486 related texts · 8 related myths · Page 4 of 11
“Gone from the daughter of Zion is all her splendor. Her princes are like deer that have not found pasture; they went powerless before the pursuer” (Lamentations 1:6)“Gone from the...
“The yoke of my transgressions is preserved in His hand, becoming entangled, coming upon my neck, sapping my strength. The Lord delivered me into the hands of those against whom I ...
“See, Lord, for I am in distress, my innards burn, my heart overturned within me, for I have been defiant. Outside the sword bereaves; in the house, it is like death” (Lamentations...
“Who is it who said and it occurred, if the Lord did not command it?” (Lamentations 3:37).“Who is it who said and it occurred, if the Lord did not command it?” – who did command? H...
“Your iniquity is completed, daughter of Zion; He will not continue to exile you. He will reckon your iniquity, daughter of Edom, He will expose your sins” (Lamentations 4:22).“You...
Rabbi Levi in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: It is written: “The hair of His head like pure wool” (Daniel 7:9); that He has no debt to any creature. Rabbi Yudan in the n...
Rabbi Azarya began: “Do not see wine in its redness, for one who sets his eye on the cup will walk the straight path” (Proverbs 23:31). Rabbi Azarya said: “Do not see wine in its r...
It is written: “And set it in the ears of Joshua” (Exodus 17:14), this is one of four righteous people to whom a portent was given; two sensed it and two did not sense it. A porten...
“Haman said to King Aḥashverosh: There is one people that is scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from every peo...
Joab was presumed dead, the city was under siege, and then blood began flowing from inside the walls. The scene: Joab's army is locked in a brutal battle, thousands have fallen. Th...
It might be more true than you think. The Tikkunei (spiritual repair) Zohar, a profound and expansive companion to the Zohar, unlocks some truly beautiful, and sometimes challengin...
Before Jacob's passing, he gathered his sons. But it wasn’t just a sentimental family reunion. First, he rebuked them, each individually, and then he addressed them all together. W...
The familiar version gives us about the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, and even receiving the Ten Commandments. But what about the nitty-gritty details of setting up their new...
The man who spoke to God face-to-face, led the Israelites out of slavery, and received the Ten Commandments. Surely, he was perfect. Not quite. The story goes that when God first c...
Moses, Moshe Rabbenu, our teacher, wasn't about to give up on them. For forty days and forty nights, that's right, another forty-day stretch in the Bible, from the 18th of Tammuz t...
The people of Israel are unlike any other nation. Why? Because their entire lives are framed by a devotion to Torah (Jewish law and teachings) and the fulfillment of its commandmen...
Jewish tradition certainly knows the feeling. Let's Here’s MOSES, the guy who spoke to God face to face, led the Israelites out of Egypt, and received the Torah on Mount Sinai. He’...
What about the truly sacred objects? Well, let's We know it vanished from historical record after the destruction of the First Temple. But according to some fascinating legends, th...
The Tikkunei (spiritual repair) Zohar, a profound commentary on the Zohar, one of the central texts of Kabbalah, offers a glimpse into just that. In particular, Tikkunei Zohar 35 u...
Take tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer), those leather boxes containing sacred scrolls that observant Jews bind to their arm and forehead during morning prayer. Eve...
I might think that just as in the armpiece there is one parchment, so, should there be in the headpiece. And this would follow, viz. Since the Torah prescribes tefillin (leather ph...
The Torah commands placing tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer) "upon your hand." But where exactly on the hand? The Hebrew word yad can mean the entire arm from shou...
The Torah says to place tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer) "upon your hand". But which hand? The Mekhilta ruled that "hand," when used without further qualification...
Rabbi Yehudah offered a distinctive argument for the placement of the head tefillin (leather phylacteries worn during prayer), drawing an unexpected connection between the laws of ...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael derives a striking equivalence from the verse "and as a remembrance between your eyes, so that the Torah of the L-rd be in your mouth" (Exodus 13:9). ...
(Exodus 13:10) "And you shall keep this statute in its time": What is the intent of this? From "And it shall be to you as a sign upon your hand," I might think that (the mitzvah of...
(Exodus 13:10) commands, "And you shall keep this statute at its appointed time." The word "statute", chukkah, could theoretically refer to any number of commandments. Perhaps it m...
When God took Moses to the summit of Mount Pisgah and showed him the entire Promised Land, the vision included far more than hills and valleys. The Mekhilta asks: how do we know th...
The Israelites are on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, a moment fraught with both hope and trepidation. Moses, ever the shepherd of his people, pleads with God. "Sovereign o...
The verse Now, right away, the Yalkut Shimoni, a compilation of rabbinic commentary on the Hebrew Bible, jumps on this. Could these cities be any old settlements? Big or small? May...
Yalkut Shimoni on Torah turns to Cities of Refuge and Their Expanding Boundaries. Abaye, a prominent Babylonian Talmudic scholar, steps in to smooth things over. He says, "This is ...
The verse deals with accidental manslaughter and the concept of exile as atonement. "And if of a sudden, without hatred, he thrust him.." Sifrei Bamidbar uses this to exclude unint...
Sifrei Devarim turns to Moses Pleads Desperately to Enter the Promised Land. Why that time? What made it so significant? Sifrei Devarim offers an analogy: Imagine a province asking...
Those are tefillin, also known as phylacteries. They’re more than just ritual objects; they’re physical reminders of our connection to God, worn daily (except on Shabbat (the Sabba...
It seems like a simple question, but sometimes the deepest meanings lie hidden within the most familiar phrases. Take, for instance, the commandment to bind words "between your eye...
Nowhere is it more poignant than in the story of Moses, right before his passing. Moses, the greatest prophet, standing at the edge of the Promised Land, knowing he won't cross ove...
SHEMAIAH AND ABṬALYON RECEIVED THE TRADITION FROM THE PRECEDING. SHEMAIAH SAID: LOVE WORK AND HATE PUBLIC OFFICE, AND BECOME NOT KNOWN TO THE RULING POWER.LOVE WORK. What does this...
Abraham made his servant Eliezer swear an oath by placing his hand on the mark of circumcision. The Torah says "under my thigh." The Targum says exactly what it means: the section ...
After the golden calf, God told Moses something devastating in (Exodus 33:1-23). The Shekinah (the Divine Presence) would not travel with Israel anymore. The Targum Jonathan turns ...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 6) contains one of the most beloved stories in all of rabbinic literature. And it appears right in the middle of the most sacred prayer in Judai...
Targum Jonathan transforms the dry legal code of (Deuteronomy 19) into something visceral. Where the Torah simply warns that the blood avenger might overtake a fleeing killer, the ...
The fight begins inside the heart, and the first weapon is not anger. It is Torah. In Ein Yaakov, Berakhot 1:21, Resh Lakish gives a battle plan against the yetzer hara, the evil i...
The Roman Emperor Hadrian outlawed the teaching of Torah after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE. Rabbi Akiva refused to stop. He gathered students in public and taugh...
The Emperor Hadrian once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah a sharp question. “Why is the Name of God mentioned only in the first five of the Ten Commandments, and not in the la...
The Torah gives one of its most peculiar laws. If a Hebrew slave, after six years of service, chooses to stay with his master rather than go free, his ear is brought to the doorpos...
Even after three signs, Moses refuses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the protest with a phrase more vivid than the Hebrew: Moses is of a staggering mouth and staggering speech, ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 13:9) hears a strange instruction and decodes it into practice. The verse says the deliverance from Egypt shall be "a sign upon your hand, and...
The commandment against idols is sweeping in a way that startles when you slow down and read it carefully. "You shall not make to yourselves image or figure, or any similitude of w...
