1,050 texts in Midrash Rabbah
At the very heart of it all, there is ONE God. Absolutely eternal. Completely self-sufficient. As Rabbi Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar, emphasi...
Having a voice, but God has feet that enable him to walk. In the Talmud, Rabbi Abahu said: "The Holy One, blessed be He, said: 'I am He who walked in the Garden of Eden'" (Taanit 2...
In Jewish mysticism, there's a powerful story about exactly that – the story of the Shekhinah, the divine feminine presence, and her long journey to find a home. The kabbalists, th...
A God of pure, untamed power, riding not on a cloud, but on the very wings of the wind. Fiery lights blazing all around, crimson fire swirling. Four immense storm-winds whipping ab...
Worlds created, then...undone. The image is striking, isn't it? Before our familiar heaven and earth, the Infinite, utterly alone, conceived of creation. The spark of Ein Sof, the ...
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It's a statement of immense power, a foundation upon which an entire worldview is built. But what does it really mean? to t...
The Torah tells us God spoke, and the world came to be. But how? Jewish tradition is rich with stories filling in those gaps, painting vivid pictures of the cosmic artistry involve...
The world was created through God's Name. It’s a “wonderful and strange and great secret,” as Howard Schwartz puts it in Tree of Souls, that the Name by which heaven and earth were...
It's a notion that the very foundations, the shoresh – the roots – of absolutely everything were established during those pivotal six days of Creation. “There is nothing new under ...
A recurring image? Water. Waters upon waters, in fact. Some mystical teachings say long ago, primeval waters covered absolutely everything. And get this: God, in His infinite creat...
Some traditions suggest that God didn't just create one Adam, but two. According to these accounts, this first Adam wasn't sculpted from earthly clay. Instead, he was "stamped with...
Instead of doing it all Himself, He delegates a portion of the task. To whom? To Chokhmah (Wisdom), Wisdom. "Let us make man," He says, as it's written in (Genesis 1:26). A seeming...
Before Adam was even a twinkle in God's eye, the Big G was contemplating a cosmic dilemma. As we learn from Tree of Souls, there were already two kinds of beings populating existen...
The Book of Genesis tells us, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.'" (Gen. 2:18). A "fitting helper." That's a loaded phra...
A potter takes clay, formless and without purpose, and shapes it into something beautiful, something useful. The clay spins on the wheel, and with skillful hands, the potter molds ...
A gathering of the most righteous souls, a kind of heavenly brain trust, existing even before the universe itself. Wild. According to the Tree of Souls, these weren't just any soul...
A picture of the Heavenly Court. It's a pretty amazing concept, isn't it? The idea that even God, in all God's glory, doesn't act in a vacuum. Where does this idea come from? Well,...
Before the sun, the moon, the stars... before anything? Jewish tradition has some pretty mind-bending answers, and one of the most fascinating involves the Torah. Not just the one ...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to God Teaches Torah In The World To Come. Well, imagine this: God, the ultimate teacher, personally instructing all of Israel in Torah. Not just reading it, ...
Yet, Jewish tradition suggests just that. The story goes that as God dictated the Torah atop Mount Sinai, Moses, ever the diligent scribe, meticulously wrote down every word. But t...
Maybe, just maybe, you're missing the Shabbat (the Sabbath). That sacred pause in the week, that island of stillness in our often-frantic lives. But did you know the Sabbath itself...
Like everyone else has a partner, a purpose, a connection that you're just... outside of? Well, according to some beautiful old stories, even the Sabbath felt that way. The Sabbath...
Young Abraham did. And his confusion led him to a profound realization about the nature of… well, everything. Being a kid, really seeing the world for the first time. Abraham, not ...
The story of Abraham's negotiation with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, found in the book of Genesis, is a powerful exploration of justice, compassion, and the courage to ...
The familiar story is this: Abraham and Sarah, finally blessed with a child in their old age. But what if there was more to the story than meets the eye? What if, as some ancient t...
The story of the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac, is one of the most powerful and disturbing in the Hebrew Bible. We usually focus on Abraham's faith, Isaac's (near) sacrifice, and G...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Sarah's Tent. The tradition says while Sarah was alive, four miracles were constant features of her tent. These signs weren't just random occurrences; they...
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,...
That feeling, that raw, unfair sting, is at the heart of the story of Jacob and Esau, and the stolen blessing. The scene is set: Isaac, now old and with failing eyesight, calls for...
Maybe you drove past a friend's house without stopping, or forgot to say thank you to someone who deserved it. The Torah tells us that Jacob, fleeing from his brother Esau, "left B...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Jacob's Heavenly Vision. The Torah tells us (Gen. 28:10-19) that Jacob dreamt of a ladder set upon the earth, its top reaching to heaven, with angels ascen...
He jolted awake and said, "In truth, the Glory of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence) dwells in this place, and I did not know it!" Then, shaken, "How awesome is this place!" (Gen....
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...
Would rest his head. God then performed a miracle and made all the stones into one. According to another tradition, Jacob placed all the stones under his head and they were fused t...
It's a pretty wild idea, isn't it? That Jacob, the trickster, the wrestler with angels, the father of a sometimes-fractious family, is so central to the divine plan that his image ...
Serah, daughter of Asher, one of Jacob's sons. We find her name nestled in the list of those who went down to Egypt with Jacob to escape the famine. You can find it in (Genesis 46:...
It seems a little… unexpected, doesn't it? We tend to think of prayer as something we do, directing our hopes and needs toward the Divine. But according to Jewish tradition, God Hi...
The familiar story is this: – the forbidden fruit, temptation, and the fall. But tucked away in the tradition of Jewish tradition, there are layers upon layers of interpretation th...
It wasn't just bad manners, folks. The story, as the rabbis tell it, is far more… complicated. Adam was made in God's image. And so was his son Seth, and Seth's son, Enosh. Accordi...
The Bible just drops them into the story. Where did they come from? It's one of those questions that has kept Jewish tradition busy for millennia. The simple answer? Adam and Eve d...
Yet, Jewish tradition whispers of just such a mystery: that the Messiah himself will descend from the side of evil. How can this be? Well, the story starts with King David, the anc...
The sages of old grappled with this very question, and their insights are captured in Bereshit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Genesis. to the very ...
It's actually a powerful argument against a very old accusation. Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin, quoting Rabbi Levi, starts us off with a verse from Psalms: "The power of His deeds He t...
Creation is often remembered as a solo act by the Almighty, but the ancient rabbis, wrestling with the very first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and t...
Jewish tradition, particularly in the ancient collection of Midrashim (rabbinic interpretive commentary) called Bereshit Rabbah, grapples with this very question. It's a mind-bendi...
That’s kind of the vibe we get right at the very beginning of Bereshit Rabbah, the classic rabbinic commentary on the Book of Genesis. Rav Huna, quoting Bar Kapara, invokes a verse...
Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon starts us off with a powerful verse from Daniel (2:22): "He reveals the deep and the hidden [umsatrata]." Now, what exactly is being revealed? Rabbi Yehuda c...
Rabbi Yitzchak did. He started with a verse from Psalms: “The beginning of Your word is truth…” (Psalms 119:160). And then he dove right into Genesis, the beginning itself. Rabbi Y...
