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It’s a powerful, devastating verse that sets the stage for the Flood. But the Rabbis of the Midrash, in Bereshit Rabbah, weren't content with a simple reading. They dug deeper, con...
Specifically, in section 27, we find a powerful connection drawn between human sin and divine response, all through the lens of a verse from Ecclesiastes. The verse in question is ...
The Torah tells us, in Genesis 6:5, that God saw the wickedness of humankind was "great" – raba in Hebrew – before the Flood. But what kind of "great" was it? Rabbi Ḥanina suggests...
The Torah tells us, in Genesis 6:6, "The Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was saddened in His heart.” Whoa. Heavy stuff. But what does it really mean? The R...
The flood narrative in Genesis is one of the most challenging passages in the Torah, wrestling as it does with divine regret and the wiping out of nearly all life. It all starts wi...
It’s not just about the rain, or the oceans. It's about something much deeper – a relationship, even a conversation, between God and the very elements of the universe. We find a fa...
Jewish tradition grapples with this very question, comparing different eras and communities that faced divine judgment. to some intense comparisons drawn from Bereshit Rabbah, a cl...
Innocent creatures caught in the wake of human sin. But the ancient rabbis grappled with this question too, offering powerful, and perhaps unsettling, explanations. In Bereshit Rab...
But the animals? Did they really deserve to be wiped out along with everyone else? Well, the rabbis of old had some thoughts on that. Rabbi Azarya, quoting Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon, ...
