335 texts in Kabbalah & Mysticism
The ninth of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles says the Torah will never be changed. The Holy One will not alter His law, nor replace Moses' law with any other. Malachi himself seale...
The Psalmist wrote, "He will regard the prayer of the destitute" (Psalms 102:17), and the Kabbalists pressed hard on the verb. Why does it say regard, and not simply hear? Because ...
The Kabbalists of Safed developed an immersion practice that turned the ritual bath — the mikveh — into a map of divine names. A person preparing for the mikveh was not merely wash...
Happy is the Jew, the Kabbalists say, who can prepare for Shabbat a complete set of garments that he wears only then. A coat, a belt, a pair of shoes, a hat — all different from th...
The mystics of Kabbalah did not just rule on large questions of Sabbath law — they drew a whole day of living around the smallest gestures. Here is a sample. Geese, fowl, cats, dog...
When Shabbat ends and three stars appear in the sky, Jewish custom has always lingered a little longer over the Sabbath queen's departure. One of the oldest customs is to sing hymn...
The Jewish calendar marks three pilgrimage festivals and twelve new moons. The Kitzur ShLaH explains that the three festivals correspond to the three patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, an...
The rabbis classified Kiddush Levanah, the monthly blessing of the moon, as one of the small but weighty acts of avodah, service of Heaven. The Kitzur Sh'lah and the kabbalists pre...
A Kabbalistic meditation preserved in Kitzur Shnei Luchot ha-Berit teaches that the 613 commandments of the Torah form a covenant between the Holy One, blessed be He, and Israel — ...
A Kabbalistic instruction for the blessing of the new moon — Kiddush Levanah — arranges the worshiper's body and words like a careful spell. The mystic is to meditate on the initia...
The Yalkut Reuveni, a late Kabbalistic anthology, preserves one of the strangest Jewish teachings about the soul: gilgul, transmigration. Souls, this tradition says, do not vanish ...
When Rome forbade Israel to study Torah on pain of death, Rabbi Akiva went right on teaching it in the open, gathering crowds around him. His friend Pappus ben Yehudah stumbled acr...
After Titus destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Rabbis tell us, a small insect flew up his nose and lodged in his brain. It ate at him for the rest of his life. The only thin...
The Rabbis teach that three things come into the world directly from the hand of the Holy One, never secondhand. Famine. Plenty. And a wise ruler. For famine, Scripture says, The L...
When Nimrod hurled Abraham into the blazing furnace at Ur of the Chaldeans — the place whose very name, the Rabbis note, means fire — the angel Gabriel stood up in the heavenly cou...
Five times in the two psalms that open Bless the Lord, O my soul (Psalms 103 and 104), David addresses his own soul. Why five? The Rabbis of the Talmud (Berakhot 10a) answer: becau...
The Rabbis of the Talmud (Yoma 21b) teach that there are six kinds of fire in the world, and not all of them behave the way fire should. The first is ordinary fire — it eats but do...
At the most joyful festival in the Jewish year — the Simchat Beit HaShoevah, the Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing, held on the nights of Sukkot — the Sages did things yo...
A man in the Talmud (Bava Batra 58a) once overheard his wife whispering to their daughter. Of their ten sons, she admitted, only one was truly his. She would not say which. The fat...
Before Rabbi Akiva became the greatest sage of his generation, he was an illiterate shepherd in the employ of Calba Savua, one of the wealthiest men in all Jerusalem. He was forty ...
During the nights of Sukkot, the Second Temple in Jerusalem lit up like nothing the world had ever seen. In the Court of the Women stood four giant golden lamp-stands, each crowned...
When Jacob died in Egypt and his sons carried his body back to the land of Canaan for burial, an unusual procession formed. The sons of Esau, the sons of Ishmael, and the sons of K...
The procedure for a capital trial under the Sanhedrin, as preserved in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 6) and carried forward in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, sounds less like an e...
At the end of days, the Rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Batra 75a, Pesachim 119b) tell us, the Holy One will set a great banquet for the righteous. The main course will be the flesh of ...
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)...
When the Holy One announced that He was going to give the Torah to flesh and blood, the angels objected. "What is man that You are mindful of him," they said, quoting the psalm, "a...
The Roman-appointed Jewish king Agrippa II, who reigned over parts of Judea in the first century CE, once tried to count the male population of Israel. Because a direct census of I...
When the Torah commands that each tribe camp under its own standard — every man by his own banner, with the ensigns of their fathers' house (Numbers 2:2) — the Rabbis were curious....
The Torah says something strange when Balaam, the prophet hired by Balak of Moab to curse Israel, finally opened his mouth. And the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth (Numbers 23:5)...
One of the stranger teachings in the later Kabbalah concerns gilgul — the transmigration of souls. The Nishmat Chaim of Rabbi Menashe ben Israel, published in Amsterdam in 1651, pr...
A man named Joseph, who kept the Shabbat with uncommon care, had a neighbor who was rich, fearful, and utterly convinced of astrology. The neighbor was told by a professional astro...
Scattered through the old anthologies is a trove of one-line sayings — proverbs the Rabbis handed down the way other peoples pass down songs. The 1901 collection Hebraic Literature...
A Jewish merchant died abroad, far from his family, in the house of a stranger. Years later, his grown son traveled to find the merchant's hidden property — but the man who had inh...
During the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the storehouses had been burned by Jewish zealots to force the city to fight. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, walking through the streets a...
Although the reading of the Book of Esther — the Megillah — on Purim is not commanded anywhere in the Pentateuch, the Rabbis teach that it is binding on us and on every generation ...
Rabbi Akiva had a habit, whenever he taught, of binding the body to the soul. "If we who study Torah suffer," he would say, "how much more would we suffer if we neglected it?" He h...
Two great sages, Rav Ami and Rav Assi, sat one day in the company of Rabbi Isaac Naphcha, and the three men fell into conversation. One of them turned and said, "Rabbi, tell us a b...
The Romans had thrown Rabbi Akiva into prison, and his disciple Yehoshua Hagarsi was permitted to bring him water — a small ration, carefully measured, just enough to keep an old m...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri taught that the priesthood did not begin with Aaron. It began with Noah's son. "The Holy One, blessed be He," the Rabbi said, "set aside Shem, separating hi...
The Talmud (Shabbat 89a-b) notices something strange: the mountain where Israel received the Torah is called by five different names in the Hebrew Bible. Why? Because a single moun...
Open the book of Kings and read: And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem ...
It is popular to lump all Pharisees together. The rabbis themselves did not. In Avot de-Rabbi Natan (chapter 37), the sages drew up a list — not of their enemies, but of themselves...
The question hung in the beit midrash: what happened to the ten tribes exiled by Assyria, and will they ever come home? The sages opened (Deuteronomy 29:28) and read: And the Lord ...
For twelve long years Rabbi Akiva had studied Torah far from home, leaving behind his wife Rachel, who had married him when he was an illiterate shepherd and had believed in him wh...
The prophet Hosea was instructed to buy back his unfaithful wife for a price that seemed arbitrary — fifteen pieces of silver, and an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley (...
Joseph's brothers had carried their father's coffin up from Egypt to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah. At the mouth of the cave, Esau was waiting. "This grave is mine," Esau said....
The Torah says (Deuteronomy 21:23), His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; for he that is hanged is accursed of God. The M...
The Talmud (Pesachim 119b) pictures the end of days as a banquet. A great cup of wine — two hundred and twenty-one logs, more than a third of a hogshead — will be brought to the ta...
