10,602 related texts · Page 207 of 221
The Midrash on the Ten Commandments tells the story of a faithful woman whose devotion was tested beyond what most people could endure — and who emerged triumphant. A certain man w...
Moses stood apart from every other prophet who ever lived. The rabbis taught that while other prophets saw God through clouded glass, Moses alone saw through a clear lens — an unob...
There was once a man so wicked that the entire town avoided him. He cheated in business, spoke cruelty to strangers, and mocked the sages when they tried to rebuke him. Everyone ag...
A young boy discovered that he could understand the language of birds. When sparrows chattered on the rooftops, he heard gossip. When ravens called from the treetops, he heard warn...
Maimonides — the great philosopher, physician, and legal authority — once interpreted a king's dream with such precision that the story entered the canon of Jewish wisdom tales alo...
Two friends loved the same woman. This is the setup for one of the most painful dilemmas in human experience — and the Jewish version of the story resolves it with an act of sacrif...
The meeting — whether real or legendary — between Rabbi Eleazar of Worms and Maimonides represents one of the great contrasts in Jewish intellectual history. Eleazar, the Ashkenazi...
A man once made a vow that he would never lose his temper, no matter what his wife did to provoke him. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compiled by Moses...
A king once raised a boy in total isolation, keeping him locked away from birth so that he would never see a woman. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (comp...
Two robbers had been terrorizing the roads between towns, ambushing travelers, stealing their goods, and leaving them bruised and empty-handed in the dust. The local authorities se...
The Midrash (Tanhuma, Teruma) teaches that the merchandise of a Torah scholar is unlike any other merchandise in the world. When a merchant sells a bolt of cloth, the cloth leaves ...
A heretic challenged the sages with a question about God's justice toward the disabled. "If your God is good, why does He create people who are maimed — the blind, the deaf, the la...
Two friends loved each other so deeply that one was willing to die for the other — and the other refused to let him. This tale of ultimate friendship, preserved in the Exempla of t...
A man hid his money in a hollow tree — and the story of what happened to that money became a parable about the cleverness of thieves and the greater cleverness of the righteous. Th...
Three chests were placed before a person who was told to choose one — and the story of that choice became a famous parable about the difference between appearance and reality. The ...
Solomon and chess — a pairing that connects the king's legendary wisdom with the world's most intellectual game. While chess in its modern form postdates Solomon by many centuries,...
A man was granted a wish — and what he wished for became the source of his downfall. The tale of the "Foolish Wish" is found in dozens of cultures, but the Jewish version carries a...
A man tore his mantle in half and gave half to a stranger — an act of generosity that became the seed of a much larger story. The "Half the Mantle" tale is found across many cultur...
Three questions were posed to a sage — and his answers became legendary. The "Three Questions" format appears throughout medieval literature, but the Jewish versions are distinguis...
Three maxims were given to a man — three simple rules for living — and his obedience to these maxims saved his life. The tale, found in Jewish and comparative folklore collections,...
A star fell from heaven — and its fall marked the beginning of a corruption that would lead to the great Flood. The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah of Rabbi Moses HaDarshan, Midrash Abkhir...
"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1). This verse became the foundation for one of the most frequently told stories in the Je...
Prince of the demons, and an important figure both in Talmudic and in post-Talmudic literature, where he appears as accuser, seducer, and destroyer. His name is etymologized as = "...
Plural word of unknown derivation used in the Hebrew Bible to denote the primitive Semitic house-gods whose cult had been handed down to historical times from the earlier period of...
A class of celestial beings appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the prophet Isaiah's visionary experience (Isaiah 6:2 onwards). Isaiah observed multiple seraphim...
The concept of soul in Jewish tradition derives from Genesis, where God endows humans with "spirit or breath" (ruah). Initially, this spirit was "inseparably connected, if not whol...
Isaiah says God is "calling from the east a bird of prey, a man of my counsel from a distant land" (Isaiah 46:11). The rabbis identified that bird of prey as Abraham. He came from ...
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...
But instead of doing it all Himself, He delegates a portion of the task. To whom? To Chokhmah (Wisdom), Wisdom. "Let us make man," He says, as it's written in (Genesis 1:26). A see...
The story goes that before disaster struck, the prophet Jeremiah pleaded with the people to turn away from their wrongdoings, to repent (do teshuva) so they could avoid exile. But ...
What if the Torah, the sacred scroll that has guided Jewish life for millennia, were to… change? It’s a mind-bending thought, isn’t it? For so many, the Torah – with its 613 mitzvo...
Some traditions whisper that it’s so much more. Imagine this: The Red Sea is splitting, a monumental miracle unfolding before the eyes of the Israelites. According to some, at that...
The story of the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac, is one of the most powerful and disturbing in the Hebrew Bible. We usually focus on Abraham's faith, Isaac's (near) sacrifice, and G...
Did you know that God prays? It seems a little… unexpected, doesn't it? We tend to think of prayer as something we do, directing our hopes and needs toward the Divine. But accordin...
The Torah tells us they wandered, but the rabbinic imagination really kicks it up a notch. This wasn't just any desert. We're talking serpents, lizards, scorpions – the whole terri...
Because that's precisely the dilemma Jewish tradition grapples with when envisioning the Messianic Era – the time when all the righteous are resurrected. Where, oh where, will ever...
We read in the book of Numbers that "all those counted were six hundred three thousand, five hundred and fifty" (Numbers 1:46). But numbers in the Torah are never just numbers, are...
It all starts with a simple verse: "These are those who were counted of the children of Israel…" And from there, it launches into a deep dive about blessings, promises, and the end...
In Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers, we find a fascinating discussion sparked by the verse "it will be that instead…" from (Hosea 2:1). Th...
Bamidbar Rabbah 2 dives into this very idea, opening with a quote from Hosea (2:1): "The number of the children of Israel will be..." It then launches into a fascinating exploratio...
Today, we're diving deep into a fascinating passage from Bamidbar Rabbah, a midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary)ic (interpretive) compilation on the Book of Numbers, to explo...
The Book of Numbers, or Bamidbar in Hebrew, gives us some fascinating insights into this very question, particularly in the fourth chapter, as explored in Bamidbar Rabbah, a classi...
Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers, gives us a glimpse into this. It focuses on a seemingly small detail: how the menorah, the candelabrum o...
It wasn't just packing up and hitting the road. Every item, every sacred object, had its specific covering, its designated place, its own ritual. Take the golden altar, for instanc...
But sometimes, tradition, holiness, and even a little bit of divine reasoning come into play. Our story begins with a seemingly simple instruction from the Book of Numbers (Bamidba...
We can see this theme beautifully illustrated in Bamidbar Rabbah (Numbers Rabbah) 4, which draws a powerful lesson from the seemingly straightforward verse, “The charge of Elazar, ...
That feeling isn't new. In fact, the ancient Israelites grappled with it too, as we learn from Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers. Our story...
Jewish tradition has some fascinating answers, particularly when we delve into the story of the B'nei Kehat, the sons of Kehat. Our story comes from Bamidbar Rabbah, a Midrash on t...
