12,014 related texts · Page 176 of 251
A king without children decreed that the Jews must pray for him to have an heir, or face consequences. The Jews searched until they found a hidden tzaddik (צדיק)—a righteous man so...
Rabbi Nachman began this tale with a warning: "You might think I will tell you everything and that you will be able to understand." He would not. And they would not. A king who had...
There was a man called the Ba'al Tefilah (בעל תפילה)—the Prayer Leader—who lived outside of civilization and spent every moment in prayer, songs, and praises to God. Periodically, ...
"God has made one thing opposite the other" (Ecclesiastes 7:14). The Tanya's sixth chapter maps the dark side of the soul's architecture. Just as the divine soul has ten holy sefir...
"For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can fulfill it" (Deuteronomy 30:14). The Tanya's seventeenth chapter takes this verse—which seems to pr...
Chapter twenty-two of the Tanya confronts a paradox: if God's speech never separates from God, and if that speech is what sustains all of creation, then how can evil exist at all? ...
"You shall love your fellow as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). Hillel the Elder called this the entire Torah, with everything else being commentary. Chapter thirty-two of the Tanya ex...
Every commandment you perform sends a flood of infinite light into the physical world. That is not a metaphor. According to the Tanya of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, that is the ...
Angels are, in a certain sense, spiritual animals. The prophet Ezekiel saw them with the face of a lion, the face of an ox (Ezekiel 1:10). The Tanya takes this literally: angels ha...
There is a direct road to God that does not require you to be a mystic or a saint. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi calls it the attribute of our patriarch Jacob: the path of compassi...
The Shechinah (שכינה), God's indwelling Presence, rests in the Holy of Holies. But if God fills the entire world with His glory, what does it mean for the Shechinah to "rest" in on...
The First Temple and the Second Temple were not the same. Not in their physical structure, and not in the quality of divine light that dwelled within them. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of ...
Listening to a wicked singer is spiritually dangerous. Listening to a righteous singer can transform your soul. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov explains why, and the answer involves the s...
"The entire world was created only for my sake" (Sanhedrin 37a). Rabbi Nachman of Breslov takes this teaching at face value: if the world exists for you, then you are responsible f...
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. ...
Why travel to see a tzaddik (a righteous person) in person when you can read their teachings in a book? Rabbi Nachman of Breslov answered this question directly: there is an immeas...
There exists a soul in every generation through whom Torah insights are revealed to the world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov describes this soul as one burdened with suffering: "Bread w...
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, in his Kedushat Levi commentary on the opening verse of the Torah, makes a claim that sounds simple but overturns how most people think about cre...
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, commenting on the Torah portion of Noach (Genesis 6:9), distinguishes between two types of righteous people, and the difference has cosmic conseq...
When the sea split, the angels fell behind. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads the verse, "The angel of God who had been traveling in front of the Israelite camp moved to thei...
"You will prostrate yourselves from a distance" (Exodus 24:1). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this verse not as a physical instruction about how far to stand from Mount Si...
Moses' name does not appear in Parshat Tetzaveh. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev uses this conspicuous absence to explore a question about wisdom, unity, and the priestly garment...
"And it came to pass when Pharaoh sent out the people" (Exodus 13:17). Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk reads the entire Exodus story as a map of the soul's struggle against the evil in...
"And you shall plate it with pure gold" (Exodus 25:11). The Talmud (Sukkah 45b) reads the verse about the Tabernacle's acacia wood—"standing up" (Exodus 26:15)—to mean that the woo...
Sefer Raziel HaMalakh (ספר רזיאל המלאך), the Book of the Angel Raziel, opens with one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Jewish mystical literature. When Adam and Eve were expel...
The most widely used section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh in everyday Jewish life was not its theology or cosmology—it was its collection of amulets. Known as kame'ot (קמעות), these pr...
The transmission narrative in Harba de-Moshe (the Sword of Moses) is one of the most elaborate chains of divine authority in all of Jewish literature. It traces a path from God to ...
The second heaven in Sefer HaRazim takes a dark turn. Where the first heaven teems with angels who serve human needs—weather, healing, agriculture—the second heaven is populated by...
The fourth heaven of Sefer HaRazim is dominated by a single spectacular image—the chariot of the sun, pulled across the sky each day by angels of fire. This is not a metaphor. The ...
The seventh heaven in Sefer HaRazim is where the text's ascending structure reaches its climax—the Kisei HaKavod (כסא הכבוד), the Throne of Glory, where God sits in unapproachable ...
Shimush Tehillim (שמוש תהלים), the Magical Use of Psalms, is a remarkable text that transforms the Book of Psalms from a collection of prayers and poems into a practical manual of ...
Shimush Tehillim devotes extensive attention to Psalms for healing and wisdom—two categories that, in Jewish thought, are deeply connected. The Hebrew word for healing, refuah (רפו...
The most esoteric section of Shimush Tehillim deals with the divine names hidden within the Psalms themselves—names that are not written explicitly but encoded through acrostics, g...
Maaseh Merkavah (מעשה מרכבה), the Work of the Chariot, is a Hekhalot (the heavenly palaces) text that provides a first-person account of the mystic's ascent through the seven heave...
The most dangerous part of the heavenly ascent described in Maaseh Merkavah (the Divine Chariot) is not the destination—it is the journey. At each of the seven gates leading to the...
The climax of Maaseh Merkavah (the Divine Chariot) is the mystic's arrival in the seventh palace—the throne room of God. After passing through six gates, surviving the challenges o...
(Exodus 12:1) "And the L–rd spoke to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying": I might think that both Aaron and Moses were being addressed; it is, therefore, written (Exod...
When God told Moses in (Exodus 7:1), "See, I have made you an overlord to Pharaoh," a question immediately arose in the minds of the ancient rabbis. The verse seems to single out M...
(Exodus 12:2) "the beginning of months": I might think, for the minimum of months, two (i.e., the most distinctive of months, Sivan and Tishrei). It is, therefore, written (Ibid.) ...
(Ibid. 5) "seh": Included in "seh" is a goat and a sheep, viz. (Devarim 14:4) "the seh of the sheep and the seh of the goats." "unblemished": to exclude a blemished animal. "male":...
"shall you take": What is the intent of this? (i.e., it seems redundant.) It is written (Devarim 16:2) "And you shall slaughter the Pesach (Passover) for the L–rd your G–d, sheep a...
R. Yonathan says: sheep for the Pesach (Passover) and cattle for the chagigah. You say this, but perhaps (the meaning is) both for the Pesach? And how would I understand (Exodus 12...
R. Eliezer says: Sheep for the Pesach (Passover) and cattle for the chagigah. You say this, but perhaps both are for the Pesach? And how would I understand "an unblemished lamb, et...
R. Akiva says: One verse states "And you shall slaughter the Pesach (Passover) to the L–rd your G–d, sheep and cattle," and another, "From the sheep and from the goats shall you ta...
Rabbi Nathan offered a striking interpretation of the erotic poetry of Song of Songs that transformed it into a lesson about the sanctity of marriage. When the verse says "a locked...
The Mekhilta uncovers a contradiction in the Torah's timeline that forces a radical rethinking of when the Passover sacrifice actually happened. Deuteronomy commands, "There shall ...
Ben Betheira tackled one of the most practical and debated questions in all of Passover law: when exactly should the Paschal lamb be slaughtered? The Torah gives a poetic instructi...
(Exodus 12:7) "And they shall take from the blood": I might think either by hand or by vessel; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 22) "And you shall dip it in the blood which is in t...
