10,602 related texts · Page 142 of 221
One hundred and eighty-five thousand soldiers died in a single night. That is how God answered Sennacherib, king of Assyria, when he broke his word to Hezekiah and sent an army to ...
King Josiah was eight years old when he inherited the throne of Judah. His grandfather Manasseh had been the worst king in the nation's history—a man who slaughtered prophets until...
In the first year of his reign, Cyrus king of Persia did something no conqueror had ever done: he freed an enslaved nation and paid to rebuild their God's house. Josephus explains ...
Three bodyguards of King Darius entered a contest that would decide the fate of the Jewish Temple. The king had fallen asleep after a great feast and woke unable to sleep again. He...
The story of Esther begins with a drunken king and a queen who said no. King Artaxerxes of Persia hosted a lavish feast—180 days of celebration for his court, then seven more days ...
Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world by age thirty, but Josephus tells a story about the one city he did not need to take by force. When Alexander marched on Jerus...
The Tobiads were a Jewish family who became the most powerful tax collectors in the Ptolemaic Empire—and nearly destroyed Judea in the process. Josephus tells the story of Joseph b...
The crisis started from within. Josephus records that after the High Priest Onias III died, a power struggle erupted between his brothers. Jason and Menelaus each bribed the Seleuc...
John Hyrcanus escaped his father's assassination and seized control of Jerusalem before his treacherous brother-in-law could reach it. But the early years of his reign were brutal....
The real power behind the Jewish throne in the first century BCE was not a Jew at all. Antipater, an Idumean whose family had converted to Judaism only a generation or two earlier,...
Herod returned from Rome with a crown but no kingdom. Antigonus, backed by the Parthians, controlled Jerusalem. It took Herod three years of brutal campaigning to claim what the Ro...
Herod had the throne, but the Hasmonean family still haunted him. His wife Mariamne was a Hasmonean princess. Her mother Alexandra was relentless in promoting Hasmonean claims. And...
Two Torah scholars convinced their students to tear a golden eagle off the Temple gate in broad daylight. Herod burned them alive for it. According to Josephus in Antiquities XVII,...
Agrippa did something no Jewish king had done in a generation: he made the people feel like they had a ruler who was actually one of them. According to Josephus in Antiquities XIX,...
And the answers? Well, they're as varied and beautiful as the stars in the night sky. Some say God dwells in the celestial realms, way up in the highest heaven, seated on the Kisei...
The Jewish mystics had a powerful image for that kind of pain: the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, weeping. It’s a radical idea, isn’t it? God, or at least this aspect of God, expe...
That’s what happened to Isaac. We all know the story: Abraham, tested to his limits, is commanded to sacrifice his beloved son. It’s a gut-wrenching tale of faith, obedience, and u...
The Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, apparently did – and according to one story, he nearly brought the Messiah himself into the world! The tale goes that the Ba'al Shem To...
Jewish mysticism, specifically through the lens of gilgul (reincarnation), offers an intriguing perspective on this feeling. The Sha'ar HaGilgulim, a core text on the Kabbalistic u...
It’s a question that’s haunted humanity for millennia, and Jewish mysticism offers some fascinating, complex, and ultimately comforting answers. The Sha'ar HaGilgul (the reincarnat...
Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, suggests that we do, in fact, possess layers upon layers, worlds within worlds. It's a concept explored beautifully in the Sha'ar HaGilgul (the reincarn...
It’s a question that’s haunted humanity for millennia, and Jewish mysticism, particularly the teachings of the Sha'ar HaGilgul (the reincarnation of souls)im (The Gate of Reincarna...
Jewish mysticism offers a fascinating, and sometimes challenging, answer: gilgul (the reincarnation of souls), or reincarnation. Now, reincarnation isn't exactly a mainstream Jewis...
Jewish mystical tradition has a fascinating way of addressing that feeling, a concept called gilgul (the reincarnation of souls) – reincarnation. And within gilgul, there's an even...
It's a landscape of hidden meanings, a garden of secrets waiting to be unlocked. And that's where Baal HaSulam, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, comes in. Known for his ability to make ev...
One question that often pops up is about the nature of the soul. The Kabbalists, those masters of Jewish mystical thought, tell us something pretty : that the soul of a person is a...
Baal HaSulam, a towering figure in Kabbalistic thought, challenges us to flip that script entirely. In his introduction to the Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, he...
He tells us, point blank, not to worry so much about creatures other than humans. Why? Because, according to him, humanity is the center of creation. Everything else, all the other...
One of the most fascinating concepts is the eternality of the soul. Now, some philosophers thought that maybe it’s all about knowledge, that the more you learn, the more eternal yo...
It’s a question that’s plagued philosophers and theologians for centuries. But Jewish mystical tradition, specifically as illuminated by Baal HaSulam in his introduction to the Zoh...
We often think of serving God, or doing good deeds, as something that needs to be completely pure, motivated by selfless love and devotion. But what if the path to that pure intent...
Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, often talks about this very challenge. It’s the struggle to move beyond our inherent self-centeredness and connect with the Divine. And one...
Kabbalists talk about this feeling too, but in terms of spiritual growth. Baal HaSulam, in his introduction to the Zohar, that mystical and foundational text of Kabbalah, uses a po...
Baal HaSulam, a towering figure in 20th-century Kabbalah, provides incredible insight into how we truly grow spiritually. He tells us in his introduction to the Zohar that simply d...
In Jewish mysticism, specifically in the teachings of Baal HaSulam, this struggle is understood as the tension between our "animal" desires and our higher, spiritual selves. And th...
The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam, in his introduction to the Zohar, illuminates a concept that might just change how you see yourself. He describes a point within us, a kind of… we...
The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam, in his introduction to the Zohar, a foundational text of Kabbalah, felt that way about his own generation. And honestly, reading his words, you mi...
He saw a spiritual drought gripping his generation, a darkness born from something quite specific: a decline in faith. Not just any faith, but faith in the wisdom of the ages, in t...
The Zohar, if you haven't encountered it, is a foundational text of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. It’s dense, poetic, and… well, let's just say it isn't exactly light reading. It’...
And the answer, according to one of the great Kabbalists, has to do with timing. Let's talk about the Ari z"l, Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), one of the most influential figures in...
The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam, in his introduction to the Zohar, speaks directly to that feeling. He paints a vivid picture of a soul yearning for connection, a connection that'...
The great Kabbalist, Baal HaSulam, certainly did. And his words, written in his introduction to the Zohar, still resonate with a raw, urgent power today. He begins with a lament, a...
He paints a picture of a future where the light of wisdom will shine so brightly that even the most unlearned will recognize the greatness of Torah scholars. Imagine a world where ...
But according to one of the most influential Kabbalists of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, that's precisely the role of the Zohar. Now, you might be asking, "What exactly is the Zo...
It's more than just words on a page, according to Kabbalistic tradition. It's a whole universe of light and wisdom, waiting to be unlocked. : what is a book? We often take it for g...
The great Kabbalist Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam (Master of the Ladder), offered a remarkable preface to the Zohar, aiming to make its wisdom more accessible. A...
It's not just a collection of stories and secrets; it's a whole different way of understanding reality. And in his preface to the Zohar, Baal HaSulam gives us a key to unlock that ...
The great Kabbalist, Baal HaSulam, in his "Preface to Zohar," delves into just that. He lays out four modes of perception, almost like lenses through which we view reality. Let's u...
