335 texts in Kabbalah & Mysticism
Rabbi Abhu once said, "Were it not for this Scripture text, it would be impossible to repeat what is written." He meant the verse in Isaiah: "On that day the Lord shall shave with ...
The midrash on Abraham's hospitality in Genesis 18 notices something small and opens it into a whole theology. The patriarch had just made a covenant with the peoples of the land. ...
Devarim Rabbah (chapter 4) preserves a comment of Rabbi Yitzchak on the verse, "When the Lord your God shall enlarge your border, as He has promised you" (Deuteronomy 12:20). It is...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
The Talmud tells of Elisha ben Abuyah, called afterward Acher — "Other" — one of the four sages who entered the mystical Garden and the only one who emerged a heretic. Somewhere in...
The Talmud and early midrashic collections preserve rabbinic mishlei, proverbs, in loose clusters — one-line teachings meant to be memorized and turned over slowly. Here is a sampl...
The midrashic retelling of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE preserves an image that belongs to nightmares. The high priest stood in the burning courts of the Beit HaM...
The children of Israel left Egypt in the Hebrew month of Nisan, in springtime, and immediately the sukkot — the booths of the wilderness — went up. They lived in these booths for f...
A gentile once came to Shammai asking to be made a proselyte, but only on condition that he be taught the Written Torah and not the Oral. Shammai sent him away with sharp rebuke. T...
Two great tannaim weighed the ethics of the courtroom. Rabbi Ishmael taught: when an Israelite and a stranger come before you in judgment, acquit the Israelite by the laws of Israe...
Abraham stands at the headwaters of the Jewish story, and the Talmud gathers around him a flood of legends — score upon score of traditions that stretch far beyond what the Book of...
Four tannaim ascended into the Pardes, the orchard of mystical contemplation, and Rabbi Akiva warned his companions before they entered. "When you come to the pavement of pure marb...
Once Solomon had chained the demon king Ashmedai, he held him captive until the Temple was completed. When the work was done, the king grew curious. "What is your superiority over ...
The sages taught that the Land of Israel was not destroyed until seven royal courts had turned to idolatry. They counted them by name: Jeroboam son of Nebat, Baasha son of Ahijah, ...
In the days of the Mishnah the rabbis regulated even the meals of mourning. At a funeral feast they ordered ten cups of wine to be drunk in the house of the bereaved — three before...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus loved to bait Rabbi Akiva with theological questions. One day he asked, "Why is the Shabbat distinguished from other days?" Akiva answered with a qu...
Rabbi Abahu once praised Rav Saphra before a group of heretics, calling him a man of great learning. The heretics, impressed, exempted Saphra from tribute for thirteen years. One d...
On the twenty-eighth of Adar the Jewish community received word that the Roman government had passed a cruel decree: Jews were forbidden to study Torah, to circumcise their sons, o...
A Roman legend told how the daughter of a certain emperor had so admired the beauty of Rabbi Ishmael's face that after his martyrdom his skin was removed, embalmed, and kept among ...
Several Talmudic stories describe sages who took advantage of a non-Jew's arithmetical error — and they are preserved without varnish, because the rabbis wanted the argument to be ...
A strange episode is preserved in the Talmud: a witch once transformed a man into an ass. He found himself in the marketplace on four legs, mounted like any beast of burden. One of...
A Roman emperor challenged a sage about the verse in Amos (3:8): The lion hath roared, who will not fear? "Where is this excellence?" the emperor scoffed. "A single horseman kills ...
When Sennacherib the Assyrian emperor came against Jerusalem, his pride was as tall as his army. The midrash tells how God humbled him in a sequence of ordinary-seeming errands. Fi...
Shechem son of Hamor once assembled a troupe of girls with tambourines to play outside the tent of Dinah, and when she "went out to see them" (Genesis 34:1), he carried her off. Fr...
The prophet Isaiah promised a strange future (Isaiah 66:23): It shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worsh...
Rabbi Judah was asked a difficult question about divine justice: how can body and soul be judged together when one is mortal and the other eternal? He answered with a parable. A ki...
A garland of proverbs preserved in rabbinic tradition, each short enough to carry in a pocket and long enough to last a lifetime. Unhappy is the one who mistakes the branch for the...
When Nebuchadnezzar led Israel into the Babylonian captivity, he demanded that the Levites — the Temple singers — perform the Songs of Zion for his court. The Levites had spent the...
The midrash taught that the arba minim — the four species shaken on the festival of Sukkot — are not a random bouquet. Each one maps to a part of the human body, so that when a Jew...
The sages taught a secret about Friday night that changes the way you walk home from synagogue. Every Jew is escorted by two angels — one good, one evil — who follow him from the B...
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day (Deuteronomy 4:4). The verse is beautiful until you read four lines later: For the Lord thy God is...
When Abraham left Ur Kasdim and the idol-shops of his father Terach, he did not simply walk away. He pitched a tent, and the tent became a doorway. The rabbis imagined the scene th...
The Talmud tells of four sages who entered Pardes — the orchard — and only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Rashi read the story literally: they ascended to heaven in ecstatic vision. Bu...
There was a season when Solomon was not Solomon. The demon king Ashmedai had stolen his signet ring — the one engraved with the Ineffable Name — and taken his place on the throne o...
Ten measures of every quality came down into the world, said the sages in Kiddushin 49b, and nine of each were claimed by one nation while the rest of humanity had to share the las...
Somewhere beyond the known world, the sages said, there runs a river that refuses to behave like a river. It is called the Sambatyon, and it does not flow with water. It rushes wit...
The sages defended Rav Saphra for his devotion to Oral Torah over Scripture, and in doing so they staked out one of Judaism's most startling claims. Tradition, they argued, is not ...
There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had ...
Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — known simply as Rabbi, the Holy One, the redactor of the Mishnah — sat one evening at his table with two of his youngest guests: Yehudah and Chiskiyah, the s...
Four rabbis were on the road to Rome. Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva traveled together, and while they were still one hundred and twenty ...
There is a moment in Chullin 90b where Rava calls out his fellow rabbi for exaggeration. The Mishnah had just described the heap of ashes that accumulated on the Temple altar — som...
Rabbi Simlai delivered one of the most famous homilies in the Talmud (Makkot 23b). Moses, he said, was given 613 commandments at Sinai. And the number is not arbitrary. Three hundr...
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God — who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant...
The moment when Joseph's brothers recognized him in the palace at Memphis was, according to the midrash, more violent than the Torah lets on. Some of the brothers, the sages said, ...
When Solomon completed the First Temple and prepared to carry the Ark of the Covenant through the main gates, he opened his mouth to sing the words of Psalm 24: Lift up your heads,...
The kabbalists posed a problem that sounds simple until you sit with it: no one is truly perfect unless he has observed all 613 mitzvot. And yet — who has ever done so? Not even Mo...
The sages said of Rabbi Tarfon that though he was a very wealthy man, he was not generous according to his means. There is a gentle reproach in that line. A man who could give thou...
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin taught in the name of Rabbi Levi that when the Holy One, Blessed be He, prepared to fashion the first woman, He held a quiet council with Himself about an...
