886 related texts · 4 related myths · Page 1 of 19
The children of Israel left Egypt in the Hebrew month of Nisan, in springtime, and immediately the sukkot, the booths of the wilderness, went up. They lived in these booths for for...
The ancient rabbis, the mekubalim (mystics), saw the world brimming with hidden meaning, a weaving with divine code. Take, for instance, the lulav and etrog, the palm branch and ci...
The Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), that treasure trove of Jewish stories and interpretations, finds echoes of this universal joy in the verses about the holiday of Suk...
The Jewish year moves with the grain. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 34:22) marks two hinges of that turning wheel: the feast of weeks at the first of the wheat harvest, and the...
Simeon ben Kamhith was serving as High Priest. He had walked with a foreign king, and in the course of the conversation a drop of spittle from the king's mouth touched Simeon's gar...
Tractate Yoma (folio 9, column 1) asks a question no one would think to ask unless they were counting: how many kohanim gedolim, high priests, served during each of the two Temples...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:16) names two festivals without naming them by their later names: the feast of the harvest first-fruits of the work thou didst sow in th...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in Jacob's Psalm. It's a treasure trove of wisdom. So, how does this verse tie into these High Holy Days? Well, the Midrash ex...
Our jumping-off point is a verse from Numbers (Bamidbar) 10:10: "And on the day of your rejoicing and on your appointed times you shall sound the trumpets." Seems straightforward. ...
Kimhit was a woman whose modesty was so complete that, according to the Talmud (Yoma 47a), even the beams of her house never saw her hair uncovered. The sages said this was the rea...
“In the first month, that is, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Aḥashverosh, he had cast a pur, that is, the lot, before Haman for each day and for each month, to the tw...
Shir HaShirim Rabbah, the classical Rabbinic commentary on Song of Songs, offers a fascinating perspective. It suggests that we can "recount your love through wine [miyayin]." But ...
For seven days before Yom Kippur, the high priest lived as if rehearsing for a wedding he could not afford to fumble. Oxen, rams, and lambs were paraded past him one by one so that...
A strange statistic is buried in tractate Yoma. During the 410 years of the First Temple, only eighteen high priests served in succession. During the 420 years of the Second Temple...
The Torah warns that whoever eats chametz during Passover will have their soul "cut off from Israel." The punishment is kareth, spiritual excision from the community. But the Mekhi...
" And perhaps no holiday embodies this more beautifully than Sukkot (the Festival of Tabernacles). Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles. It's a time we build temporary shelt...
Leviticus 23 lists every festival on the Jewish calendar. The Targum Jonathan transforms it from a schedule into an instruction manual, adding measurements, procedures, and theolog...
In the generation after the Second Temple was destroyed, some men claimed to be descendants of the priestly lines and demanded the privileges of kohanim, including the right to eat...
See, (Leviticus 16:23) tells us that Aaron, the High Priest, would enter the Tent of Meeting – the Ohel Mo'ed – and remove the linen vestments he wore when he entered the Sanctum –...
Take Sukkot (the Festival of Tabernacles), for example, the Feast of Tabernacles, a joyous holiday where we dwell in temporary shelters, remembering our ancestors' journey through ...
The Torah declares in (Exodus 12:16), "On the first day, a calling of holiness." The Mekhilta asks what it actually means to "call" a day holy. And the answer is surprisingly concr...
The sages of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law), in discussing the laws of the etrog, declared that if its peduncle – or even, according to some versions, its nipple –...
(Exodus 23:16) refers to Shavuoth (the Festival of Weeks) as "the festival of the harvest, the first-fruits of your labor." The Mekhilta notes that this description appears within ...
Sometimes, it's in those very details that we uncover profound insights into Jewish law and tradition. to one such detail from Sifrei Bamidbar, a fascinating work of halakhic (lega...
Rabbi Abahu offers a powerful insight into this very question, drawing from the book of Exodus. "Three pilgrimage festivals you shall hold a festival to Me during the year" (Exodus...
It turns out, even the number of curtains held a profound significance. eleven curtains made of goats' hair. Why eleven? Well, according to tradition, it mirrors the eleven heavens...
In Tikkunei (spiritual repair) Zohar 99, we find a fascinating idea: the left side is associated with Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, a time of judgment and introspection. The right s...
The succah, of course, is that temporary dwelling we construct during the festival of Succot, a reminder of our ancestors' journey through the desert after the Exodus. The lulav is...
It wasn't just about grand ceremonies; even the distribution of offerings had its own set of rules and regulations. to one little-known, but fascinating, detail from Sifrei Devarim...
I'm talking about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The sages tell us Yom Kippur is so vital that even in the messianic future, when all other holidays fade away, this one will rem...
Yikes. The "trumpets," of course, are the shofar, the ram's horn, whose blasts are meant to awaken our souls, to call us to repentance and introspection. And the prayer, "On this D...
It revolves around the lulav. The lulav isn't just any palm branch. During the Jewish festival of Sukkot (the Festival of Tabernacles), this palm shoot, along with the etrog (citro...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai expanded the promise of Sabbath observance far beyond three festivals. Where Rabbi Yehoshua linked Shabbat (the Sabbath) to Pesach (Passover), Shavuot, and Suc...
Who exactly is being told to do this counting? Is it the beth-din, the Jewish court, maybe acting on behalf of the community? That's where the Sifrei Devarim, a collection of early...
Like you're about to figure something out, and then BAM! A little voice pops up to say, "Hold on a second..." Well, that’s kind of what's happening in this passage from Sifrei Deva...
Well, our Sages grappled with that very idea when it came to Sukkot, the Festival of Booths. Sukkot, as you probably know, is that joyous week where we dwell in temporary shelters,...
The shofar on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) was not just a call to repentance. According to the Targum's version of (Numbers 29), the trumpets served a cosmic combat function...
Take the verse from the Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim, "How fair are your feet in sandals [bane’alim]," with its slightly unusual plural form, "sandals" [ne’alim]. What could that p...
The verse from (Leviticus 23:24) sets the stage: "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first of the month, shall be a rest for you, a remembrance b...
The arba minim, the "four species" used during the Jewish festival of Sukkot (the Festival of Tabernacles), carry a meaning far deeper than ritual. These four species – the etrog, ...
It uses the four species taken on Sukkot, the Festival of Tabernacles, as a metaphor for the Jewish people. It comes from Vayikra Rabbah, a Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive comment...
"And you shall guard this day": What is the intent of this? Is it not already written (16) "all labor shall not be done in them"? This tells me only of labor per se. Whence do I de...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael derives the practice of Kiddush, the sanctification of Shabbat (the Sabbath) over wine, from the commandment to "sanctify it." The phrase "to sanctify...
“He stripped His shrine like a garden; He destroyed His place of assembly. The Lord caused festival and Shabbat (the Sabbath) to be forgotten in Zion and He scorned king and priest...
It's not as simple as "everyone," that's for sure. to what the ancient texts tell us about who’s in, who’s out, and why. The verse we’re unpacking is from Sifrei Devarim, a collect...
Letter of Aristeas turns to The Silent Reverence of Priests at Their Duties. One of the most fascinating accounts we have comes from the Letter of Aristeas, a pseudepigraphical tex...
The opening song of the Sabbath Sacrifice cycle establishes a structure that would influence Jewish mysticism for centuries: seven heavenly sanctuaries, each governed by an angelic...
They stood at Sinai, heard the very voice of God thundering the Ten Commandments, including the absolute prohibition against idolatry… and then, a mere forty days later, they're pa...
