5,406 related texts · 40 related myths · Page 4 of 113
Jacob, also known as Israel, patriarch of the Israelite nation, has passed away. His sons, the heads of the tribes, are preparing to lay him to rest in the Machpelah (מַכְפֵּלָה), ...
Legends of the Jews turns to An Army of Seir Attacked Joseph's Family Three Days After Jacob Died. The Ginzberg's says masterful retelling in Legends of the Jews, Joseph and his br...
That’s kind of what happened to Levi, son of Jacob, in the story of Dinah and the city of Shechem. It’s a tale filled with passion, betrayal, and some pretty intense family dynamic...
Prophecies and predictions have always held a certain allure, a glimpse behind the curtain of time. And in Jewish tradition, we have plenty of them. This particular prophecy, found...
The patriarch Jacob certainly did. Him, nearing the end of his days, gathering his sons around him. It’s a powerful scene, fraught with love, anxiety, and a deep desire to impart w...
Legends of the Jews turns to When Jacob Died the Eyes of All Israel Closed Too. Here’s the thing: true enslavement didn’t grip them immediately. Why? As long as one of Jacob's sons...
The story of Deborah unfolds not long after the time of Ruth, another woman held up as an ideal. The Book of Judges tells us that after the death of Ehud, a judge who delivered Isr...
"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...
The list is pretty surprising. The passage Now, these are three of the twelve tribes of Israel, the children of Jacob. But what does that have to do with things that have been arou...
Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer turns to The Acts of Kindness That Earned Israel Its Freedom. So, what qualities allowed them to be ready for redemption? Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinati...
Surprisingly, it's a concept we find echoed even in the most sacred of texts when describing the relationship between God and the tribes of Israel. Sifrei Devarim 352 paints us a p...
When Esau and Jacob finally reunited after twenty years of separation, the Bible says Esau ran to his brother, embraced him, kissed him, and they wept (Genesis 33:4). It sounds lik...
"Go forth and gaze, daughters of Zion, upon King Solomon" (Song of Songs 3:11). The sages of Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:3 read that word tziyyon as m'tzuyanim, the distinguished ones,...
Rav Yitzchak asked: what did David mean when he wrote, Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; further not his wicked device, lest they exalt themselves. Selah (Psalms 140:8)...
Benjamin the Righteous was the keeper of the communal poor-box in his city. He had one job: to guard the coins and give them out to the hungry. In a year of famine a woman came to ...
The blessing Isaac gives Esau, as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it, is a warning and a prophecy woven together. "Upon thy sword shalt thou depend, entering at every place: yet...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws, the prohibition agai...
Simeon and Levi answered their father Jacob with a question that has rung through every generation since. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:31) gives them a longer speech than the...
"And he built there an altar, and named that place, To God, who made His Shekhinah to dwell in Bethel, because there had been revealed to him the angels of the Lord, in his flight ...
Jacob blesses his sons with a breaking voice. "God the Almighty give you mercies before the man," he prays, "that he may release to you your other brother, and Benjamin" (Genesis 4...
It is one of the shortest verses of Jacob's farewell, and one of the most surprising. Jacob, the quiet dweller in tents, claims a city by right of conquest. "I have given to thee t...
A blessing that divides is still a blessing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the Hebrew's terse curse-on-anger and reveals its surgical logic. "If they dwell together, no king nor rul...
"By your sword you will live, and you will serve your brother; it will be when you will revolt, you will remove his yoke from your neck" (Genesis 27:40). It’s a confusing mix of do...
One that stings, and echoes through the ages. We see it play out in the story of Jacob and Esau. In (Genesis 32:7), Jacob's messengers return with a troubling report: "We came to y...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Jacob Hopes Esau Has Repented After All These Years. Jacob, remember, is about to face his brother Esau, from whom he'd essentially stolen a birthright and...
Our ancestor Jacob certainly did. When he sends messengers ahead to his brother Esau, the report they bring back plunges him into fear. But within that fear, we find a fascinating ...
It’s a uniquely human experience, and it's exactly the kind of layered emotion we find in the story of Jacob's reunion with Esau. In (Genesis 32:8), it says "Jacob was very frighte...
It’s a pretty universal experience, and it seems even Jacob, one of our patriarchs, felt it too. Our story begins with Jacob's reunion with his brother, Esau, after many years of s...
That’s kind of the vibe I get from the encounter between Jacob and Esau after their long separation, as described in Bereshit Rabbah 78. The verse in question is (Genesis 33:14), w...
Our ancestors felt it too. And the Rabbis, in their infinite wisdom, addressed it head-on. We find a fascinating discussion in Bereshit Rabbah, specifically section 79, sparked by ...
The Torah tells us, "Jacob’s sons answered Shechem and Ḥamor his father with guile, and spoke, as he had defiled Dinah their sister” (Genesis 34:13). But was it really just guile? ...
Bereshit Rabbah, that beautiful collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Genesis, dives deep into this very verse (Genesis 34:25) about Simeon and Levi avenging their ...
The scene: a devastating famine grips the land. Jacob's sons have returned from Egypt with grain, but it’s gone. They need to go back, but the mysterious Egyptian ruler, who we, th...
The story of Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, is a powerful illustration of just that – a tale of lost potential, impulsive actions, and the consequences that ripple through generations....
The story of Esau and Jacob is a classic example, and the Rabbis in Devarim Rabbah, a collection of homiletic interpretations on the Book of Deuteronomy, unpack it with incredible ...
Our sages grappled with it too, and one place where they explore this idea is in Kohelet Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Ecclesiastes. The verse in ...
You finally catch a break, and then. BAM! Another challenge appears. Our ancestor Jacob knew that feeling all too well. After years of wandering, wrestling angels, and navigating t...
A voice cries in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God" (Isaiah 40:3). The Aggadat Bereshit connects this voice, the heral...
Reuben, firstborn son of Jacob and Leah, lay dying in the hundred and twenty-fifth year of his life. Two years had passed since Joseph fell asleep forever. Now Reuben's own sons ga...
Benjamin, twelfth and last son of Jacob, born of Rachel, had lived a hundred and twenty-five years. He kissed his sons and began to speak. "As Isaac was born to Abraham in his old ...
(Exodus 15:14) "Peoples heard, they quaked": When the peoples heard that Pharaoh and his hosts were lost in the sea, that the rule of Egypt had ended, and that their idolatry had b...
"I will assemble Jacob, all of you; I will bring together the remnant of Israel" (Micah 2:12). The end of Aggadat Bereshit's prophetic arc arrives here: not the death of Jacob, not...
The Torah drops a cryptic detail in the middle of an Edomite genealogy: this is Anah who found the yemim in the wilderness. For two thousand years, readers have argued about what y...
He even wrote about it. He mentions "the inhabitants of Seir and Philistia; And the foolish nation that dwelleth in Sichem." Now, Seir refers to the land of Edom, often seen as riv...
Little does Jacob know the drama unfolding there, the accusations, the imprisonment of Simeon, and the demand to bring Benjamin, his youngest and most cherished son, back to Egypt....
Leah's second son is Simeon, whose name comes from the Hebrew shama, "He heard" (Genesis 29:33). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan extends her words into another layer of prophecy. She na...
Take lentils, for example. Humble, unassuming… yet, in Jewish tradition, they're deeply tied to mourning and sorrow. Why lentils? The tradition tells us that when Cain killed Abel,...
The story goes that after his less-than-amicable departure from his father-in-law Laban, Jacob found himself at the River Yabbok (Yabbok, a river in the Transjordan, now part of Jo...
