886 related texts · 4 related myths · Page 3 of 19
Rabbi Akiva, the towering sage who reshaped all of rabbinic Judaism, offers his own answer to the question of why the Torah only mentions water when prohibiting the cooking of the ...
The Torah says that Passover must be observed "for your generations" (Exodus 12:14), and the Mekhilta immediately spots a potential loophole. The Hebrew word for "generations" is "...
Two verses in the Torah appear to contradict each other on a basic question: how many days must one eat matzah during Passover? One verse says six days. Another says seven. The Mek...
R. Eliezer says: On it they were redeemed; but they are destined to be redeemed only on Tishrei, as it is written (Psalms 81:4) "Blow the shofar (of redemption) on the month (of Ti...
The prohibition against breaking the bones of the Pesach (Passover) sacrifice includes two seemingly small words that carry enormous legal weight: "in it." The Mekhilta zeroes in o...
When God commanded that a jar of manna be preserved, the instruction was specific (Exodus 16:33): "Put therein a full omer of manna and place it before the Lord as a keeping for yo...
(Exodus 23:14) commands: "Three festivals shall you celebrate for Me in the year." The Mekhilta asks why this verse is needed when (Exodus 23:17) already says "Three times shall ev...
The story The midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) starts with an intriguing premise: someone suggested to Saul that David should be made king while Saul was still alive. Why...
Why the Torah Repeats the Command for Passover Offerings is the question behind this passage from Sifrei Bamidbar. Sifrei Bamidbar offers a few intriguing answers. The first is abo...
Sifrei Devarim turns to Six Days or Seven Days of Matzah at Passover. The question? How long exactly are we supposed to eat matzah during Passover? It But here’s the thing: one ver...
The Omer offering is a big deal, marking the start of the 49-day countdown to Shavuot, the festival of weeks. But what if you were a super-efficient farmer? Could you harvest at ni...
A reader can imagine the grand spectacle, the soaring prayers, the scent of incense.. but what about the physical posture of the priests, the kohanim? Well, a fascinating little de...
You stumble upon something like this, from Sifrei Devarim 208, and you think, "Wait, what's going on here?" It all revolves around a passage in Deuteronomy (21:5) about a very spec...
The Targum's version of (Numbers 35) contains one of the most radical theological claims in all of ancient Jewish literature. It explains why a manslayer confined to a city of refu...
"The Secret of the Intercalation: On the adjustment of festivals and leap years. In the Talmud: Abba, the father of Rabbi Shmuel, said to Shmuel, 'Does the master know this matter ...
(7) (Fol. 16) MISHNAH (the earliest code of rabbinic law): At four periods in each year the world is judged; on Passover, in respect to the growth of grain; on Pentecost, in respec...
(8) With whose opinion does our Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) agree? Neither with that of R. Maier, nor with that of R. Juda, nor with that of R. Jose, nor with that ...
Among the Ten Martyrs whose deaths Jewish tradition recalls on Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av were Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the Patriarch of the Jewish people under Roman occupation, ...
Two brothers lived in the same town, one rich, one poor. After the festival of Sukkot, the poor brother walked through the neighborhood gathering up the etrogim that families had f...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:3) performs one of its most characteristic moves, it drops the future straight into the past. The plain verse says, I will bless those who ble...
When Jacob returned to Bethel, the very stones where he had dreamed of the ladder decades earlier, he did not simply set up a marker and move on. He raised a pillar of stone on the...
God's instruction to Moses at Sinai comes with a precise choreography. "Go down, and then ascend, thou and Aaron with thee; but let not the priests or the people directly come up t...
A quote from Deuteronomy, saying God is "near it." But who is "it"? The verse itself speaks of a nation that has God near to it. Devarim Rabbah, in its characteristic fashion, find...
Shemot Rabbah turns to Why No Foreigner May Eat of the Passover Offering. The Midrash then dives into a comparison between the Exodus from Egypt and the future redemption. During t...
We see it used for anointing, for lighting, for cooking. but what's the deeper symbolism? to a fascinating exploration from Shir HaShirim Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic interpret...
It’s a weight that impacts not just them, but the entire community they serve. The source explores a fascinating passage from Vayikra Rabbah, a midrashic (rabbinic interpretive com...
A whole tractate of Midrash can grow out of three words, and Vayikra Rabbah 26 proves it. It all starts with a simple phrase: "Speak to the priests." But as is so often the case in...
And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron: “This is the ordinance of the passover” (Exod. 12:43). There are chapters of the Torah in which a general statement is made at the beginning...
Ben Sira, in his wisdom, shines a spotlight on this remarkable individual. The text sings of him as "Great one of his brethren, and glory of his people." Not a bad title. But what ...
Forget the sterile descriptions in history books. Ben Sira, in chapter 50 of his wisdom book, gives us a series of breathtaking images to help us do just that. He paints pictures w...
The usual account traces them back to the Torah, to Moses at Sinai. But what if some of those traditions, the feel of them, actually predate the Torah itself? to the Book of Jubile...
Not just any Passover, but the Passover as envisioned in the Book of Jubilees. It’s considered apocryphal by many (meaning it's not included in the canonical Hebrew Bible), but it ...
It's considered apocryphal by some, pseudepigraphal by others (meaning, falsely attributed to a biblical figure), but no matter what you call it, it's a fascinating window into a w...
The Book of Jubilees, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is an ancient Jewish text. It's considered apocryphal by some, meaning it’s not included in the standard Hebrew Bible, b...
The Book of Jubilees, sometimes called Lesser Genesis, is an ancient Jewish religious work of 50 chapters, considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as well as Beta Isr...
Among the oldest Jewish texts outside the Hebrew Bible is a peculiar document called the Letter of Aristeas, not a letter in scripture, but a letter about scripture, recounting how...
The familiar story centers on the Maccabees, the brave Jewish warriors who fought against the oppressive decrees of the Seleucid king Antiochus. But what happened after they won? W...
The Book of Maccabees I turns to Simon Rises as High Priest After Jonathan's Death. The story unfolds in the First Book of Maccabees, chapter 14. Jonathan, Simon's brother, had bee...
Zerubbabel won the riddle contest, but when King Darius offered him any reward up to half the kingdom, he asked for something no treasure could buy. According to the Chronicles of ...
The story of Israel's return from exile reads like a cascade of empires, each rising and falling at breathtaking speed. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Heb...
As the time approached for the Israelites' redemption from Egyptian slavery, a dilemma arose. They hadn't accumulated enough good deeds to merit their freedom! So, what did God do?...
Sometimes, the stories behind them are even more incredible than the rituals themselves. Let's The Legends of the Jews tells us that Abraham’s circumcision wasn't just a personal a...
God, in all His glory, gave Moses meticulous instructions on how to build it. Seems straightforward. Wrong. In Ginzberg's retelling in, Legends of the Jews, poor Moses descended fr...
When Moses approached Aaron with the news that God wanted him to be the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, Aaron wasn't exactly ecstatic. He pointed out, "What! Thou hadst all the labor...
The Talmud tells us that the menorah was made of a single piece of gold. But how did Moses, blessed be he, actually make it? The story goes that when God commanded Moses to create ...
This comes to us from Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, drawing from various Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) sources. Remember the story? Elijah, challenging the priests...
It was a showdown of epic proportions, a challenge to prove who the real God was. As we know from the biblical narrative, Elijah proposed a simple yet profound test: build two alta...
Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, takes on Apion's wild accusations in his work Against Apion, and it’s a doozy. Apion, in his eagerness to smear the Jewish people...
