3,050 related texts · Page 20 of 64
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a cornerstone of Kabbalistic literature, touches on this very feeling. It speaks of a power that comes not just from knowledge, but from some...
Sages are gathered, delving into the mysteries of creation. One tanna, a teacher of Jewish law, rises and shares a profound insight, building upon the wisdom of those who came befo...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, that incredible companion to the Zohar, the central work of Kabbalah, gives us some pretty powerful guidance on how to really make Shabbat (t...
Jewish mysticism teaches that everything we do, every choice we make, impacts not just ourselves but the very fabric of the universe. And when it comes to our relationship with the...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah, delves deep into the mystical meanings hidden within the Torah and other Jewish texts. And in this particular sec...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a truly fascinating part of the Zohar itself, touches on this very feeling. Specifically, Tikkunei Zohar 116 uses imagery from the story of N...
The Kabbalists sure did. They saw profound mysteries hidden in the very letters of the Hebrew alphabet, seeing them not just as sounds but as building blocks of the universe itself...
Prepare to have your mind delightfully bent. Let's plunge into a mystical idea from the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, specifically Tikkun 120. This section, steeped in Kabbali...
And the key to unlocking it? A mystical figure named Metatron. Now, the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, is not always the easiest text to parse, so let’s unpack this a bit. It b...
The answer, according to the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, might surprise you. The Tikkunei Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), unveils a profound vision of ...
An emperor and a king—both childless—met by chance at an inn. Neither recognized the other at first, but each noticed royal mannerisms in his companion. They confessed their identi...
A king decreed forced conversion throughout his country. Every Jew had a choice: convert or leave. Some abandoned everything—their homes, their wealth, their entire lives—and fled ...
A king told his wise man: there exists another king who signs his letters with three claims—that he is mighty, truthful, and humble. "Mighty I can confirm," said the king. "The sea...
A queen and her bondmaid gave birth on the same night. The midwife—curious about what would happen, or perhaps driven by something darker she could not name—switched the babies. Th...
Chapter thirty-three of the Tanya prescribes an exercise for generating joy—and it is available to every person, regardless of spiritual level. Concentrate your mind and consider: ...
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...
Strip away the medieval slander and a real tradition of Jewish magic emerges—one that Joshua Trachtenberg traced from the Bible through the Talmud and into the folk practices of me...
The opening of the book of Ezekiel contains a grammatical oddity that the Mekhilta refuses to ignore. The phrase "the word of the Lord was, was" (hayoh hayah) uses the verb twice, ...
Rabbi Akiva found a hidden message in a single word from (Exodus 12:1) — the word "saying." When God spoke to Moses, the instruction included "saying," which Akiva interpreted as a...
And thus do you find with Baruch the soon of Neriah, who complained before the L–rd, (Ibid. 45:3) "You (Baruch) say: Woe unto me, the L–rd has added grief to my pain!" (You say:) W...
Rabbi Yonathan taught a striking principle about eclipses. Both solar and lunar eclipses, he declared, were given as signs — but not for Israel. They were relegated entirely to the...
"Speak to the whole congregation of Israel": The speaking was on Rosh Chodesh; the taking (of the lamb), on the tenth; and the slaughtering, on the fourteenth. You say this, but pe...
Rabbi Acha bar Rabbi Oshiyah laid out the precise timeline of the first Passover. God spoke to Moses on the first of the month (Rosh Chodesh). The Israelites selected their lambs o...
Rabbi Yossi Haglili agreed with the established timeline of the first Passover: God spoke on the first of the month, the lamb was selected on the tenth, and the slaughtering occurr...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — offered an alternative reading of (Deuteronomy 16:2): "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." Rather than identifying ...
The Mekhilta raises a question that cuts to the heart of the Passover story: why did God command the Israelites to select the Passover lamb four full days before slaughtering it? W...
Rabbi Nathan takes on a question that had puzzled scholars of the Torah for generations: what does the Hebrew phrase ben ha'arbayim actually mean? The term appears in the Passover ...
The Mekhilta traces a prophetic thread that spans nearly the entire Hebrew Bible, connecting a drunken curse in Genesis to a divine promise in the book of Joel. When the prophet Jo...
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...
The Torah records a striking detail about the Israelites' departure from Egypt: "and provisions, too, they could not make for themselves." The Mekhilta reads this not as a statemen...
The Torah commands: "the one lamb shall you offer in the morning, and the other lamb shall you offer in the afternoon" (Numbers 28:4). This is the tamid, the daily perpetual offeri...
The Torah records God's instruction: "And they shall make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them" (Exodus 25:8). The Mekhilta once again poses its characteristic question:...
The students of a great teacher reported that he expounded a striking principle using the words of the prophet Jeremiah: "Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when it...
The verse (Exodus 13:9) states, "And it shall be to you as a sign upon your hand and as a memorial between your eyes." The Mekhilta derived from the sequence of this verse a precis...
(Exodus 14:3) "And Pharaoh will say about the children of Israel: They are nevuchim in the land": "nevuchim" is "confounded," as in (Joel 1:18) "How the beasts groan! The herds of ...
"And the heart of Pharaoh was reversed" (Exodus 14:5). The Mekhilta reads this reversal not as a change of mind about letting Israel go, but as the collapse of an empire. When Isra...
What is written of the fourth kingdom (Aram)? (Ibid. 23) "This is what he said: The fourth beast: There will be a fourth kingdom upon the earth which will be different from all the...
The Mekhilta brings the prophet Jeremiah into its sustained argument about the power of prayer, citing one of the sharpest contrasts in all of Scripture: "Cursed is the man who tru...
An analogy: A man was walking on the road leading his son before him when robbers came to snare him, whereupon he took him and placed him behind him, when a wolf came to snatch him...
The Mekhilta extends its catalogue of divine judgment by east wind to yet another generation: the builders of the Tower of Babel. The pattern grows stronger with each example — God...
The Mekhilta offers a parable to explain a seeming contradiction in Jewish prayer practice. A king has two sons. He enters the younger son's room at night and says, "Wake me at sun...
The Mekhilta preserves a rapid-fire debate about what exactly earned the tribe of Judah the right to kingship over Israel. The exchange is compressed and dramatic, as rabbinic dial...
The Mekhilta draws a parallel that cuts both ways. In the previous passage, the rabbis established that believing in Moses equals believing in God. Now they demonstrate the reverse...
King Jehoshaphat marched his army into the desert of Tekoa and won a battle with nothing but faith. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, a 3rd-century CE halakhic midrash (rabbinic inter...
"This is my G–d and I will extol Him": R. Eliezer says: Whence is it derived that a maid-servant beheld at the Red Sea what was not beheld by Ezekiel and the other prophets, of who...
An analogy: A king's son goes abroad—he goes after him and attends upon him. He goes to a different city—he goes after him and attends upon him. Thus with Israel. When they went do...
The Mekhilta offers a parable about a mortal king going to war. When a king of flesh and blood prepares for battle, emissaries from neighboring lands come to him requesting sustena...
The Mekhilta presents another contrast between a mortal king at war and God. A king of flesh and blood, while engaged in battle, cannot supply all of his soldiers with what they ne...
