1,676 related texts · 3 related myths · Page 2 of 35
In (Exodus 16:9), Moses instructed Aaron to tell the entire congregation of Israel to "draw near before the Lord." Two rabbis in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael disagreed about what ...
Remember the scene: Moses, up on Mount Sinai, receiving the very word of God, etched onto stone tablets. And then… disaster. The Israelites, impatient and faithless, melt down thei...
Psalm 2, verse 12, gives us pause: "Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him." It's a pot...
"He prepares a table before me." What does that even mean in the context of a comforting psalm? Midrash Tehillim connects this to the manna, that miraculous food that sustained the...
The Israelites, fresh out of Egypt and sustained by miraculous manna in the desert, certainly did. And their grumbling, as recorded in Sifrei Bamidbar, offers a fascinating glimpse...
It goes deep into how we understand divine favor and the very nature of Torah itself. water is life. But not all water is created equal, at least not symbolically. Our text from Si...
Our tradition is full of fascinating interpretations of seemingly simple phrases. Take, for instance, the verse in Deuteronomy (32:2), "Let my teaching drop as the rain." The Sifre...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan, the legend of the Rabbis remembers that the land was inhabited by giants, not merely tall men but beings of such scale that a ...
Bamidbar Rabbah opens the laws of the nazir, the person who vows to abstain from wine and grapes in order to dedicate himself to God. The text immediately connects abstaining from ...
In fact, according to Bereshit Rabbah, a classic collection of Rabbinic interpretations of the Book of Genesis, the rainbow holds profound meaning, a glimpse, perhaps, into the ver...
The verse But the rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) weren't just interested in the visual. They wanted to understand the why behind the what. The Midrash beg...
The verse Sounds simple. Just gather your daily bread, or manna. But the Rabbis, in their infinite wisdom, see so much more woven into these words. They connect it to (Psalm 68:20)...
The verse we're unpacking is "Your branches are an orchard of pomegranates" (Song of Songs 4:13). The Midrash cleverly interprets "your branches" (shelaḥayikh in Hebrew) as "your g...
It's been interpreted in so many ways! The first reading, it's a lovely invitation. A romantic rendezvous amidst blooming fruit trees. But as is often the case with Jewish sacred t...
Vayikra Rabbah turns to Rain, Torah, and Light as God's Greatest Gifts. Rabbi Yonatan, in this passage, identifies three core gifts: the Torah, the luminaries (sun, moon, and stars...
It's a metaphor, a living, breathing symbol of the Jewish people themselves. We find this beautiful idea elaborated on in Vayikra Rabbah 36, a section of the Midrash (rabbinic inte...
Nebuchadnezzar's second challenge to Ben Sira is deceptively simple. "Count the trees in my garden." The seven-year-old doesn't even need to look. "Thirty types of trees are in you...
Judah found himself smack-dab in the middle of the allied kings' infantry. His immediate target? Jashub, the king of Tappuah. Jashub wasn't just any king. He was mounted on horseba...
Variantly: "on the fifteenth day of the second month": Why is the day mentioned? To know on which day the manna descended for Israel. Israel ate from the wafer that they took out o...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai offered a surprising claim about what life was actually like for the Israelites in Egypt. Contrary to what one might expect from a nation of slaves, Israel liv...
Rabbi Simai begins with a seemingly simple observation: "My taking shall drip as the rain." It’s a phrase ripe with symbolism, and Rabbi Simai uses it to explore the relationship b...
Where do dreams come from? The Talmud in Berakhot 55a offers a surprisingly psychological answer: from the dreamer's own mind. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani taught in the name of Rabbi ...
When the final redemption comes, God will redeem Israel from one place only: Zion. Not from the desert, not from the waters, not from any place of exile, from the Temple Mount. "Fr...
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God, who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant,...
Sometimes, a seemingly simple verse can open up a whole world of interpretation and insight. Let’s take a look at a moment in the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar, specifically chapter 13...
The Rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) thought Pharaoh knew exactly how that felt when he finally let the Israelites leave Egypt. Shemot Rabbah, a compilation...
Vayikra Rabbah, a fascinating collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Leviticus, explores this very idea, using the strange and unsettling phenomenon of leprosy in ho...
A sigh from a Jewish person can repair what is broken in the world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught this not as poetry but as metaphysics. The sigh, the deep exhalation of grief or...
When harsh decrees threaten the Jewish people, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov prescribes an unexpected remedy: dancing and clapping hands. The logic runs through a teaching about what co...
You cannot receive complete divine providence until you shatter your desire for money. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught this as a direct spiritual mechanism, not a moral platitude. ...
Who wrote the Hebrew Bible? The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b provides a complete accounting, attributing every book to a specific author. Moses wrote his own book, the Torah. And also ...
What does God do all day? The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah takes this question seriously. The rabbis laid out a detailed twelve-hour schedule. During the first three hours, God ...
Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back" (Ruth 1:8): Why did she send them back? In order not to be embarrassed by them. For so did we find that in Jerusalem there were se...
Midrash on the death of Aaron "I lost the three shepherds in one month" (Zecharia 11:8); and thus, in one month, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses died. Miriam died on the 1st of the month ...
Rabbi Yehuda said, "Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) before the Holy One, Blessed be He: One of wholly righteous people; and they are immediately writt...
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...
In the years after the fall of the holy city, a mother named Hannah and her seven sons were thrown into prison. One by one, in order of their ages, the tyrant brought the boys befo...
The sages of the Talmud taught that the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within every human being, goes by seven different names in Scripture. Each prophet saw a different face of...
There was an incident involving Miriam daughter of the baker, who was taken captive with her seven sons. The emperor took them and placed them behind seven partitions. He brought t...
“They heard that I sigh; there is no comforter for me; all my enemies heard of my misfortune, were glad because You acted. May You bring the day that You proclaimed, and they will ...
“How the Lord has clouded the daughter of Zion in His wrath. He cast the splendor of Israel from the heavens to the earth, and did not remember His footstool on the day of His wrat...
The Book of Maccabees I turns to The Seleucids Mock Judas for Fighting From the Mountains. "Thou alone liftest up thyself against us," the message begins. "And I am laughed to scor...
Let me tell you a story, one ripped from the pages of Legends of the Jews, that might just give you a taste. Joseph, elevated to power in Egypt, is finally face-to-face with his br...
The familiar telling remembers the manna, that miraculous food from heaven, but the stories surrounding its arrival are just as fascinating as the food itself! You’re stranded in t...
In Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, we find intricate descriptions of the subtle architecture of consciousness. The source turns to one fascinating corner of this architect...
It’s a metaphor for the highest levels of spiritual light. Specifically, Think of them as the “brains” of the partzuf (a divine configuration), or divine configuration. a bit, draw...
When it comes to Peri Etz Hadar – the "Fruit of the Goodly Tree," that is, the etrog – that feeling goes into overdrive. It's a whole system for elevating what we eat. Specifically...
Jewish mystical tradition, specifically the Kabbalah, offers a mind-bending map of sorts, attempting to describe the indescribable. And sometimes, it does this using… well, let’s j...
