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That’s exactly where Shoshana found herself. The story, tucked away in the Book of Daniel (though some versions place it separately), throws us right into the middle of a drama in ...
Her story, found in The Book of Susanna, is a powerful one. It all unfolds with a chilling simplicity. The text tells us "the people of the house heard her cry and ran to the viney...
That’s how I feel about the story of Susanna. We're diving into a small but potent piece of Jewish tradition: The Book of Susanna. It's a short story, often included as an addendum...
We find ourselves at a pivotal, agonizing moment. Susanna, a woman known for her piety and beauty, finds herself accused of adultery. Two elders, powerful figures in the community,...
Think again. The Wisdom of Solomon, a powerful text, reminds us that nothing escapes the notice of the Divine. It's a profound and, frankly, a little unsettling thought. "For the H...
The Wisdom of Solomon, a book from the Apocrypha, speaks directly to this. It gives voice to those who whisper doubts in their hearts, those who let cynicism color their words. It'...
Today, we're diving into one of those fascinating, lesser-known works: the Book of Jasher. Now, it's important to understand that this isn't part of the Tanakh. Its authenticity an...
The Book of Jasher, an ancient text referenced in the Bible itself (Joshua 10:13 and (2 Samuel 1:1)8), offers some pretty fascinating, and sometimes unsettling, glimpses.. The chap...
The Book of Jasher isn't part of the canonical Hebrew Bible, but it's referenced within it (Joshua 10:13 and (2 Samuel 1:1)8). It's considered by some to be a valuable historical s...
The Book of Jasher, a text referenced in the Bible itself (Joshua 10:13 and (2 Samuel 1:1)8), gives us some intriguing details.. After Enoch ascended into heaven—yes, that Enoch—hi...
We often gloss over that part of the Noah story, but the Book of Jasher, an ancient Hebrew text of legend and lore, dives right in! Chapter 7 is all about the generations that foll...
We often associate it with powerful Egyptian rulers, but its origins are a bit…unconventional, to say the least. Buckle up, because the Book of Jasher has a wild story to tell abou...
That’s the emotional whirlwind that engulfs the sons of Jacob after selling their brother Joseph into slavery, as recounted in Chapter 43 of the Book of Jasher. The chapter opens w...
There are entire books dedicated to filling in those gaps, offering tantalizing glimpses into the lives of our ancestors. One such book is the Book of Jasher, a work referenced in ...
The Book of Jasher, an ancient Hebrew text referenced in the Bible itself (Joshua 10:13 and (2 Samuel 1:1)8), fills in some of those gaps. It's like a behind-the-scenes look at the...
The teacher says "Aleph" and expects the child to repeat it. That's how Torah education works—has worked for centuries. But Ben Sira isn't a normal child. He's a newborn prodigy wh...
For the letter Gimel, Ben Sira offers a proverb about trust: "Reveal your secret to one out of a thousand, even if you have many well-wishers." One out of a thousand. That's the ra...
The letter Vav arrives, and Ben Sira delivers one of his sharpest proverbs yet: "Woe to one who follows after his eyes! And know that they are the product of straying, and there is...
The letter Yud picks up exactly where the previous proverb left off, and it doesn't hold back: "The watchman does not sleep. When she is a minor—lest she be seduced or assaulted in...
The letter Lamed marks a sharp turn. After several proverbs about daughters, Ben Sira pivots to marriage itself: "Do not sleep in your youth, and when you are old, do not marry an ...
The letter Nun delivers a proverb about the domestic nightmare the Alphabet of Ben Sira seems to fear most—not infidelity, not poverty, but a wife who won't stop talking: "Shake yo...
"Blind your eyes because of a widowed woman, and do not covet her beauty in your heart." That's what Ben Sira says, in the proverb attached to the Hebrew letter Ayin (ע)—and it's a...
"Control your face around evil friends. Do not walk on the road with them. Hold your feet back around them, lest you be caught in their trap." This proverb, corresponding to the le...
"Acquire for yourself money, and a good wife, fear of God, and accumulate sons for yourself, even a hundred of them." The letter Kuf (ק) in the Alphabet of Ben Sira delivers a prov...
"Distance yourself from an evil neighbor and do not be counted among their friends." So begins the proverb of the letter Resh (ר) in the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It sounds like a stra...
"Acquire for yourself gold coins, and all money, but do not tell your wife where the money is, even if she is good." And with that, the alphabetical proverbs of the Alphabet of Ben...
A medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, the child prodigy Ben Sira mastered the entirety of human and divine knowledge in just seven years. The text lays it out year by y...
Nebuchadnezzar's first question to Ben Sira is bizarre. "How does the rabbit shave her head?" The answer Ben Sira gives connects this strange question to one of the most famous enc...
Nebuchadnezzar's second challenge to Ben Sira is deceptively simple. "Count the trees in my garden." The seven-year-old doesn't even need to look. "Thirty types of trees are in you...
Before Eve, there was Lilith. According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, God didn't create Eve first. God created a woman from the sam...
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had questions. Ben Sira had answers. And in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a satirical medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, no question was t...
Nebuchadnezzar noticed something odd about the human body and asked Ben Sira to explain it. Everywhere on the body, each hair follicle holds two hairs. But on the head, each follic...
The Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, tells the longest and wildest origin story for why dogs and cats can't stand each other. It goes all the...
Jewish tradition holds that a handful of people never died. They walked into Gan Eden - the Garden of Eden - while still alive, bypassing death entirely. The Alphabet of Ben Sira, ...
The dead do not simply lie still. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, the righteous dead have a vast habit...
The stone god fell on its face. That was the beginning of everything. Abraham worked in his father's idol shop. Every day he carved gods out of stone and wood and metal for Terah, ...
Walking home from the river, Abraham could not silence his own mind. "What evil is my father doing?" he thought. "He carves these gods with his own chisels and lathes. He shapes th...
Abraham laughed in his mind and sighed in the grief and anger of his soul. "How can something manufactured by my father be his helper? Should the body be subject to its soul, and t...
That feeling is at the heart of our story today, a tale I call "The Cottage of Candles," retold from Howard Schwartz's Tree of Souls. Once, there was a Jew driven by an unshakeable...
We all know the story of Job. It opens with a description so idyllic it almost feels unreal. "There was a man in the land of Uz," the Book of Job tells us. A man named…Job. And thi...
This isn't your typical biblical story. It’s a myth, a folk tale, preserved in the Israel Folktale Archives, about a wonder child who lived during the time of the Temple in Jerusal...
The Book of Ezekiel, one of the most powerful and enigmatic texts in the Hebrew Bible, opens with just such an experience. We find Ezekiel, a priest, in exile, far from Jerusalem, ...
Tzadkiel isn't just any celestial being. He's the one who lovingly clothes each soul arriving in Paradise with garments of incredible purity, woven by the "Bride of God." – the car...
It's a concept that's woven deep into Jewish lore, appearing in various forms throughout our sacred texts and stories. One particularly compelling tale features Rabbi Loew, the leg...
That's a glimpse into the world of the dybbuk. Our story begins in the mystical city of Safed, a center of Kabbalah in the Galilee. There lived a widow, known throughout the commun...
The Jewish tradition has a fascinating, and sometimes troubling, figure that embodies this very idea: the golem. The most famous golem story, of course, revolves around the Golem o...
Time and again, the Jewish community of Prague faced the horrifying accusation of blood libel – the false claim that they used the blood of children in their Passover matzah. These...
It’s a wild one, and it involves a homunculus, a miniature, artificially created human. The story goes that Maimonides had a brilliant young assistant, a student he poured his hear...
