12,014 related texts · Page 177 of 251
"And they shall place it on the two side posts and on the lintel": I might think that if he placed (the blood on) one before the other, he has not fulfilled his obligation. It is, ...
"on this night": I might think, the entire night; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 10) "You shall not leave over anything of it until morning, and what is left over of it until mor...
The Torah says the Passover lamb must not be "cooked in water" (Exodus 12:9). Water is specified. But Rabbi Yishmael immediately sees the problem: what about wine? What about fruit...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) and the most authoritative sage of his generation — weighs in on the Passover cooking ...
Rabbi Yonathan builds a towering logical structure to prove that Passover leftovers cannot be burned on the festival — and like Rabbi Yishmael, he argues the Torah did not need an ...
When God announces the final plague, He uses a word that seems simple but carries layers of meaning: "And I shall pass through the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:12). The Hebrew is ve'a...
The Mekhilta articulates one of the most powerful principles in all of rabbinic theology through a deceptively simple logical argument. The principle: God's capacity for good alway...
The Mekhilta catches a redundancy in the Torah's Passover instructions that most readers would never notice — and from that redundancy, it extracts a legal ruling about where God's...
(Ibid. 15) "Only on the first day you shall eliminate leaven from your houses": before the eve of the festival. You say this, but perhaps (the meaning is) on the day of the festiva...
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 conc...
Rabbi Yossi HaGlili reads the same verse about "what is to be eaten by all souls" and arrives at a different conclusion than Rabbi Yishmael. Where Yishmael excludes both animals an...
The Torah instructs in (Exodus 12:22), "And you shall take a bunch of hyssop," referring to the bundle of hyssop used to apply the blood of the Paschal lamb to the doorposts in Egy...
The Torah describes the blood ritual of the first Passover in Egypt: the Israelites were to apply the blood of the Paschal lamb to the lintel and the two doorposts of their homes. ...
"and the L–rd will skip over the blood": Now does this not follow a fortiori, viz.: If of the blood (on the door) of the Pesach (Passover) of Egypt, the less "formidable," which ob...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic commentary on Exodus, arrives at one of the most dramatic prophetic verses in all of Scripture: "The glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh will ...
The Mekhilta, the halakhic midrash on Exodus from the 2nd century CE, examines one of the starkest either-or passages in the Prophets. Isaiah delivers God's ultimatum: "If you acqu...
The prophet Ezekiel delivered an oracle of terrifying certainty: "Behold, it has come; it has arrived, says the Lord God. This is the day of which I spoke" (Ezekiel 39:8). But when...
The prophet Micah painted one of the most beloved images in all of Jewish prophecy: "And each man will sit under his grapevine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afra...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic commentary on Exodus, addresses a verse with massive implications for the Exodus narrative. Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy: "And the Lord said to you...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, offers a remarkable insight into the nature of obedience. The Torah says of the Israelites: "and they did" — referring to the Passove...
"And it was in the middle of the night" (Exodus 12:29). The tenth plague — the slaying of the firstborn — struck at midnight. But the Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, rai...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, addresses a question that cuts to the heart of the Passover story: who actually killed the firstborn of Egypt? The verse states simpl...
Variantly: "And he called to Moses and to Aaron": What is the intent of this? Pharaoh had said to him (Ibid. 10:28) "Go from me." (29) "And Moses said: "True have you spoken" (and ...
The word ugoth in the phrase "ugoth matzoth" (Exodus 12:39) refers to thin wafers — flat cakes of unleavened dough. The Mekhilta establishes this meaning by cross-referencing two o...
"This is the statute of the Paschal offering." Scripture speaks of (both) the Pesach (Passover) of Egypt and the Pesach for all the generations. These are the words of R. Oshiyah. ...
The Torah states "and you shall circumcise him; then he shall eat of it," establishing circumcision as a prerequisite for eating the Passover sacrifice. The Mekhilta uses this vers...
Having established that the Pesach (Passover) sacrifice could be eaten "in two places" by a single group, Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai was asked the obvious follow-up question: how exac...
Conversion raises a tricky legal puzzle when it happens at the wrong time of year. Rabbi Shimon, quoted in the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (a halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive ...
"let all of his males be circumcised": We are hereby apprised that (non) circumcision of his males prevents him from offering the Pesach (Passover). Whence do we derive the same fo...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai offered his own parable to explain the same prophecy from Jeremiah — that a future redemption would overshadow the memory of the Exodus. His version is shar...
Moses commanded the people: "Remember this day when you went out of Egypt" (Exodus 13:3). The Mekhilta notices that this verse, taken alone, refers to the daytime — "this day." The...
Rabbi Chiyya ben Nachmani delivered a teaching in the name of Rabbi Yishmael that cuts against every natural human instinct. The verse in (Deuteronomy 8:10) already commands, "You ...
The Torah explicitly commands a blessing after eating — (Deuteronomy 8:10) states, "You shall eat and you shall be satisfied and you shall bless the Lord your God." But what about ...
Rabbi Yitzchak found a verse that establishes blessings both before and after eating. (Exodus 23:25) reads, "And you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and...
(Exodus 13:3) records Moses telling the people, "This day you go out, in the month of Aviv." The Hebrew word Aviv means spring. But the verse seems redundant — everyone present alr...
Rabbi Eliezer agreed that the tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer) belong on the upper arm rather than the palm, but he arrived at the conclusion through entirely dif...
Rabbi Yehudah offered a distinctive argument for the placement of the head tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer), drawing an unexpected connection between the laws of ...
How often must a person inspect their tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer) to make sure the scrolls inside are still intact? The Mekhilta derives the answer through a...
If only a donkey's firstborn is redeemed, what does the Torah mean when it says in (Numbers 18:15), "but redeem shall you redeem the first-born of the unclean beast"? The Mekhilta ...
R. Yossi Haglili says: Since the Torah commands you both to redeem your son and to teach him Torah, then just as if one's father has not taught him, he must teach himself, so, if h...
Rabbi Eliezer posed a question that shaped Passover observance for all generations: How do we know that a gathering of sages or students must occupy themselves with the laws of Pes...
(Exodus 13:18) "And G–d led the people circuitously by way of the desert to the Red Sea": in order to perform miracles and mighty acts with the manna and the quail and the well. R....
Joseph spoke a prophecy to his brothers before he died: "God will surely remember you" (Genesis 50:25). The Hebrew uses a doubled verb — "pakod yifkod" — and the Mekhilta finds in ...
Joseph's dying request to his brothers included a subtle but legally significant phrase: "And you shall bring up my bones from here with you" (Genesis 50:25). The Mekhilta zeroes i...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi — told a parable about the Roman emperor Antoninus that illuminates why God personally guided Israel through the wilderness. Antoninus was presiding at ...
(Exodus 14:4) "And I shall strengthen Pharaoh's heart": for it was divided, whether to pursue or not to pursue. "and I will be honored through (the downfall of) Pharaoh and all of ...
The Mekhilta turns to the prophet Daniel's vision of the four kingdoms, focusing on the terrifying image assigned to Greece. In (Daniel 7:6), the kingdom of Greece appears as a leo...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai offered his own version of the parable about Egypt's catastrophic miscalculation, and his telling amplified the scale of the blunder dramatically. A man inh...
