335 texts in Kabbalah & Mysticism
A man of Sidon came to Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai to arrange a divorce. He had lived many years with his wife and no children had been born to them. In the Jewish world of the time, c...
A group of philosophers once traveled to Rome and put a question to the elders of the Jewish community there. "If your God takes no pleasure in idolatry," they asked, "why does He ...
On the day Solomon sought to bring the Aron, the Ark of the Covenant, into the newly finished Temple, the gates refused to open. Solomon stood before them and began to recite psalm...
The rabbis of the Talmud were connoisseurs of soil. They compared regions by fertility the way others compare wines. The best land in the world, they said, is Egypt, for it is writ...
Ben Hei-Hei came to Hillel with a verse that troubled him. Malachi had said, "Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God a...
Among those who forfeit their share in the world to come, the sages taught, is the one who reads sefarim chitzonim, "outside books." The phrase is a technical term. It refers to wr...
Jerusalem was under siege. Day after day, the defenders inside the city lowered a basket of silver over the walls, and the besiegers below filled the basket with a lamb, a kid, or ...
When Ravah bar Nachmani, one of the giants of the Babylonian academies in the fourth century, died alone in the wilderness, his students searched for him for days without success. ...
When Moses blessed the tribe of Asher at the end of his life, he said, "Let him dip his foot in oil" (Deuteronomy 33:24). The rabbis of the Talmud took the blessing literally. Ashe...
Rabbi Levi taught that on the day Solomon carried the Ark into the Temple, something unusual happened to the wood. The beams of cedar that lined the walls and the ceilings, long si...
"Those passing through the valley of weeping make it a well; also blessings shall cover the teacher" (Psalms 84:6). Rabbi Yochanan read the verse and pressed on its first image. Th...
Someone once asked Rabbi Akiba how it could be that King Hezekiah, the righteous teacher of Torah, had raised a son as wicked as Manasseh. "Twelve years old was Manasseh when he be...
A philosopher once stood before Rabbi Akiba with a question designed to unsettle him. "If your God loves the poor," the philosopher asked, "why does He not support them Himself? Wh...
The sins of Israel had grown too heavy for the patience of the Holy One. The prophet Jeremiah had warned for decades and had been ignored, mocked, thrown into a pit. A time came wh...
A ship docked at an island on its way between two ports. The captain announced that he would weigh anchor at a set hour, and he warned the passengers that a bell would sound three ...
When Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai lay dying, his disciples came to gather at his bedside. They expected composure from the man they called the Light of Israel, the Pillar of the Right...
On the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham threw open his tents and invited every household in the land. It was meant as a celebration, but rumor crawled in with the guests. Whispers pas...
There are three, the sages teach, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, singles out by name and calls virtuous. The first is the unmarried man who lives in a great city and does not si...
The sages taught that four things cancel an evil decree sealed in Heaven, and they built each proof from Scripture itself. The first is tzedakah, the righteous gift. "Righteousness...
King Solomon needed the Shamir, a creature no larger than a barley grain but strong enough to split any stone, because the Torah forbade iron tools on the Temple's stones. To find ...
The prophet Joel called him "the hidden one," and the sages took the phrase at its full weight. "I will remove far from you the hidden one, and I will drive him into a land barren ...
A devoted couple in the Galilee had lived together for years without a child. Finally the husband came to Rabbi Shimon and said they had agreed to separate, since the marriage had ...
Caesar once said to Rabbi Tanchum, "Come, let us become one people." The rabbi answered calmly. "Very well. But we are circumcised, and we cannot simply become as you are. If, howe...
In the Temple service, everyone bowed thirteen times, corresponding to the thirteen shofar-shaped collection boxes and the thirteen tables arrayed in the sanctuary. Yet those who b...
Midrash Rabbah on Deuteronomy preserves a strange detail about the fall of the First Temple. When the Babylonian conquerors carried away the holy vessels, they did not carry away t...
Scripture says that Jacob's family went down to Egypt numbering seventy souls (Genesis 46:27). When the sages sat down to count the names listed in the chapter, they reached only s...
The Talmud counts carefully. King David composed one hundred and three psalms, and only after the hundred and third did he allow himself to utter the word Hallelujah. What made him...
The sages collected sharp observations about who people tend to be and why. Most donkey drivers, they said, are rough with their customers, but most sailors are pious, because anyo...
The sages were debating whether a certain oven, built in sections and joined with sand, could become ritually unclean. Rabbi Eliezer ruled it pure. The majority ruled it impure. He...
The sages loved to measure the enemies of Israel, because their sheer size made the victory more astonishing. When Sennacherib the Assyrian invaded Judah, he came with forty-five t...
When Esau came back from the hunt and saw that Jacob had taken the blessing, he plotted his revenge quietly. The sages, reading the reunion years later in Genesis 33, noticed that ...
The prophet Ezekiel writes, "I have set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations, and countries are round about her" (Ezekiel 5:5). Taken in its plain sense, the verse places the holy...
Rav Pinchas pointed out that King David called five times upon the Holy One to arise in the book of Psalms. "Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God" (Psalms 3:7). "Arise, O Lord, in Your...
A traditional prayer of personal return, drawn from the anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings, places the worshiper on his knees before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "E...
The sages taught that when a person stands at the judgment seat of the Holy One after death, six questions are put to the soul. They are not trick questions. They are the exam the ...
Before he launched his final assault on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused to consult the omens. He was a king of his age, and the practice of his age was belomancy, divination by arrows...
The anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings preserve a parable about five sets of passengers who embark on a long sea voyage. When the ship puts in at a beautiful island midway t...
There is a strange debate preserved in tractate Berachot (folio 47, column 2) that asks a question most of us are afraid to ask out loud. Who, exactly, counts as an am ha'aretz — a...
Rava once told a story in the name of Rabbi Yochanan that was preserved in tractate Sanhedrin (folio 104, column 2) — and it is really a story about how a Jew is supposed to see. T...
Tractate Rosh Hashanah (folio 16, column 2) teaches that on the Day of Judgment three ledgers are opened and three groups of souls appear before the Holy One, blessed be He. The pe...
The Talmud in tractate Gittin preserves a wild stretch of stories in which Benaiah ben Yehoyada, one of King David's mighty men, captures Ashmedai, king of the demons, and leads hi...
Tractate Gittin (folio 57, column 2) preserves one of the most devastating martyrdom stories in all of rabbinic literature — a Jewish mother and her seven sons dragged before a Rom...
A Tzeduki — a Sadducee, member of the party that rejected the Oral Torah — once came to Rabbi Abhu with a question meant to sting. "Your God is a priest," he said, "for it is writt...
A beggar once came to Rava's door asking for a meal. The story is told in tractate Ketubot (folio 67, column 2), and it is really about the difference between charity as surveillan...
Tractate Bava Batra preserves a strange debate about classroom size that turns, without warning, into a story of life and death. The rabbis were arguing about elementary education....
One of the most formidable women in the Talmud was Beruriah, wife of Rabbi Meir. She appears mostly in fragments — but in one famous passage she corrects her husband's Hebrew, and ...
Tractate Shabbat (folio 66, column 2) preserves something most modern readers will find startling: a rabbinic prescription against fever that is half incantation, half midrash. The...
Tractate Yoma (folio 9, column 1) asks a question no one would think to ask unless they were counting: how many kohanim gedolim, high priests, served during each of the two Temples...
