938 related texts · 25 related myths · Page 4 of 20
The Book of Jubilees, treasured as scripture by some ancient Jewish communities like the Essenes of Qumran, retells the Torah with a storyteller's eye for detail. And chapter 6 lin...
Our tradition, Jewish tradition, certainly doesn’t shy away from trying to answer it. The Book of Jubilees, a text that, while not part of the standard Hebrew Bible canon, offers a...
This ancient Jewish text, considered canonical by some but not included in the standard Hebrew Bible, gives us a vivid, almost apocalyptic, picture. It paints a stark image of divi...
Book of Jubilees turns to Isaac Blesses Jacob With the Dew of Heaven. Isaac, old and nearly blind, his hand resting on Jacob's head. He pours out his heart, saying: "Jacob, my belo...
Like, you read them and think, "Wait, did that really happen that way?" Let's It's in the Book of Jubilees, chapter 26, and it's about Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. The familiar story is...
BAM! Disaster strikes. "They announced this to Jacob saying: 'Behold, the kings of the Amorites have surrounded thy sons, and plundered their herds.'" Can you imagine the panic? Th...
It's right at the heart of the Book of Judith. Judith isn't just any story; it's a powerful tale of courage, faith, and a woman taking matters into her own hands. It's set during a...
The Letter of Aristeas, though not strictly a sacred text, offers us a fascinating glimpse, a sort of travelogue, into that world. It paints a picture, quite literally, of the land...
Sometimes, those objects become more than just reminders. They become imbued with the spirit of the victory itself. That’s exactly what happened with Judas Maccabeus. After a parti...
The story plunges us right into the thick of it. Judas Maccabeus, the hammer of God, and his army are on the move. They’ve just made a sharp turn "by the way of the wilderness unto...
The familiar story centers on their destruction, but the Book of Jasher, a non-canonical Jewish text that elaborates on stories from the Hebrew Bible, really paints a vivid picture...
When Pharaoh sought counsel on what to do about the growing Israelite population, he summoned three men: Reuel the Midianite, Job, and Balaam of Petor. Their answers determined the...
Twelve catastrophes. Stacked on top of each other. Each one worse than the last. This is what God revealed to Baruch about the end of the world. And it reads like a countdown to an...
On the second night, Ezra saw something rise from the sea. An eagle. Vast. Monstrous. It had twelve feathered wings and three heads, and when it spread those wings, they covered th...
God didn't just leave the entrance to Paradise unguarded. Instead, He appointed the cherubim, those powerful, almost indescribable angelic beings, to stand watch. But they weren't ...
It’s closer than it first appears. The scene: Sodom, ripe for the taking, its riches and food plundered by victorious armies. But amidst the spoils, they seize Lot, Abraham’s nephe...
He'd just pulled off a daring rescue, freeing his nephew Lot from the clutches of invading kings. And in doing so, he'd recovered a great deal of stolen goods. The King of Sodom, a...
In Sodom, a stranger once found himself embroiled in a dispute. We don't know exactly what it was about, but it was serious enough to bring before the court. They wrangled and argu...
Fire and brimstone, a pillar of salt, and some very unhappy angels. But the details… the details are truly something else. The Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews says it wasn’t just So...
The stories we hear about Sodom in the Torah only scratch the surface. Jewish tradition paints a truly horrifying picture of this infamous city and its sister, Gomorrah. According ...
Legends of the Jews turns to Destruction of Sodom of Admah. It wasn't just Sodom and Gomorrah. There were other cities in that region, equally deserving of divine wrath. Take Admah...
Legends of the Jews turns to Destruction of Sodom of Abraham. The story goes that God, observing the rampant wickedness in Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities, had reached ...
Abraham, like a loving father, couldn’t bear the thought of people suffering. He pleaded with God, interceding on behalf of the sinners of Sodom. It wasn't just a polite request; i...
The story, as told in Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews, is a real nail-biter. The familiar story centers on Sodom and Gomorrah. These cities were, shall we say, not exactly shining e...
The familiar story is this:. The wicked city, the angels disguised as travelers, the impending doom. But have you ever stopped to consider just how far gone the people of Sodom wer...
Take the story of Lot, Abraham's nephew, and the destruction of Sodom. The familiar story is this:. God, disgusted by the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, decides to destroy them....
Sodom did not burn at a random hour. In Legends of the Jews, the timing of dawn becomes part of the judgment. The Ginzberg's says retelling in Legends of the Jews, the destruction ...
Abraham, our ancestor Abraham, did just that. Think back to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. A harrowing tale. We read in the Torah about Abraham pleading with God to spare the cit...
The Legends of the Jews, that incredible compilation of rabbinic stories by Louis Ginzberg, paints a vivid picture. Jacob isn’t just walking; he’s transformed. He’s "crowned like a...
That’s kind of what happened in Egypt, according to the legends surrounding Joseph, the dreamer who rose to power. Remember Joseph? Sold into slavery by his brothers, he ended up i...
Legends of the Jews turns to Michael — Moses and the Angels. The story goes that even the angels themselves were taken aback. They came to God, saying, "Moses, the familiar of Thin...
He is the ultimate power in Egypt, and he is absolutely convinced of his own divinity. So, when Moses and Aaron come to him with their message – "Let my people go, that they may se...
Sometimes, the answer might be… in the water. the environment around us shapes us. And according to some fascinating legends, that influence can be incredibly literal. The Israelit...
Legends of the Jews turns to Joab's Sword Fuses to His Hand in Battle Against Amalek. The horror! Joab, a seasoned warrior, suddenly finds himself in this grotesque predicament. He...
It wasn't just wisdom, my friends; it was a little help from some… unusual sources. He had a magnificent eagle, his own personal aerial chariot, if you will. This wasn't just any e...
He was, let's just say, very enthusiastic about idol worship. And he wasn't shy about flaunting it. As Ginzberg retells it in Legends of the Jews, Ahab taunted Elijah, basically sa...
Two Torah scholars convinced their students to tear a golden eagle off the Temple gate in broad daylight. Herod burned them alive for it. The Josephus says in Antiquities XVII, the...
The familiar story is this: from Genesis: the serpent, the forbidden fruit, the exile. But what then? Did the Garden just sit there, empty and forlorn? Not quite. According to Jewi...
Maybe that’s because the rainbow we see today isn’t the rainbow of the Messiah. Not yet, anyway. the rainbow we know is a promise, a beautiful one, certainly. It's a reminder of Go...
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...
The Sulam Commentary describes creation in Atzilut as development: gestation, infancy, and mental maturity. The Sulam Commentary explains that these stages. Gestation, Infancy, and...
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...
Jewish mystical tradition, particularly the Kabbalah, doesn’t shy away from exploring the complexities of creation.It comes to us from the Introduction to the Sulam Commentary, a v...
That’s kind of the question we’re confronting today. Imagine someone turning to you and saying, "Why should I bother with all this Why should I be compelled to think that they are ...
Da'at (Knowledge) Tevunot, a profound work of Jewish thought, grapples with this very issue. It suggests that what appears to be divine inaction or even harshness is actually a for...
Is it just random chaos? Or is there a deeper structure, a cosmic architecture at play? The Jewish mystical tradition, particularly the Kabbalah, offers a fascinating answer. It te...
They function as divine attributes, stages in a process. But here’s the thing: these Sefirot themselves are pure, unadulterated Godly light. They exist on a completely different pl...
Jewish mystical tradition offers a fascinating answer, one that explores the very nature of creation itself. Let’s Now, before you picture a divine stick figure, understand that in...
