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“What shall I attest to you, to what shall I liken you, daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I equate you, and comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is as vast as t...
“It is the Lord’s kindnesses that have not ceased, for His mercies have not ended” (Lamentations 3:22).“It is the Lord’s kindnesses that have not ceased” – Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish ...
“Let him sit alone and be silent, because He has laid it upon him” (Lamentations 3:28).“Let him sit alone and be silent” – Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: The Holy One blessed be He ...
“The kings of the earth and all the inhabitants of the world did not believe that an adversary and enemy would enter the gates of Jerusalem” (Lamentations 4:12).“The kings of the e...
“In those days, when King Aḥashverosh was sitting on his royal throne that was in the Shushan citadel” (Esther 1:2). This is one of the places15The reference to “places” is unclear...
“He said to Mehuman, Bizzeta, Ḥarvona” – Rabbi Yoḥanan said: At that moment, the Holy One blessed be He called the angel who is appointed over fury16A reference to the verse: “Quee...
“The king was very angry and his fury burned within him.” Rabbi Yoḥanan said: At that moment, The Holy One blessed be He said to the angel appointed over fury: Descend and blow win...
“Those close to him” (Esther 1:14) – they brought the calamity close to themselves. “Karshena” – who was appointed over the vetch3A plant used as animal feed. [karshinin]; “Shetar”...
“With the arrival of the turn of Esther, daughter of Aviḥayil uncle of Mordekhai, who had taken her as his daughter, to go to the king, she did not request anything except that whi...
“Haman said to King Aḥashverosh: There is one people that is scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from every peo...
Rabbi Levi said: Accursed are the wicked who are engaged in evil counsel against Israel, and each one of them counsels in his way and says: ‘My counsel is better than your counsel....
“The king rose in his fury from the wine banquet to the palace garden and Haman stood to plead for his life from Esther the queen, for he saw that the king has resolved to do him h...
We read in Genesis that God spoke and creation happened. But what if there were… helpers? What if the story is a bit more layered, a bit more collaborative? There's a fascinating m...
There was a blueprint, a guide, an artisan involved: The Torah. Yes, the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the very text we read and study, was, according to some tr...
Maybe that feeling is a tiny glimpse into the ultimate truth: that everything is sacred. Philo, the 1st-century Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, certainly thought so. He envisio...
The Jerusalem Talmud, specifically in the tractate Shabbat, recounts a rather bold statement. The sages, or Chazal, tell us about someone who, upon witnessing the beauty of somethi...
Jewish tradition speaks of such moments as revelations of the Shekhinah (שכינה), the Divine Presence. But what exactly does that mean? And what does it look like? Sometimes, it see...
It’s a question that has echoes through Jewish tradition, and one that comes up in a fascinating discussion about bowing down, prostration, and the very nature of God’s glory. The ...
Isn't it fascinating how often we grapple with the line between respect and worship? Where do we draw that boundary? It's a question that goes right to the heart of Jewish thought....
This happens, especially when we delve into the complex world of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. And that’s precisely what this passage addresses: a series of misunderstandings and mis...
The ancient rabbis certainly did. They wrestled with theological concepts that could easily lead to heresy, constantly defending the core belief in one God against any notion of mu...
The answer, as with so many profound questions, lies deep within Jewish tradition, and grapples with some pretty mind-bending concepts, especially when we delve into Kabbalah. But ...
The question of creation... it's one that's gripped humanity for millennia, isn't it? How did it all begin? Was there a before? And if so, what was it like? The rabbis of old grapp...
why? What was the point of this divine bouncer? That's the question the Midrash of Philo 24 wrestles with. Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), by the way, is a method of in...
Take the image of the cherubim, those powerful, enigmatic beings guarding the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled. What do they really represent? Philo, a Jewish philos...
You know, Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam? The one who, according to (Genesis 5:24), simply "was not, for God took him." A verse so simple, yet so… strange. What does it ev...
These are the kinds of questions that the ancient interpreters of the Bible loved to wrestle with! And in a fascinating, though fragmented, text known as The Midrash of Philo, we f...
One such answer comes from a text attributed to Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt during the first century. While scholars debate whether he actually pen...
It's like we're trying to soften the blow, to create a little distance between the person and the negative action. Well, it turns out this isn't just a quirk of human interaction; ...
The Midrash of Philo dives into this very question, exploring the human soul's capacity for growth and its resistance to it. It suggests that not every soul possesses the ability t...
Jewish tradition certainly understands that feeling. And it can be pretty direct about it, too. Take this passage from The Midrash of Philo. Now, Philo of Alexandria, he was a fasc...
Take Hagar, for example. Poor Hagar. A handmaiden, caught in the middle of Sarah and Abraham's struggle to have a child. She runs away into the desert, desperate and alone. And the...
The verse in question, from (Genesis 16:10), has an angel speaking to Hagar, Sarah's handmaid, who is pregnant with Abraham's child, Ishmael. The angel says, "I will multiply thy s...
The mystics imagined it, and what they saw is The story goes that when God decided to create Adam, it wasn't a snap of the fingers. It was a process. A cosmic sculpting project, if...
Like there's someone... or something... watching over you? Well, Jewish tradition has a fascinating answer for that feeling: guardian angels. But these aren't the cherubic, winged ...
Jewish tradition grapples with this feeling too, often through stories of angels – beings of immense power, but always, always subservient to God. What does it mean to say somethin...
A time long, long before time as we know it. Before the sun, the moon, the stars… before even the very Earth beneath our feet. What existed then? Well, according to some mystical t...
There's one particular story that throws this idea into sharp relief: the Giving of the Torah. Now, picture this: At the very beginning, when the Creator shaped the cosmos, there w...
That’s the situation the Israelites faced at the Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds, what we often call the Red Sea. And what happened next is one of the most iconic moments in the entire T...
It’s a question that surfaces, quite literally, when we read the story of the Exodus. We know Pharaoh's army drowned in the Red Sea. As it says in (Exodus 15:1), "Horse and driver ...
The very concept of the Temple in Jerusalem, that sacred place, was envisioned at the dawn of creation itself. As Howard Schwartz recounts in Tree of Souls, God, in His infinite wi...
In the beginning God created (Gen. 1:1). It is written elsewhere in reference to this verse: Blessings are upon the head of the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked c...
And the two angels came to Sodom (Gen. 19:1). May it please our master to teach us the number of death penalties the Beth Din (the court of seventy-one members) was empowered to im...
And the two angels came to Sodom (Gen. 19:1). Scripture states elsewhere in allusion to this verse: But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit; therefore, He was turned to be th...
And the two angels came to Sodom … and he said: “Behold now, my lords, turn aside, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet” (Gen. 19:1–2). Th...
And the Lord remembered Sarah, as he had said (Gen. 21:1). Scripture states elsewhere in allusion to this verse: God is not a man that He should lie; neither the son of man, that H...
And it came to pass after these words that God did prove Abraham (Gen. 22:1). What words were spoken? Ishmael had said to Isaac: I am superior to you, for I underwent circumcision ...
These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham begot Isaac (Gen. 25:9). Scripture states elsewhere in allusion to this verse: Children’s children are the crown of old m...
