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Josephus, in his work Against Apion, reflects on this very question. He's making a case for the integrity and antiquity of Jewish history, and he does so by comparing it to the his...
to one such instance, where the Egyptian historian Manetho gives us a glimpse into how the ancient world viewed the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. Josephus, in his work Against Api...
Cain didn't just kill his brother. According to Josephus, he then built a city, invented weights and measures, drew the first property lines—and turned the entire human world towar...
Twenty pounds of silver. That was the price of a human life—the amount Joseph's own brothers accepted from a passing caravan of Ishmaelite merchants in exchange for their seventeen...
The Egyptian princess who raised Moses had to make him swear an oath before handing him over to the king. That is how little she trusted her own father's court—the same court whose...
Eli the high priest had two sons who were a disgrace to everything he stood for. Hophni and Phinehas served at the Tabernacle in Shiloh, but they used their priestly office as a li...
She did not trust the reports. The Queen of Sheba—whom Josephus calls the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia—heard endless stories about Solomon's wisdom, but she refused to believe secon...
King Ahab wanted a vineyard. Its owner, Naboth, said no. That refusal ended with Ahab dead in his chariot, his blood licked by dogs exactly where the prophet said it would happen. ...
Demetrius I, a Seleucid prince who had escaped captivity in Rome, seized the Syrian throne and immediately turned his attention to Judea. Jewish collaborators, led by the corrupt H...
According to the Sha'ar HaGilgul (the reincarnation of souls)im, the "Gate of Reincarnations," that little loose end can have some pretty profound implications. To understand this,...
Here, we're talking about Zeir Anpin, which literally means "Small Face." In Kabbalah, Zeir Anpin is a complex concept, often seen as representing the emotional attributes of God, ...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a profound commentary on the Zohar, certainly feels that way. It's filled with layers upon layers of symbolism, and sometimes, just sometimes...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a central work of Kabbalah, delves into this very feeling, exploring the idea of "time" and its significance in our relationship with the Div...
In fact, the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah building upon the Zohar, dives deep into the heart's role, seeing it as far more than just a blood-pumpin...
I get it. There are passages in Jewish mystical literature that can feel that way. Take this snippet from Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar (specifically, Zohar Ḥadash 26a, if you ...
That feeling, that tension, is woven right into the fabric of the cosmos, according to some of the deepest mystical teachings in Judaism. Let's turn to the Tikkun (spiritual repair...
Jewish mysticism has a lot to say about that very tension. Today, we're diving into a small but powerful passage from the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a later expansion of th...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah, speaks to just that feeling, issuing a powerful call to awaken and protect something precious. Imagine a world wh...
Especially the Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a later addition to the Zohar, the foundational text of Kabbalah. It dives deep into the hidden meanings of the Torah, offering ra...
"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...
"When you take a census of the Children of Israel, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for his soul" (Exodus 30:12). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev reads this as God offering the J...
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...
The Torah commands regarding the Passover lamb: "On the tenth day of this month, they shall take" (Exodus 12:3). The Mekhilta zeroes in on one seemingly minor word in this verse, t...
The Torah introduces a practical problem in the laws of the Passover sacrifice. What happens when a household is too small to consume an entire lamb? (Exodus 12:4) addresses this d...
The Torah uses an unusual word — "michsah" — when describing how the Passover lamb should be allocated. (Exodus 12:4) says the lamb must be divided "according to the michsah of sou...
Rabbi Yishmael confronted a puzzle in (Deuteronomy 16:2), which says: "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." But the Passover offering is supposed t...
(Exodus 12:6) "And it shall be to you for a keeping": Why does the taking of the Pesach (Passover) precede its slaughtering by four days? R. Matia b. Charash says: It is written (E...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, one of the most brilliant and mystically inclined sages in all of rabbinic literature, offers a reading of the Passover timeline that is as precise as a wa...
The rabbis of the Mekhilta press deeper into the logic of the festival offering, deploying one of the Talmud's most powerful reasoning tools: the kal va-chomer, the argument from l...
Two verses in the Torah appear to contradict each other on a basic question: how many days must one eat matzah during Passover? One verse says six days. Another says seven. The Mek...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus dating to the 2nd century CE, zeroes in on a single phrase from the Passover laws to clarify exactly who was obligated to perform the ...
The Torah commands regarding the Passover sacrifice: "you shall not take out of the house." But take what out of the house? The Mekhilta clarifies that Scripture is speaking specif...
The Torah commands: "The entire congregation of Israel shall offer it" (Exodus 12:47). The Mekhilta asks why this verse is necessary at all, given that the Torah already instructed...
Rabbi Nathan found a specific legal scenario embedded in the verse "let all of his males be circumcised." The phrase excludes a particular case from preventing a master's participa...
"One Torah shall there be for the citizen and for the stranger" (Exodus 12:49). This verse — one of the most sweeping declarations of equality in the Torah — might seem redundant. ...
(Exodus 13:15) records a foundational obligation: "and every firstling of my sons I shall redeem." The redemption of the firstborn, known as pidyon haben, is one of the Torah's mos...
The Mekhilta preserves one of the most comprehensive lists of a father's obligations to his son in all of rabbinic literature. By Torah mandate, a man must do the following for his...
And thus did the Holy One Blessed be He impress upon the nations of the world His love of Israel—He Himself walking before them, so that they (learn to) treat them honorably. And l...
Rabbi Bana'ah taught that God split the Red Sea for the Israelites in the merit of their ancestor Abraham. The proof lies in a striking verbal parallel between two verses. When Abr...
When Yithro, the father-in-law of Moses, heard about everything that had happened at the Red Sea, he made a remarkable declaration: "Now I know that greater is the Lord than all th...
R. Shimon b. Gamliel says: Come and see how different are the ways of the Holy One Blessed be He from the ways of flesh and blood. (A man of) flesh and blood heals bitter with swee...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael cites a devastating passage from (II Chronicles 24:25) to illustrate the consequences of shedding innocent blood. The verse describes the downfall of ...
Yithro, the father-in-law of Moses, had seven names — and the Mekhilta explains that each name encoded a different aspect of his extraordinary character. Yether — because he "added...
The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves a fascinating tradition about the name of Jethro, Moses's father-in-law. His name was not always Jethro. In the beginning, the Torah calls h...
The verse says that Aaron and all the elders of Israel came to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law "before God." But the Mekhilta raises an obvious question: where was Moses himsel...
A certain philosopher asked R. Gamliel: It is written in your Torah "for the L–rd your G–d is a wrathful G–d." Now is there power in idolatry to arouse wrath (in G–d)? One here is ...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betheira offered an alternative proof that the commandment to honor parents applies equally to all people regardless of sex. His argument in the Mekhilta DeRabbi ...
The Mekhilta presents a sophisticated chain of legal reasoning about which commandments can override which other commandments. The question at stake is whether the obligation to bu...
