9,687 related texts · Page 92 of 202
Chapter eighteen of the Tanya reveals the deepest source of every Jew's connection to God: an inherited love that predates individual experience. The Tanya has just argued that eve...
"The candle of God is the soul of man" (Proverbs 20:27). Chapter nineteen of the Tanya takes this verse and builds from it one of its most luminous teachings: the soul is a flame t...
The Tanya's twentieth chapter asks a question with a startling answer: why will even the most secular, disconnected Jew choose death rather than worship an idol? This is not theore...
"The Torah and the Holy One, blessed is He, are altogether one," says the Zohar. Chapter twenty-three of the Tanya explains what this means in practice—and the explanation transfor...
Chapter twenty-five of the Tanya returns to the verse that has been its guiding thread—"For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can fulfill it" ...
Intrusive thoughts during prayer are not a sign that your prayer is worthless. They are a sign that your prayer is working. Chapter twenty-eight of the Tanya addresses one of the m...
"You shall love your fellow as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). Hillel the Elder called this the entire Torah, with everything else being commentary. Chapter thirty-two of the Tanya ex...
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Chassidism, poses a devastating question in his masterwork the Tanya: if most people will never fully defeat their evil inclina...
Every commandment you perform sends a flood of infinite light into the physical world. That is not a metaphor. According to the Tanya of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, that is the ...
A strange ruling sits at the heart of Jewish law. If you recite the Shema prayer entirely in your mind, with complete concentration and devotion, you have not fulfilled your obliga...
Angels are, in a certain sense, spiritual animals. The prophet Ezekiel saw them with the face of a lion, the face of an ox (Ezekiel 1:10). The Tanya takes this literally: angels ha...
Rabbi Chaim Vital, the great student of the Arizal, revealed something extraordinary about what happens in the upper worlds when we study Torah. Study Torah with genuine intention,...
Before you put on your tallit in the morning, before you open a book of Torah, before you do anything holy at all, you need one thing first. Fear. Not terror. Not dread. Rabbi Schn...
If God's light were to flow into the world without restriction, this world could never exist. Everything finite would dissolve back into the Infinite like a candle flame in the sun...
There is a love of God that surpasses all the forms of love the Tanya has described so far. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi compares it to gold surpassing silver. It burns like fiery...
The Shechinah (שכינה), God's indwelling Presence, rests in the Holy of Holies. But if God fills the entire world with His glory, what does it mean for the Shechinah to "rest" in on...
A sigh from a Jewish person can repair what is broken in the world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught this not as poetry but as metaphysics. The sigh, the deep exhalation of grief or...
The essence of life comes from prayer. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov derives this from a single verse: "Prayer to the God of my life" (Psalms 42:9). Prayer is not merely an appeal to th...
You cannot receive complete divine providence until you shatter your desire for money. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught this as a direct spiritual mechanism, not a moral platitude. ...
To draw peace into the world, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught, you must elevate God's glory to its source. And that source is fear. "To fear the glorious name" (Deuteronomy 28:58)....
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that anyone who wants to taste the Or HaGanuz (אור הגנוז), the Hidden Light that God stored away from the first day of creation, must elevate the qu...
The true tzaddik (a righteous person), Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches, is the one who looks at every detail of creation and asks: why did God make it this way? Why does a lion ha...
Everything has a purpose. And that purpose has a purpose of its own, each one higher than the last. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov uses this insight to explain why you must judge every p...
Why travel to see a tzaddik (a righteous person) in person when you can read their teachings in a book? Rabbi Nachman of Breslov answered this question directly: there is an immeas...
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, in his Kedushat Levi commentary on the opening verse of the Torah, makes a claim that sounds simple but overturns how most people think about cre...
When God told Abraham, "Go to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), He was deliberately vague. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this vagueness as a divine instructi...
Sarah is the only woman in the entire Torah whose age at death is recorded. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev asks why, and his answer reveals something stunning about what it mean...
"These are the generations of Isaac, the son of Abraham; Abraham begot Isaac" (Genesis 25:19). The repetition seems redundant. If Isaac is the son of Abraham, we know Abraham begot...
"Jacob left Beer Sheva" (Genesis 28:10). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev connects this verse to a surprising topic: Chanukah. The word Chanukah (חנוכה) derives from chinukh (חנוך...
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev opens his commentary on Parshat Va'era with a question about the nature of prophecy. God tells Moses, "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jac...
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 ...
"You will prostrate yourselves from a distance" (Exodus 24:1). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this verse not as a physical instruction about how far to stand from Mount Si...
"They shall take for Me a contribution" (Exodus 25:2). The first commandment God gave after the revelation at Sinai was to build Him a home. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev finds...
Parashat Pekudei opens with an accounting of the Tabernacle's materials (Exodus 38:21), but the Kedushat Levi (Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev) sees something far deeper than a l...
In his commentary on Parashat Bereshit, Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk (the Noam Elimelech) asks a deceptively simple question: why does the Torah begin with the word "beginning"? Ras...
In Parashat Noach, Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk redefines what it means to be a righteous person. The Torah says Noah was "a righteous person, complete in his generations" (Genesis ...
God's command to Abraham—"Go forth from your land, your birthplace, and your father's house" (Genesis 12:1)—reads like travel instructions. Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, in his comm...
"And these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt" (Exodus 1:1). Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk opens his commentary on Parashat Shemot with a strange claim: a pers...
"And Moses went up to God" (Exodus 19:3). Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, commenting on Parashat Yitro, draws a distinction between two kinds of righteous people—and explains why Mose...
Sefer Raziel HaMalakh (ספר רזיאל המלאך), the Book of the Angel Raziel, opens with one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Jewish mystical literature. When Adam and Eve were expel...
The longest and most carefully guarded section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh catalogs the divine names—the Shemot (שמות), the names of God through which creation was brought into being ...
Sefer Raziel HaMalakh contains a detailed cosmological map of the seven heavens—a tradition rooted in early rabbinic literature (Chagigah 12b) and expanded dramatically in the Hekh...
The cosmology section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh presents creation not as an act of physical labor but as an act of speech. God spoke, and the universe crystallized from divine langu...
Sefer HaRazim (ספר הרזים), the Book of Mysteries, is a Jewish theurgic text dating to approximately the 3rd-4th century CE, making it one of the earliest structured works of Jewish...
Shimush Tehillim (שמוש תהלים), the Magical Use of Psalms, is a remarkable text that transforms the Book of Psalms from a collection of prayers and poems into a practical manual of ...
The protection Psalms in Shimush Tehillim are the text's most famous and widely practiced section. For centuries, Jewish communities around the world have recited specific Psalms i...
The most esoteric section of Shimush Tehillim deals with the divine names hidden within the Psalms themselves—names that are not written explicitly but encoded through acrostics, g...
The most dangerous part of the heavenly ascent described in Maaseh Merkavah (the Divine Chariot) is not the destination—it is the journey. At each of the seven gates leading to the...
