3,636 related texts · Page 43 of 76
Herod was twenty-five years old when his father Antipater handed him the governorship of Galilee. His first act was to hunt down a band of raiders led by a man named Hezekiah who h...
In 40 BCE, the Parthian Empire invaded the Roman East and everything Herod had built nearly collapsed overnight. Antigonus, the last surviving son of Aristobulus, allied with the P...
Herod returned from Rome with a crown but no kingdom. Antigonus, backed by the Parthians, controlled Jerusalem. It took Herod three years of brutal campaigning to claim what the Ro...
Herod had the throne, but the Hasmonean family still haunted him. His wife Mariamne was a Hasmonean princess. Her mother Alexandra was relentless in promoting Hasmonean claims. And...
Mariamne was everything Herod wanted and everything he feared. A Hasmonean princess of extraordinary beauty, she gave him legitimate connection to the dynasty he had overthrown. Jo...
Herod tore down the Second Temple and rebuilt it from scratch. Not because it was falling apart. Because it wasn't grand enough for him. According to Josephus in Antiquities XV, He...
Herod sent his sons to Rome for an education. They came home polished, handsome, and walking straight into the deadliest family feud in Jewish royal history. Alexander and Aristobu...
Herod strangled his own sons. Both of them. On the same day. At Sebaste, the city where he had married their mother Mariamne twenty years earlier. According to Josephus in Antiquit...
Two Torah scholars convinced their students to tear a golden eagle off the Temple gate in broad daylight. Herod burned them alive for it. According to Josephus in Antiquities XVII,...
Herod died the way he lived: in agony, surrounded by plots, and trying to control what happened after he was gone. His body was rotting while he was still inside it. According to J...
The moment Herod was dead, the nation exploded. Three separate revolts broke out across the country before his sons could even settle who inherited what. According to Josephus in A...
And what they've imagined is According to tradition, within Paradise – also known as Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden, paradise) – lie not just one, but six palaces, each a home for th...
We often hear about the benevolent angels, the messengers, the healers. But what about the ones who fall from grace? Let's talk about Dumah. According to Jewish tradition, Dumah wa...
The holiday of Sukkot, as we know, is based on the biblical verse, "You shall live in booths seven days" (Leviticus 23:42). We build these temporary dwellings, the sukkot (plural o...
Think of it as a current flowing from the four sacred worlds of ABYA – Atzilut (the World of Emanation)h, Beriah (the World of Creation), Yetzirah, and Assiyah – a concept we'll un...
But according to one of the most influential Kabbalists of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, that's precisely the role of the Zohar. Now, you might be asking, "What exactly is the Zo...
Jewish mysticism, particularly in the Kabbalistic tradition, has a fascinating way of describing just that kind of spiritual elevation. We're going to dive into a concept that migh...
The Kabbalah, with its intricate maps of the spiritual realms, offers a fascinating parallel. Today, we're diving into a specific concept from the Sulam Commentary, exploring how s...
We're going to be looking at a passage from Da'at (Knowledge) Tevunot, a work that explores profound questions about creation, the soul, and our purpose in the world. The text we'r...
The text emphasizes that knowing God's singularity – His absolute oneness – isn't enough. It can't just be a mental exercise. It has to sink deep, becoming a bedrock of our being, ...
Da'at (Knowledge) Tevunot, a profound text of Jewish thought, delves into this very question. It points to a divine emanation, a flow of energy from the Creator, as the lifeblood o...
Well, in Da'at (Knowledge) Tevunot, a profound exploration of Jewish thought, we delve into precisely that. And it all starts with understanding the existence of humankind itself, ...
Jewish mystical tradition grapples with this very feeling. It speaks of an "Encompassing Light" – a concept that can be both beautiful and a little intimidating. So, what exactly i...
We often talk about the Sefirot, the ten emanations through which God reveals Himself and creates the world. Think of them as divine attributes, stages in a process. But here’s the...
The Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, a Kabbalistic text whose title means "Hall of Forty-Nine Gates of Wisdom", grapples with this very question, particularly as it relates to the vessels ...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a later expansion of the Zohar, is a cornerstone of Kabbalistic thought, offering intricate interpretations of scripture and the mysteries of...
Moses certainly did. The Torah tells us, in (Exodus 2:12), that Moses "turned this way and that, and he saw that there was no man..." Now, the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a ...
We tend to think of it as a straightforward statement about time, about creation. But what if it’s also a secret code, pointing us towards something much deeper about the nature of...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a companion volume to the Zohar itself, speaks of just such a situation. It paints a vivid picture of prophecy, not as some distant, unattain...
Maybe you're trying to focus on something important, and suddenly the phone rings, or a notification pops up, or... a snake winds itself around your ankle? Okay, maybe not the snak...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a profound and mystical commentary on the Zohar itself, warns us about precisely that. It speaks of the dire consequences of separating "the ...
Jewish mystical thought, especially the Zohar and its companion works, wrestles with this very tension. And Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar 85, specifically, offers a fascinating...
There's a fascinating passage in Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar 87 that offers a really intriguing perspective. It suggests that this very struggle, this intellectual and spirit...
The passage speaks of the "wings of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence)" as being the "covering of the blood" of a beast or bird. Now, before you get squeamish, remember that in Je...
to a fascinating passage from the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, specifically Tikkun 120, and see what it reveals about universal praise and divine presence. The passage opens ...
to a fascinating passage from Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar 291 and see what secrets we can unlock. The passage begins with a seemingly simple phrase: "Your neck." But in the m...
Why does God sometimes tell Moses to "go to Pharaoh" (lekh el Par'oh) and other times to "come to Pharaoh" (bo el Par'oh)? Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev discovers two entirely ...
The Torah lists the patriarchs in a specific order: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In (Exodus 3:6), God introduces Himself to Moses at the burning bush as "the God of your father, the ...
Before Aaron was chosen for the priesthood, every member of Israel was eligible to serve as a priest. The entire nation stood on equal footing when it came to approaching God throu...
(Exodus 12:1) "saying": Go and say it to them immediately. These are the words of R. Yishmael. As it is written (Exodus 34:34) "And he went out and spoke to the children of Israel ...
Rabbi Yoshiyah raised a question that touches the very structure of the Jewish calendar: who has the authority to add an extra month to the year? The Hebrew calendar is lunar, and ...
The Mekhilta takes three words — "I, the Lord" — and unpacks from them a theology of divine certainty that spans from punishment to reward. When God declares "I, the Lord" in the c...
"and I shall see the blood": R. Yishmael was wont to say: Isn't everything revealed to Him, viz. (Daniel 2:22) "He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him," and (P...
R. Yoshiyah said to him: Why is this different from all of the "sayings" in the Torah, which were from Moses to say to Israel? Here, too, from Moses to say to Israel. Why, then, is...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, explores a striking rhetorical pattern found throughout the Hebrew Bible: moments where a prophet says God "has spoken," and the rabb...
The prophet Joel declared, "And all who call in the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Joel 3:5), a sweeping promise of deliverance for anyone who invokes God's name. But the Mekhil...
When God instructed Israel about the Passover observance, He included a forward-looking phrase: "And it shall be, when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as He has s...
And the children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, and from Succoth to Eitam, and from Eitam to Pi Hachiroth. On the fifth day (of the week) they journeyed from Egypt, an...
