4,543 related texts · 51 related myths · Page 91 of 95
Another explanation: As she purified the entire house of her father like the blood of a bird (tzipor, used in purifying some impurities). Rabbi Yose bar Chaninah said, 'They sought...
The Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 392 makes a breathtaking claim about the two stone tablets that Moses received on Mount Sinai: they were not made from any earthly material. "The tablet...
When the Holy One came to give the Torah to Moshe, he said over the order of the Readings, the Mishna, the aggadah (non-legal rabbinic narrative) and the Talmud as it says "And God...
When Israel went out of Egypt, Moses said ‘and in the wilderness, where you saw how God your God carried you, as a man carries his son’(Deuteronomy 1:31); and when they went out of...
Pirkei Avot, also known as "Ethics of the Fathers," is one of the most widely studied texts in all of Jewish literature. And one of the most unusual tractates in the Talmud. Unlike...
Midrash HaGadol: Several manuscripts of this midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) are found in well-known libraries, and one belonged to Dr. Alexander Kohut, who used it in t...
"Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Chazit": It is also called "Aggadat Chazit", and it is a comprehensive midrash on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. These midrashim be...
The Book of the Wellspring of Wisdom When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the clou...
(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...
(16) (Ib. b) (Ex. 34, 6), And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed. R. Jochanan said: "Had this passage not been written, it would have been impossible to think of it, for ...
(24) (Fol. 21b) It is written (Ps. 12, 7) The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver refined in the crucible of earth, purified seven times. Rab and Samuel both explain it. On...
Rabbah bar bar Chana saw smoke coming from the earth where Korah's children were swallowed. In Ein Yaakov, Bava Batra 5:11, the desert merchant tells him to come and see the place....
When Moses descended from Mount Sinai carrying the two tablets of the covenant, he found the Israelites dancing around a golden calf. His fury was absolute. He shattered the tablet...
The sages taught that physical cleanliness was not merely a matter of hygiene, it was a spiritual discipline that could literally make a person shine. Rabbi Judah HaNasi, known sim...
Moses stood apart from every other prophet who ever lived. The rabbis taught that while other prophets saw God through clouded glass, Moses alone saw through a clear lens, an unobs...
Three figures pray and God delights in it: Moses, David, and the Messiah. This is the claim Aggadat Bereshit makes from (Proverbs 15:8), "the prayer of the upright is His delight."...
After two full years in prison, Pharaoh dreamed (Genesis 41:1). The midrash reads this through Psalm 73: "As an endless dream, the Lord despised their form." God does not reveal Hi...
"And Jacob called unto his sons" (Genesis 49:1). The Torah records the great final blessing, all twelve sons gathered around the dying patriarch, each receiving something tailored ...
One small Hebrew word, kalot, "completed", carries an entire wedding, an entire exorcism, and the steadying of the whole world. In Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:5, the sages pry open (Nu...
The Talmud (Pesachim 119b) pictures the end of days as a banquet. A great cup of wine, two hundred and twenty-one logs, more than a third of a hogshead, will be brought to the tabl...
An Aramean king ruling in one of the cities of the Land of Israel once assembled the Jews of his domain and issued a decree. If they could prove to him the superiority of Moses and...
An apostate once led the king into a synagogue at precisely the hour when the Torah reader was chanting the verse from Deuteronomy: "How can one pursue a thousand, and two put ten ...
The venerable Hillel had eighty disciples. That number is not a boast but a ledger. The rabbis kept careful count. Thirty of those eighty, they said, were worthy that the Shekhinah...
When Solomon set out to build the Temple, he faced a strange obstacle hidden in plain sight in the Torah. Scripture says that "the house, when it was in building, was built of ston...
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...
Rabbi Levi told a parable that holds three prophets in one sentence. Israel, he said, is like a noblewoman who had three friends. One knew her in her prosperity. One knew her in he...
The plague of frogs rose out of the Nile, and the sages wondered: how does a single verse describe it in the singular? And the frog came up and covered the land of Egypt (Exodus 8:...
The sages of the Talmud taught that the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within every human being, goes by seven different names in Scripture. Each prophet saw a different face of...
Scripture says that Jacob's family went down to Egypt numbering seventy souls (Genesis 46:27). When the sages sat down to count the names listed in the chapter, they reached only s...
Rabbi Simlai delivered one of the most famous homilies in the Talmud (Makkot 23b). Moses, he said, was given 613 commandments at Sinai. And the number is not arbitrary. Three hundr...
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God, who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant,...
Hillel the Elder, the Babylonian immigrant who rose to lead the Jewish people in the first century BCE, had eighty students by the end of his life. The Talmud in Sukkah 28a divides...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan, the legend of the Rabbis remembers that the land was inhabited by giants, not merely tall men but beings of such scale that a ...
The rabbis preserved a strange little tradition about how Og, the giant king of Bashan, survived the Flood. The Torah never explains it. Og appears later, towering over the Israeli...
A medieval Jewish legend tells of a king of Poland who fell under the influence of a sorcerer — a wizard — and issued a decree: the Jews of his kingdom must convert, be...
After the boils, the Lord does not relent. He sends Moses back to the palace, and the command has not changed. "Arise in the morning, and place thyself before Pharoh, and say to hi...
The Torah gives us a glimpse into such an experience with the story of the Ohel Mo'ed, the Tent of Meeting. The Book of Exodus describes how Moses would set up this tent "outside t...
Not just any mountain, but Mount Sinai itself, the very place where God met Moses. It’s a mind-bending image, isn't it? That's how some of our tradition describes the moment of rev...
Before the sun, the moon, the stars... before anything? Jewish tradition has some pretty mind-bending answers, and one of the most fascinating involves the Torah. Not just the one ...
Devarim Rabbah turns to God's Signature. The tradition tells us that the first tablets were written by the very finger of God. But the second? Those were written by Moses himself. ...
Serah, daughter of Asher, one of Jacob's sons. We find her name nestled in the list of those who went down to Egypt with Jacob to escape the famine. You can find it in (Genesis 46:...
What happens to the abandoned? What happens to the children left to the elements, victims of cruelty and fear? Sometimes, stories offer us the most profound answers. Think about th...
Devarim Rabbah turns to The Dual Messiah. This isn't just any duo,. You might be thinking, "Moses? Isn't he the guy who led the Israelites out of Egypt and received the Torah?" Abs...
That feeling, that inherent worth… it's something the ancient rabbis grappled with too. And they found a powerful message about it in the very first verses of the Book of Numbers, ...
Take the story of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, who famously perished while offering "alien fire" before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1). Their death is mentioned no less than four...
A seemingly straightforward instruction: "The Lord said to Moses: Count every firstborn male of the children of Israel from one month old and above, and take the number of their na...
Bamidbar Rabbah turns to The Demographic Puzzle of Levites Versus Firstborn. So, the children of Israel are wandering in the desert, and God instructs Moses to count two groups: th...
The ones that make you tilt your head and ask, "Wait, what? (Numbers 3:46) tells us about redeeming the 273 firstborn Israelites who were "over and above the number of Levites." Ok...
