3,277 related texts · 11 related myths · Page 4 of 69
“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground, are silent. They have placed dust on their heads, have girded themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem have lowere...
Take the tale of Balak and Balaam. It's more than just a simple request to curse a nation. It’s a clash of egos, a battle of wills, and a whole lot of ancient magic. Ginzberg, in h...
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 105a) actually tells us that Balaam, the infamous prophet-for-hire, was one of three individuals whom God tested and who utterly failed. He's in dark company,...
The biblical account in the Books of Kings gives us glimpses of his fiery personality, his confrontations with kings, and his miraculous deeds. But those are just snapshots. They b...
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that prayer is the essential weapon of the Messiah. Not a sword. Not an army. Prayer. The teaching begins with a striking image from the Zohar: the ...
A person trapped on a low spiritual level might assume that deep Torah understanding is beyond their reach. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov says the opposite is true: the pathway from the...
The most practical-looking passages in the Sword are also the easiest to misread. Gaster's 1896 edition preserves adjurations connected with illness, danger, childbirth, court trou...
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael draws attention to a striking pattern woven through Scripture: when the prophets speak, they echo words that God already uttered long before. The chai...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai made a breathtaking claim: the sun and the moon themselves serve as eternal witnesses that God had already committed to splitting the sea for Israel long be...
In a fascinating passage from Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a compelling possibility emerges. The text explores the story of Samuel, the last of the Judges and a pivotal prophet in ancie...
That messiness, that delicious, complicated paradox, is exactly what grabs our attention in Jewish tradition too. Take the tale we find in Sifrei Devarim 342. It focuses on the pro...
In ancient Israel, a person who killed someone by accident did not go free. Neither was he executed. He ran for his life to one of six cities of refuge, and the roads that led ther...
Who wrote the Hebrew Bible? The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b provides a complete accounting, attributing every book to a specific author. Moses wrote his own book, the Torah. And also ...
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...
At the end of days, the prophet Malachi says, you will be able to tell the righteous from the wicked at a glance: "You shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked...
"Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob" (Jeremiah 2:4). Not the word of Jeremiah. Not the word of the priesthood. The word of the Lord, direct, unmediated, demanding attentio...
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...
When the Torah laid out the rules for Israel's king, it gave three specific warnings. In Deuteronomy 17, Moses wrote that the king shall not acquire for himself many horses. He sha...
The rabbis taught that Jerusalem was not like other cities. Ten laws applied to her alone, each one a small clue to her strange status. A mortgaged house there was never permanentl...
After Moses grasps the serpent by the tail and it becomes a rod, the Holy One explains the purpose of the miracle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan puts it plainly: In order that they may be...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Righteousness of Isaac. The Rabbis identify ten distinct famines that have struck the world throughout history. Ten! That's a lot of empty plates.* One dur...
It goes way beyond just being "fair." It's actually about a profound and intimate relationship between us and the Divine. Devarim Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the ...
Kohelet Rabbah, a Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, tackles this idea head-on with the verse: "If the spirit of the ruler comes u...
Shemot Rabbah turns to Moses Gathers the Elders With a Secret Sign. Why the elders? Shemot Rabbah emphasizes the vital role elders play in upholding Israel. It draws a parallel to ...
Shir HaShirim Rabbah turns Solomon's vineyard at Baal Hamon into a symbol for Israel, Torah, and divine peace. What does this seemingly simple verse really mean? The rabbis, master...
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman tells us that all the prophets, in their visions, saw the rise and fall of kingdoms, particularly their impact on Israel. It all starts with a seemingly inn...
It all begins with the poignant question: “Who fulfilled the mitzvah," the good deed, "of separating from a woman at the time of her discharge?” The answer? A surprising figure: Ye...
“And her tears are on her cheeks [leḥya],” over her priests, just as it says: “He shall give to the priest the foreleg, the jaw [haleḥayayim], and the maw” (Deuteronomy 18:3). Alte...
There was an incident involving Doeg ben Yosef who died and left a young son to his mother. She would measure him in handbreadths and donate his weight in gold to the Temple182Lite...
“Judah was exiled due to affliction and great enslavement. She settled among the nations, did not find rest; all her pursuers have overtaken her within the straits” (Lamentations 1...
“The ways of Zion are in mourning, without Festival pilgrims; all her gates are desolate; her priests sigh; her maidens are forlorn, and she is embittered” (Lamentations 1:4).“The ...
God told Israel three separate times: do not go back to Egypt. According to Esther Rabbah, they violated every single warning and paid for every single one. Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai ...
Forget your gavels and stern judges. Imagine something far more… theatrical. The image comes to us from Legends of the Jews, that incredible compilation of rabbinic lore put togeth...
R. Elazar Hamodai offered his own interpretation of the five qualities required of judges, and his reading was both more vivid and more demanding than R. Yehoshua's. "And you shall...
" The term sorer umoreh itself is fascinating. It appears in the Book of Deuteronomy (21:18-21), outlining a grim scenario. But what exactly does it mean to be "wayward and rebelli...
The Book of Ben Sira, a treasure trove of wisdom literature, grapples with these very questions. "An wild king will destroy the city, and a city is settled by the intelligence of i...
It’s a story packed with adventure, piety, and a healthy dose of divine intervention. to a particularly intense moment from the beginning of the story. Our hero, Tobit, is in deep ...
The Book of Maccabees I turns to Jonathan's Men Storm a City Under Siege. The tradition turns to the Book of Maccabees I, a historical account that gives us a glimpse into those tu...
It's considered by many to be part of the Apocrypha, a collection of writings of uncertain origin, that elaborates on stories from the Bible and fills in gaps. And Chapter 73 is wh...
Nebuchadnezzar doesn't believe Ben Sira actually knows what's in his garden. So the king proposes a test. He'll blindfold the boy, march his army past in separate battalions, and B...
The breaking point came at Mod'aith. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, after Antiochus departed for Maced...
Legends of the Jews (Ginzberg) turns to Zepho King Of Kittim. The story of one such figure: Zepho, King of Kittim. His tale, as pieced together in Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, i...
Legends of the Jews (Ginzberg) turns to The King Of Ethiopia. It sounds wild, doesn't it? According to Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, the Ethiopians, in desperate need of a leader...
Laban, in the Bible, certainly felt that way about his nephew, Jacob. Laban wasn't exactly known for his generosity. When he heard about Jacob's arrival, penniless and seeking refu...
The story of Job, as we know it from the Bible, is already But the Jewish tradition, especially as elaborated in works like Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, really fleshes out the d...
He has no clue that destiny has something truly unexpected in store. At this precise moment, war erupts between Ethiopia and its former eastern territories. King Kikanos, leading h...
That feeling, that impossible tension, isn’t new. The Israelites felt it acutely during their enslavement in Egypt, and their frustration boiled over in a truly heartbreaking way. ...
It wasn't as simple as picking names out of a hat, that's for sure! After delivering his blessings, Moses tasked the people with finding suitable individuals to serve as judges and...
