563 related texts · 17 related myths · Page 1 of 12
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:20) names names. The Hebrew only tells us that "some of them" kept manna overnight against Moses's word. The Targum identifies the culprits: Bu...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:3) drops two shocking names into the Egyptian court. Pharaoh needs intelligence on the escaping Hebrews. Who gives it to him? Dathan and Ab...
Legends of the Jews turns to Dathan and Abiram Join Korah's Rebellion Against Moses. Korah wasn't alone. Oh no, discontent rarely travels solo. According to the ancient texts, seve...
The Hebrew says only "two Hebrew men." The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:13) names them. "And he went out the second day, and looked; and, behold, Dathan and Abiram, men of t...
Legends of the Jews turns to Dathan and Abiram Rejected Moses When He First Tried to Lead. Can you blame Moses for turning right around and heading back to Midian? He spends anothe...
The story of Korah's rebellion, found in the Book of Numbers, is one of the most dramatic and unsettling in the Torah, and the defiant words of Dathan and Abiram, two key figures i...
, guided by the ancient text of Sifrei Bamidbar. Why was such a covenant even necessary? Because, as the text explains, Korach challenged Aaron's priesthood. Imagine a king giving ...
After the plague killed twenty-four thousand, God ordered a new census. The Targum's version of (Numbers 26) opens with a phrase absent from the Torah: "the compassions of the heav...
The full scope of Moses's argument against the angels is recorded in Shabbat 89a, and it is a masterclass in turning your opponent's own premises against them. Moses went through t...
These weren't exactly the heroes of our story, you see. Remember Korah's rebellion? Dathan and Abiram were right there, stirring up trouble. They challenged Moses's leadership, que...
It is often remembered as pure power-grabbing, but the ancient texts suggest a more nuanced, almost heartbreaking, story of ambition, family, and perceived injustice. The Book of N...
The quarrel between Korah and Moses began with a poor woman and her single ewe-lamb. She fed the lamb from her own bread and let it drink from her own cup. When she sheared its woo...
The earth opened its mouth and swallowed men alive. Not in a myth. Not in a metaphor. According to Josephus, the ground beneath the tents of the rebels cracked apart with a sound l...
It’s a tale of ambition, delusion, and a very dangerous offering. The scene is set: Moses, leading the Israelites. And then comes Koraḥ, a Levite, challenging Moses’s leadership, s...
The incense was terrifying. Israel had watched it kill Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, when they brought unauthorized fire before God (Leviticus 10:1). Two young priests, dead ...
The Mekhilta extends its analysis of conditional versus unconditional covenants to two more foundational gifts: the Torah scroll and the priesthood of Aaron. Whence is it derived t...
The story centers around Rabbah bar Bar Hannah, a figure known for his… let’s just say, colorful travel stories. One day, as recounted in Bava Batra 74a, a Bedouin approached Rabba...
The opening verse of Deuteronomy lists a string of place names, "in the wilderness, in the Arabah, over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Di-zaha...
The Torah says (Numbers 16) that Korah led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and that the earth opened and swallowed him. What the Torah does not say, what the midrash fills in,...
Reached the absolute limit of what you can do to help someone, and they just... won't listen? Well, Moses knew that feeling. And the story of Korach's rebellion really brings it ho...
He sees an Egyptian taskmaster brutally beating an Israelite. Something snaps. But it wasn’t brute force that Moses used. No weapon was needed. According to Legends of the Jews, Mo...
Ginzberg, in Legends of the Jews, paints a vivid picture of the internal struggles within the Israelite community itself. It wasn’t all unity and resistance. There were figures lik...
Legends of the Jews turns to Moses's Transgression of Abiram. So, Moses, following God's instructions, tells the community to distance themselves from Dathan and Abiram. You'd thin...
A fascinating story from the book of Numbers, and elaborated upon in the classic work, Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg, a compilation of centuries of Jewish tradition, that e...
Korah did not just challenge Moses. According to the Targum Jonathan, he manufactured a theological argument using the very fabric of his clothing, hid treasure he had looted from ...
Sometimes, the solutions to those disagreements come in the most unexpected forms… like, say, a blossoming staff. We find this story in Bamidbar Rabbah 18, which elaborates on the ...
Before Aaron was chosen for the priesthood, every member of Israel was eligible to serve as a priest. The entire nation stood on equal footing when it came to approaching God throu...
Midrash, the art of interpreting scripture, often shines a spotlight on just that: the unsung heroes and the hidden connections within the text. to a passage from Midrash Tehillim,...
The day after Korah's company was swallowed by the earth, the people of Israel accused Moses and Aaron of murder. God sent a plague. And Aaron did something no other priest would e...
With her third son, Leah reaches for a new hope. This time, she thinks, Jacob will at last be yilaveh, attached, to her (Genesis 29:34). So she names the child Levi, from the root ...
"And the habitation of the children of Israel in Egypt and in other lands was four hundred and thirty years." This is one of the verses that they (the seventy-two elders changed) i...
(Exodus 14:1-2) "And the L–rd said to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel that they return and encamp": R. Shimon b. Yochai says: Wherever it is written "saying and tell...
It even shows up in our ideas about Gehenna. Gehenna. It’s a loaded word. Often translated as "Hell," it’s really more complex than that. It’s a place of purification, of reckoning...
The death of Moses is the most devastating scene in the Torah. And the Talmud in Sotah 13b expands it into something almost unbearable. Moses pleaded with God not to let him die. H...
When a lion roars, every animal in the forest freezes. Even the ones who have never been hunted. Even the ones too far away to be prey. The sound itself is the message: there is so...
The Sages had a quiet problem to solve. The Torah insists that on the seventh day God rested from all the work of creation. But the world is full of objects that seem to lie outsid...
(Gemara) Let us see: when do the priests enter to eat the Terumah? Is it not when the stars appear? Let then the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) say: "From the time the...
The familiar story centers on the plagues visited upon Egypt. Blood, frogs, locusts… a greatest hits album of divine retribution. But what about the behind-the-scenes details? What...
The familiar version gives us the highlights – the Nile turning to blood, the frogs, the darkness. But some sources really dial up the intensity, giving us a truly nightmarish visi...
Following the pestilence, God instructs Moses and Elazar, the son of Aaron the priest, to take a census. A head count of the entire Israelite community, specifically those twenty y...
Legends of the Jews (Ginzberg) turns to The Plagues Brought Through Aaron. In Legends of the Jews, as retold by Ginzberg, a whole year passed between the first plague and the final...
The familiar story is this: God sends these devastating plagues upon Egypt until Pharaoh finally relents and lets the Israelites go. But there's so much more to it than just a simp...
(Yes, that's the title of the whole collection.) It's a wild ride through the aggadah – the stories, the embellishments, the "filling in the blanks" that surrounds the more straigh...
This is the weight of the story It begins with a warning, a plea really. "Therefore let these words of mine which I am about to speak find entrance into thy heart.." It’s a serious...
The familiar story is this: Pharaoh, terrified by the growing number of Israelites, orders all newborn Hebrew boys to be cast into the Nile. A desperate act of cruelty. But what wa...
The Israelites weren't just a faceless mass of slaves. They were organized, structured, even in their oppression. Officers were appointed over every ten Israelites, and these group...
He's been arguing with God, questioning his own abilities, and generally dragging his feet about returning to Egypt. But finally, finally, he relents. "Okay," he says "I'll go. But...
It wasn’t just a random act of divine anger. According to Jewish tradition, there was a method to the madness, a specific reason why certain plagues were assigned to certain people...
