335 texts in Kabbalah & Mysticism
There was a man named Yochanan who served as High Priest for eighty years. Eighty. Longer than most men live, longer than any priest before or since had stood between Israel and th...
Look again at the opening of Genesis. "Zachar u-nekevah bara otam" — "male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). Why does the verse call the single creature otam, "them," if ...
Ravina once sighed, "There is no truth left in the world." Rabbi Toviah would not let the statement stand. "If all the riches of the world were offered me," he would say, "I would ...
Every day three choirs of ministering angels stand before the throne and sing. The first class sings, "Holy!" The second answers, "Holy!" The third completes the line: "Holy is the...
When Solomon needed the king of the demons to help build the Temple without iron, he sent his captain Benaiah son of Jehoiada into the wilderness. Benaiah carried two weapons that ...
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 ...
Rabbi Yossi gave a teaching that startles the ear. The Shechinah, he said, has never descended below, and Moses and Elijah never truly ascended on high. Heaven and earth keep a sma...
A Sadducee came to Rabbi Abahu with a sharp question. "You rabbis teach," he said, "that the souls of the righteous are treasured up beneath the Throne of Glory. If that is so, how...
Elijah was a regular visitor at Rabbi's academy. He would slip in quietly, take his seat, and listen. One first-of-the-month he came in late, and Rabbi asked him what had kept him....
Rava said something that rabbis are not supposed to say. "Life, children, and sufficient livelihood," he taught, "do not depend on merit. They depend on mazal — on the star under w...
Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, quoting Rabbi Yehoshua, said something that should stop us: since the destruction of the Temple, not a single day has passed without a curse (Sotah 48a). ...
Rav Kahana was a scholar, but he was poor, and poor scholars in Babylonia often had to work as peddlers to survive. He earned his bread by selling women's baskets door to door. One...
Rabbah bar Nachmani ran one of the great academies of Babylonia, and twice a year — in the month before Passover and the month before the Feast of Tabernacles — thousands of Jews t...
When blind Isaac reached out to bless his son and said, "HaKol kol Yaakov v'ha-yadayim y'dei Esav" — "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau" (Genesis...
When Israel came out of Egypt and stood at the shore of the Reed Sea, Samael — the angel who serves as heavenly prosecutor — rose up to accuse them. "Lord of the Universe," Samael ...
Rabbi Levi told a parable that holds three prophets in one sentence. Israel, he said, is like a noblewoman who had three friends. One knew her in her prosperity. One knew her in he...
Four rabbis were walking together on Mount Scopus, looking down at the ruin of Jerusalem. They saw a fox running out of the Holy of Holies. The three older sages began to weep. Rab...
When the waters of the flood began to rise and every living thing scrambled toward the ark, a strange creature came to Noah's gate — the Lie. The Lie asked to be admitted. Noah loo...
Elijah was traveling in disguise with a rabbi, as he often did in the legends. Toward evening they arrived at a large and imposing mansion, the home of a haughty, wealthy man. The ...
Rabbi Eleazar said that the month of Tishri holds more Jewish history than any other. "Abraham and Jacob were born in Tishri," he taught, "and in Tishri they died. On the first of ...
The plague of frogs rose out of the Nile, and the sages wondered: how does a single verse describe it in the singular? And the frog came up and covered the land of Egypt (Exodus 8:...
The Talmud (Kiddushin 80b) tells a grim little tale to justify a rule about guarding appearances. Once a woman stood weeping over her husband's fresh grave. Not far off, a guard ke...
For three years the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel stood locked in argument. Each claimed the law, the halacha, belonged to them. Both schools were sharp; both were pious...
The Rabbis taught, in Chullin 94a, a cluster of warnings about the small deceptions that undo a household. None is dramatic. Each is deadly. The shoe. Do not sell a neighbor shoes ...
The Talmud preserves a strange journey. Benaiah son of Jehoiada has captured Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and leads him bound toward Solomon's court. Along the road, the demon...
Before Rabbi Akiva died, he sat his son Rabbi Yehoshua down and gave him seven instructions. They read less like commandments than like the quiet advice of a man who had seen too m...
Rabbi Yochanan taught a strict rule in Yevamot 34b: a widow who waits ten years before remarrying will have no children with her new husband. The ten-year gap, the sages believed, ...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus thought he had caught Rabbi Akiva in a contradiction. "If your God loves the poor," he pressed, "why doesn't He feed them Himself?" Akiva did not he...
The story picks up after Ashmedai, king of the demons, has seized Solomon's magical ring and flung it into the sea. Power stripped, Solomon is no longer Solomon. The demon king hur...
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi made a grand claim in Berakhot 19a: "The tribunal excommunicates for the honor of a Rabbi in twenty-four cases," he said, "and every one of them is laid out...
On the Feast of Sukkot, the Torah commands Israel to offer seventy bullocks across the seven days (Numbers 29:12–36). Rabbi Eliezer asked the obvious question in Sukkah 55b: sevent...
And it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham (Genesis 22:1). Rabbi Yochanan, speaking in the name of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra, asks in Sanhedrin 89b: after what thin...
Sanhedrin 65b sets the sages debating: what exactly is an enchanter — the figure the Torah forbids? Rabbi Shimon gives the ugliest definition: one who passes the secretions of seve...
Gittin 57b tells a story that Jewish liturgy still refuses to round off. Four hundred boys and four hundred girls were once kidnapped from their families by Roman captors. As the s...
The Roman official had one cup too many set before him, and his face twisted unnaturally. A Rabbi knew the cure — rearrange the cups so the even number became odd, and the face wou...
Sanhedrin 91a preserves a courtroom drama from the age of Alexander of Macedon. The people of Egypt appeared before the conqueror to lodge a complaint against Israel. Their argumen...
Jewish folk belief about small coins ran deep in the towns of Poland. Among both Jewish and Gentile neighbors a superstition held that a penny found at the right moment — stumbled ...
The story is told in Tanna d'vei Eliyahu. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was walking one day when he saw a man gathering wood in the forest. He called out a greeting. No answer. He call...
Rabbi Eliezer lay between life and death. His disciples and friends gathered around the bed, weeping openly. The great teacher, the man who had trained a generation, was slipping a...
The sages loved short sayings that carried a whole theology in a line. Here are a handful gathered from rabbinic tradition. Cold water morning and evening is better than all the co...
The Rabbi had traveled with Elijah for days and seen strange justice everywhere. A poor couple had hosted them with warmth, and that night the family cow died. A wealthy man had tu...
The sages illustrated repentance with a parable, and this one has sailed down the centuries. A great ship was crossing the ocean on a long voyage. Before reaching port, a storm dro...
Samuel the prophet once stood at the bank of a river and watched a strange sight. A frog was swimming across the water with a scorpion riding on its back. The scorpion could not sw...
Scripture says of Samson that "the spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between Zoreah and Eshtaol" (Judges 13:25). The rabbis reading that verse pause...
The rabbis of the Talmud once ruled that a woman should not walk between two men, and a man should not pass between two women. The reasons were tangled up with concerns about purit...
Rome had issued three decrees against the Jews. They were forbidden to keep the Sabbath, forbidden to circumcise their sons, and forbidden to observe the laws of family purity. The...
A visitor arrived at the royal court of Solomon, hoping for an audience with the wisest of kings. He was not admitted. Three days passed, and each day he was told to wait. On the f...
The sages of the Talmud taught that the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within every human being, goes by seven different names in Scripture. Each prophet saw a different face of...
