16 texts in Midrash Aggadah
Jewish tradition offers a stunningly beautiful image: Our prayers, all of them, rise up and become a crown for God. The image comes to us from several sources, each adding its own ...
One of my favorite images is this: God carries everything beneath His arms. Not just a gentle embrace, but a sustaining act of holding. According to some mystical traditions, God's...
Before the sun, the moon, the stars... What illuminated the very first moments of creation? Jewish tradition tells us that the first thing God created wasn't a physical object, but...
Some ancient Jewish texts suggest something far more dramatic. Imagine this: On the first day of creation, God brings forth fire and water, mixing them to form the very heavens. Bu...
It wasn't always this way, you know. Jewish tradition offers some pretty amazing stories about the creation of the heavens, stories filled with divine power and a touch of… well, c...
Some traditions say it was all water. Just a vast, unending universe of water. But how did we get from that to the world we know? Well, according to one beautiful myth, God took sn...
The ancient rabbis certainly did, and they came up with some pretty fascinating ideas. The image of the world resting on pillars is a powerful one, found in creation myths across c...
It’s a question that’s puzzled thinkers for millennia, and Jewish tradition offers some fascinating, even surprising, answers. We're told that Adam, unlike the rest of creation, wa...
We’re talking about the hayyot (חַיּוֹת), the “living creatures,” also sometimes called the heavenly creatures. These aren't your average angels. According to the lore, they're som...
It's about four great sages who dared to enter Pardes – Paradise. The implications of this seemingly simple story have echoed through Jewish mysticism for centuries. Who were these...
But according to ancient Jewish mystical traditions, this journey, often called "descending to the Merkavah (the Divine Chariot)" – the divine chariot – is fraught with peril. And ...
Jewish tradition, while often speaking of seven heavens, hints at something even beyond that: an eighth heaven, a realm of ultimate mystery. Now, we’re pretty familiar with the con...
Jewish tradition offers a beautiful and powerful image: they're gathered by an angel named Sandalphon and transformed into crowns for God. Every word, every intention, every heartf...
According to some accounts, these beings are, in a way, leftovers from the very first week of existence. The story goes that God was creating, creating, creating, all day long for ...
Not literally, of course. But what if it could? There's an old story, a cautionary tale really, that speaks to just that. It's found tucked away in the Talmud (B. Hagigah 13a), and...
That's the image we get when we delve into some of the descriptions of the World to Come, the Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come). In these visions of the future, we're told that God Hi...
