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Masechet Kallah is one of the minor tractates in the Talmud, in the Order of Damages. It consists of external beraitot and mishnayot that were compiled at the end of the Talmud by ...
Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva (Nusaḥ II) [according to the Krakow and Amsterdam printings] Said Rabbi Aqibha: these are the 22 letters with which the Torah was given to the tribes of Isr...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Sheni Ketuvim In the beginning God created etc. - To declare the might of the acts of creation to creatures, and to make it known to them...
Berachoth: Chapter One From what time on may we read the Sh'm'a of the evening? "From the time the priests enter to eat their Terumah until the end of the first watch," said R. Eli...
We are taught that R. Jose says: "once upon a time I was walking on a road and I entered one of the ruins of Jerusalem to pray. Elijah, blessed be his memory! came and watched me a...
R. Elazar b. Abina said : "He who recites Te-hila l' David (Ps. 145) three times a day may be sure of an inheritance in the world to come." What is the reason? Shall I say because ...
Buried in the Ein Yaakov's collection from Berakhot is a teaching that sounds more like ancient medical advice than religious law: "The rabbis taught that asparagus is good for the...
(4) R. Joshua, however, says: "Whence do we know that the Patriarchs were born in the month of Nissan? It is said (I Kings 6, 1) In the fourth year, in the month Ziv (glory), which...
(9) We are taught in a Baraitha: R. Juda taught in the name of R. Akiba: "Why does the Torah command (Lev. 23, 10) a sheaf of the first fruits to be brought on the Passover? Becaus...
(15) It is said above that the school of Hillel said: "He who abounds in kindness inclines [the scale of justice] towards the side of kindness." How does He do it? R. Eliezer said:...
(20) MISHNAH (the earliest code of rabbinic law): For the proclamation of six New Moon days, messengers are sent out: for Nissan, on account of the Passover; for Ab, on account of ...
(23) (Fol. 19) On the twenty-eighth of Adar, the good news came to the Jews that they need no longer abstain from studying the Law, for the king [of Syria had earlier] issued a dec...
Alexander the Great tied two eagles together with meat in front of them, so they fly upwards with him until his eyelids dropped from the cold. He then descends in a glass box to th...
A Kuthean disputed with R. Meir as to the righteousness of Jacob who only separated Levi tithed as one of the io tribes, instead of separating one more for the remaining two. For h...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
Two Jews were carried away captive from Mount Carmel. The captor following them overheard one saying to the other “A she -camel has passed before us, she is blind of one eye and on...
Nakdimon ben Gorion was one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem, and he had made a dangerous bargain. He borrowed twelve wells of water from a Roman nobleman — the Hegemon — promisi...
Hananya, the nephew of Rabbi Joshua, was a respected scholar living in Babylon. And one day he made a decision that nearly split the Jewish world in two. He decided to set the cale...
Two men came to pray before Rabbi Eliezer. One prayed at enormous length — pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that stretched on and on. The other prayed briefly...
When God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, the scene was unlike anything the universe had ever witnessed. The entire nation of Israel stood at the base of the mountain, and when the v...
Kamsa&Fall of Jerusalem. Git tin, f. 55b, 56b, 57. Sanhedrin (the supreme rabbinic court), f. 104. Pirke de R. Eliezer, ch. 49. Tanh. Numb. Hukkat § 1. and B. ibid. p. 99. Midr. Ha...
Rabbi Akiba was walking through a cemetery when he encountered something terrible — a dead man, naked and blackened, carrying an enormous load of wood on his back. He was running a...
After the destruction of the Temple, the wealthy families of Jerusalem were reduced to utter destitution. The Talmud (Ketubot 66b) records the most heartbreaking example: the daugh...
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was the son of a wealthy landowner who wanted nothing more than for his boy to work the fields. But Eliezer wanted Torah. At the age of twenty-two — far older ...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 75a) records a breathtaking vision of the future Jerusalem: its gates would be made of single pearls, each pearl so enormous that it could be carved into a g...
Rabbi Akiba shocked his companions by laughing at moments when any sane person would weep. The Talmud (Makkot 24a-b) records two instances of this extraordinary laughter, and both ...
When Moses and Aaron walked into Pharaoh's palace to demand the release of the Israelite slaves, they were not entering a building. They were entering a fortress designed to intimi...
Seven Good Years when Young. Midr. Zutta (Ruth) ed. Buber, p. 55. Nissim, f. 36b. Yalk. II, § 607. Rappaport, R. Nissim. Husin, Maase Nissim, No. 33. Yalk. Sip. Ill, pp. 107, no. c...
Man Who Would Not Swear. Ben Atar, No. 5, f. 23 a. Midr. Decalogue, III, 2. Nissim, Reprinted Sef. Hayashar, Livorno 1862, f. I39bf. Yalk. Exod. II, p. 138. Farhi, O. P. I, f. 26 a...
Bird’s Three Advices. Tendlau, Fellmeier, No. 21. Grunbaum, Jud. Dtsch. Chrest. p. 249. Ginzburg, Hagoren, 1923, p. 42. Benfey,Pantschat.I,38o. Barlaam u. Josaphat, v. Wiener, Jahr...
What made Eli the priest live so long? The midrash gives a simple answer: Torah study. "Fortunate is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of ...
The pattern repeats. Israel suffers, God rescues, and Israel sings. Then the singing stops, and the same behavior that caused the original suffering returns. The Holy One watches t...
When the offering was completed (1 Chronicles 18:26), the midrash reads it through Song of Songs: the thread of crimson, the image of the veil that separated the holy from the prof...
Hananiah, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, was living in Babylonia in the second century CE when he began doing something the Sages in the Land of Israel could not toler...
The Rabbis teach that King Solomon, for all his wisdom, committed three transgressions of kingship that the Torah had warned against. He multiplied horses. He multiplied wives. He ...
Two great sages, Rav Ami and Rav Assi, sat one day in the company of Rabbi Isaac Naphcha, and the three men fell into conversation. One of them turned and said, "Rabbi, tell us a b...
The Talmud (Shabbat 89a-b) notices something strange: the mountain where Israel received the Torah is called by five different names in the Hebrew Bible. Why? Because a single moun...
When Alexander of Macedon marched east, the Samaritans — called in the Talmud the Kutim — saw a political opening. They sent word to Alexander asking him to destroy the Temple in J...
The Torah tells the encounter briefly: Potiphar's wife caught Joseph by his cloak, and he fled. The midrash, unwilling to leave so fierce a struggle so thinly described, puts Psalm...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the sage who rescued Torah study from the ashes of Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE by founding the academy at Yavneh, once taught that in the future, wh...
Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Korcha, heard the story from an old man of Jerusalem who had lived through the Babylonian destruction. In the valley below the city, Nebuzaradan — captai...
A Roman noblewoman, a matrona, came to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta with a question. She had been reading the book of Genesis, and she was curious about the birth of Rebecca's twins. "Wh...
The prophet Ezekiel writes, "I have set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations, and countries are round about her" (Ezekiel 5:5). Taken in its plain sense, the verse places the holy...
Before he launched his final assault on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused to consult the omens. He was a king of his age, and the practice of his age was belomancy, divination by arrows...
Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel all went through seasons of barrenness before they bore children, even though each was promised a great nation through her womb. The sages asked why the ...
Devarim Rabbah (chapter 4) preserves a comment of Rabbi Yitzchak on the verse, "When the Lord your God shall enlarge your border, as He has promised you" (Deuteronomy 12:20). It is...
A Kuthean — a Samaritan — once came to Rabbi Meir with an accusation against the patriarch Jacob. It is preserved as exemplum No. 32 in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection. "Your ancest...
The sages taught that the Land of Israel was not destroyed until seven royal courts had turned to idolatry. They counted them by name: Jeroboam son of Nebat, Baasha son of Ahijah, ...
