is written (Jonah 1:3) "And Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish, etc." Now can one flee from the L–rd? Is it not written...
(Exodus 12:2) records God's instruction to Moses: "This month shall be to you the beginning of months." It is the very first commandment given to Israel as a nation, even before th...
Rabbi Nathan takes on a question that had puzzled scholars of the Torah for generations: what does the Hebrew phrase ben ha'arbayim actually mean? The term appears in the Passover ...
The Torah uses an unusual doubled phrase when describing how the Passover lamb must not be prepared: "vashel mevushal" — literally something like "cooked, cooked" or "boiled, boile...
"from the first day until the seventh day": Its punishment is for seven days; the exhortation against it obtains always. For it would follow (otherwise), viz.: Since (eating chamet...
R. Yonathan says: This (derivation) is not necessary. If labor is forbidden on the first and last days, which are neither preceded nor followed by holiness, then how much more so c...
The Mekhilta extends the previous argument about festival labor restrictions to Shabbat (the Sabbath) itself, using an elegant reversal of the kal va-chomer — the argument from les...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic commentary on Exodus, arrives at one of the most dramatic prophetic verses in all of Scripture: "The glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh will ...
The word ugoth in the phrase "ugoth matzoth" (Exodus 12:39) refers to thin wafers — flat cakes of unleavened dough. The Mekhilta establishes this meaning by cross-referencing two o...
Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) noticed the same numerical tension between two biblical verses about the duration of Israel's time in Egypt. One says "they shall serve them and they s...
God never let Israel go into exile alone. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, a halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) from approximately the 3rd century CE, tracks the She...
The Mekhilta presents a teaching that reaches back before the creation of the world itself. The names of the righteous — and their deeds — are known to God before they are ever bor...
Rabbi Yitzchak found a verse that establishes blessings both before and after eating. (Exodus 23:25) reads, "And you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and...
(Exodus 13:5) states, "And it shall be, when the Lord brings you to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite." That is five nations. But J...
(Exodus 13:6) declares, "And on the seventh day, a festival to the Lord." The Hebrew word for festival, chag, is related to chagigah, the special festival offering brought at the T...
What happens when a sheep that has never given birth delivers twin males at the exact same moment? Rabbi Yossi HaGlili tackled this unusual scenario head-on, and his ruling surpris...
The Torah is specific about how to redeem the firstborn of a donkey: "And every firstling of an ass shall you redeem with a lamb" (Exodus 13:13). The Mekhilta takes this precision ...
The Torah draws a direct line between the tenth plague and a permanent commandment: "And the Lord killed every first-born... therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord every male first-bor...
Variantly: "and shalishim": Three (Egyptians) against every one (Israelite). Others say: three hundred against one. And how did Pharaoh know how many Israelites died in the three d...
Rabbi Shimon HaTemani declared that God split the Red Sea in the merit of a single commandment: circumcision. The covenant of Abraham, inscribed in the flesh of every Jewish male, ...
Rabbi Eliezer ben Yehudah of Bortutha declared that God split the Red Sea in the merit of the twelve tribes of Israel. The tribal structure of the nation — not the faith of any sin...
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...
Rabbi Eliezer HaModai preserved one of the most extraordinary statements God ever made about the people of Israel. When Moses cried out at the Red Sea, God responded: "Why do you c...
When God split the Red Sea for the Israelites, the miracle did not stop at a single body of water. The Mekhilta asks a pointed question: what about the waters in pits, cavities, ca...
Pappus expounded a verse from Job: "And He is one, and who can turn Him back? Whatever He desires, He does" (Job 23:13). His interpretation was straightforward — God is the sole ju...
Great is the faith wherein Israel believed in Him who spoke and brought the world into being; for in reward for Israel's belief in the L–rd, the Shechinah reposed upon them and the...
Rabbi Meir takes the tradition further than either Rabbi Yossi or Rebbi. Even fetuses in their mothers' wombs, he declares, opened their mouths and chanted song before God at the R...
The Mekhilta highlights Samson as another example of the principle that a person's punishment mirrors their sin. Whatever someone boasts about or indulges in becomes the exact inst...
The Mekhilta adds two more names to its list of nations whose arrogance led to their precise downfall: the great city of Tyre and its ruler Malchah (identified with the prince of T...
