3,050 related texts · Page 21 of 64
And all who help Israel, help, as it were, the Holy One Blessed be He, viz. (Judges 5:23) "Curse Meroz, said the angel of the L–rd. Curse bitterly its dwellers. For they came not t...
Antoninus, the Roman emperor, once asked Rabbeinu HaKadosh — Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) — for political counsel. "I wan...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael takes the phrase "working wonders" from the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:11) and expands it far beyond the events at the Red Sea. The Torah describes Go...
Variantly: "working wonders" with the fathers, and destined to work them with the sons, viz. (Michah 7:15) "As in the days when you went forth from the land of Egypt, I shall show ...
The Mekhilta interprets the phrase "to the habitation of Your holiness" as a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem. God guided Israel through the wilderness in the merit of the holy...
(Exodus, Ibid.) "Quaking has seized the dwellers of Plasheth": Once the dwellers of Plasheth heard that Israel had entered the land, they said: They have come to take revenge for t...
The Mekhilta offers a variant tradition that shifts the scene from the Red Sea to the Jordan River. When Israel crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, all the kings of Canaan b...
The Mekhilta tells a parable. Robbers break into a king's palace. They despoil everything of value. They kill the king's courtiers — his loyal servants, the people who maintained h...
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai offered a surprising claim about what life was actually like for the Israelites in Egypt. Contrary to what one might expect from a nation of slaves, Israel liv...
Moses begged God for permission to cross into the Promised Land. The word he used was "na" — a term the rabbis identified as pure imploration, the language of a person who knows th...
Moses would not give up. Even after God had decreed that he would not lead Israel into the Promised Land, he stood his ground and kept negotiating, trying every possible angle to g...
Moses refused to accept the verdict. After God told him he could not enter the Promised Land as a king or as a commoner, he came back with yet another proposal — each one more desp...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael explores a tradition about what God revealed to Moses at the end of his life. Among the many visions granted to Moses before his death, the rabbis ask...
The Mekhilta offers a striking interpretation of the phrase "from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of Pharaoh" (Exodus 18:10). Why does the verse mention both Egypt and Pharaoh ...
Yithro warned Moses with a vivid and frightening prophecy (Exodus 18:18): "You will languish." The Hebrew word used here prompted two different interpretations from the rabbis, and...
Yithro told Moses to select judges from among the people, but he specified five qualities they must possess (Exodus 18:21). R. Yehoshua explained what each qualification meant in p...
Yithro's plan for restructuring Israel's judicial system was built on precise mathematics. He told Moses to appoint "officers of thousands, officers of hundreds, officers of fiftie...
R. Nathan made a bold comparison between two of the most important covenants in Jewish history — and declared that the covenant with an obscure desert clan was greater than the cov...
The Mekhilta tells a parable about a man walking along a road with his young son. At first, the father leads his child in front of him, keeping the boy in sight. But then robbers a...
Variantly: "I am the L–rd your G–d": When the Holy One Blessed be He stood and said "I am the L–rd your G–d," the mountains shook and the hills quivered, and Tavor came from Be'er ...
The Mekhilta offers a parable that illuminates the logic behind the order of events at Sinai. A king of flesh and blood enters a new province. His servants immediately urge him: "M...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael uses a vivid parable to explain why murder is equated with diminishing the divine image. The teaching compares God to a king of flesh and blood who en...
Idolatry and adultery are the same sin. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, a 3rd-century CE halakhic midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), makes this case by pointing to the stru...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael reveals a hidden connection between two of the Ten Commandments by examining their physical placement on the tablets. The commandment "You shall not t...
(Exodus, Ibid. 16) "And they said to Moses: Speak, you, with us, and we will hear, (and let G–d not speak with us, lest we die.") We are hereby apprised that they lacked the streng...
(Exodus 22:1) introduces the law of the burglar: "If the thief be found breaking in." The Mekhilta clarifies what the homeowner's mental state must be. The verse describes a situat...
"You shall not cook" — the Torah explicitly prohibits cooking meat in milk. But what about eating the cooked mixture? The verse says "cook," not "eat." Does the absence of an expli...
The Mekhilta pushes the meat-and-milk prohibition further. What about cooking an animal's flesh in its own milk? Not the mother's milk, not a sister's milk, but the milk the animal...
Can goat's milk be used to cook sheep's flesh? The species are different — goats and sheep — but both are domesticated livestock. The Mekhilta extends the prohibition through yet a...
R. Yishmael and R. Elazar b. Azaryah and R. Akiva were once walking on the road, with Levi Hasadar and R. Yishmael the son of R. Elazar b. Azaryah walking behind them, when this qu...
The prophet Isaiah did. And his vision, described in the Book of Isaiah (6:1-8), has shaped Jewish understandings of God, heaven, and the very nature of holiness for millennia. Ima...
Jewish tradition offers a powerful, heart-wrenching image: Mother Zion. The image of Mother Zion comes from a deep well of sorrow and longing, born from the exiles and devastations...
We're talking about a figure so powerful that, according to some, it was this angel who brought everything into existence. Think of it: this angel created not just the physical wor...
But for Elijah, the prophet, and his devoted disciple Elisha, it was reality. Our story begins as the Lord is about to take Elijah up to heaven. Elijah and Elisha are journeying fr...
The Jewish mystical tradition has some pretty answers, especially when it comes to King David. There's a wild idea that David wasn't just crowned here, but also in heaven! Accordin...
Jewish tradition actually considers the possibility that certain individuals, through their spiritual potency, could actually force the coming of the Messiah. Wild. In every genera...
That's the story of two yeshiva students, eighty years ago, burning with a desire for redemption. Their hearts yearned for Jerusalem, for the chance to stand at the tomb of King Da...
According to Jewish tradition, it's not just about who gets in, but who gets to wake up first. Why are our patriarchs, the Avot – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – said to be buried in t...
It’s a concept that has pulsed through the heart of Jewish longing for centuries: the return of all scattered Jewish communities to the Holy Land. Jewish tradition paints a breatht...
The opening of Psalm 1, "Blessed is the man," seems simple enough, but according to Midrash Tehillim, a collection of rabbinic interpretations of the Book of Psalms, it's packed wi...
It's like a vast, intricate conversation spanning centuries. Midrash, the art of interpreting and elaborating on scripture, helps us hear those connections. And Midrash Tehillim, s...
The Book of Psalms certainly does. And the Midrash, the ancient rabbinic commentaries, dives deep into these very questions. Today, we're looking at Midrash Tehillim 5, a fascinati...
The Midrash Tehillim, a collection of Rabbinic commentaries on the Book of Psalms, grapples with just that, using Psalm 7 as a springboard to explore themes of guilt, respect, and ...
The ancient collection of rabbinic teachings called Midrash Tehillim uses a powerful analogy to describe exactly that feeling – and it centers on the life of King David. Imagine th...
It’s a question that’s plagued humanity for ages, and it’s something the ancient rabbis wrestled with too. Midrash Tehillim, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Psalm...
In Midrash Tehillim, a collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Psalms, the text wrestles with this very idea, using the term "Cushite" as a lens to understand beauty,...
It's a wild ride, so buckle up! The Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) starts with a stark claim: "For Hillel the wicked, his own desires are his god." Whoa. Harsh. It's no...
Midrash Tehillim, a collection of interpretations on the Book of Psalms, offers us a glimpse into that very question. Specifically, in Midrash Tehillim 12, we find a fascinating ba...
