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The Book of the Wellspring of Wisdom When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the clou...
Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva (Nusaḥ II) [according to the Krakow and Amsterdam printings] Said Rabbi Aqibha: these are the 22 letters with which the Torah was given to the tribes of Isr...
The Small Letters and their Purposes The ALEPH in ויקרא And He called (Leviticus 1:1) is small, to teach that the Holy Blessed One is only revealed to the nations of the earth thro...
Before the universe existed, not even parchment existed — no animals had yet been created to provide skins for scrolls. So the Torah was written on the arm of God Himself, in black...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Read-but-not-Written I) But [the children of] Benjamin would not yield (Judges 20:13). The word the children of is missing, for they did ...
Written but not Read "For rather Amnon" (II Samuel 13:33) is written, because at first Jonadab son of Shim'ah said "for Amnon alone has died," for the truth of the matter that Amno...
The author of Rav Pealim [Vilna Gaon] wrote about the Socher Tov of Midrash Tehillim and said: I found in the book, Ohel Yosef by Rabbi Yosef the Sefaradi on Parashat Vayikra, on t...
The Aggadah (non-legal rabbinic narrative) of Shimon Kefa preserves a remarkable tradition about how the early Jewish sages worked to establish a clear separation between the Jewis...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Sheni Ketuvim In the beginning God created etc. - To declare the might of the acts of creation to creatures, and to make it known to them...
[From the Sefer Raziel] Rabbi Ishmael said, "I saw the King of Kings sitting on a high and exalted throne, with His legions standing before Him, upon His right and upon His left. (...
These are the ten questions that Rabbi Eliezer asked regarding the resurrection of the dead: The first one is - will God resurrect some of Israel or all of them? The answer is that...
Rabbi Yishmael asked: why did Job risk everything by demanding an answer from God (Job 31:35)? Because Job understood something terrible. Without death, life has no name. Without d...
Our Rabbis have taught: "The night has four watches," so says Rabbi. R. Nathan says "Three." What is R. Nathan's reason? It is written (Judges 6:19) "And Gidon, and the hundred men...
(3) (Fol. 10b) We have been taught that R. Eliezer says: "In the month of Tishri the world was created; in the month of Tishri the Patriarchs [Abraham and Jacob], were born, and in...
(4) R. Joshua, however, says: "Whence do we know that the Patriarchs were born in the month of Nissan? It is said (I Kings 6, 1) In the fourth year, in the month Ziv (glory), which...
(10) R. Isaac said: "A year which is poor (Israel appears humble) in the beginning, will be rich in the end (Israel's request will be granted). What is the reason for it? For it is...
(16) (Ib. b) (Ex. 34, 6), And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed. R. Jochanan said: "Had this passage not been written, it would have been impossible to think of it, for ...
The sages taught that God is not like any light that human beings have ever seen. The sun can be blocked by a cloud. A lamp can be extinguished by the wind. Even the stars fade whe...
The mysteries of creation — the Maaseh Bereshit — were considered so dangerous that the sages restricted who could study them. The Talmud (Hagigah 14b) famously records the story o...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was known as a man who tested everything through experience rather than theory alone. When a question arose about the nature of children, he did not consul...
The rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) debated endlessly over the mystery of how God created the world — and what existed before creation began. According to ...
This comprehensive article examines cosmogony (theories of universe origin) across biblical, post-biblical, and rabbinical Jewish traditions, comparing them with Babylonian and oth...
Adam is the Hebrew and Biblical designation for humanity generally, and specifically for the progenitor of the human race. According to Genesis i, mankind was created on the sixth ...
The article presents Eden as an "earthly paradise" described in Genesis ii-iii where Adam and Eve resided before their fall. The term "Eden" likely derives from Assyrian "edinu" (m...
The article describes the flood narrative from Genesis vi.9-ix.17, where God destroys humanity due to wickedness, sparing only Noah's family and two (or seven) pairs of every livin...
Gehenna (Hebrew: Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death); Greek: Geenna) originated as "the valley of the son of Hinnom," south of Jerusalem, where child sacrifi...
Dreams have at all times and among all peoples received much attention. In the youth of a nation, as in the youth of an individual, dreams are so vivid that they appear to be hardl...
This word occurs only once in the Bible, in Ps. cxxxix. 16, where it means "embryo." In tradition everything that is in a state of incompletion, everything not fully formed, as a n...
Prince of the demons, and an important figure both in Talmudic and in post-Talmudic literature, where he appears as accuser, seducer, and destroyer. His name is etymologized as = "...
Plural word of unknown derivation used in the Hebrew Bible to denote the primitive Semitic house-gods whose cult had been handed down to historical times from the earlier period of...
A class of celestial beings appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the prophet Isaiah's visionary experience (Isaiah 6:2 onwards). Isaiah observed multiple seraphim...
The cherub represents a winged celestial being frequently referenced throughout Scripture. According to the prophet Ezekiel's vision, cherubim appear as a group of four living crea...
"Behemoth" denotes the hippopotamus, though the Biblical description contains mythical elements suggesting these were not ordinary animals. The creatures appear in Job xl, where be...
The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accor...
The term "paradise" likely derives from Persian origins. Within the Hebrew Bible, it appears only three times: Canticles 4:13, (Ecclesiastes 2:5), and (Nehemiah 2:8). The first usa...
The concept of soul in Jewish tradition derives from Genesis, where God endows humans with "spirit or breath" (ruah). Initially, this spirit was "inseparably connected, if not whol...
After Sodom's destruction, Abraham journeyed on. He left the ruined plain behind and moved — not fleeing, not grieving, just continuing. Job had the language for this: "The mountai...
The Messiah, say the rabbis, will be greater than all the patriarchs — greater than Abraham, greater than Isaac, greater than Moses. This is the reading Aggadat Bereshit makes of I...
When the final redemption comes, God will redeem Israel from one place only: Zion. Not from the desert, not from the waters, not from any place of exile — from the Temple Mount. "F...
Jacob saw the leaders of Esau listed in the Torah — king after king after king (Genesis 36:31-43) — and was afraid. "How can I stand against all of them? I am one man." The Holy On...
"In all their affliction, He was not afflicted" (Isaiah 63:9). The midrash reads this as conditional: if Israel does the will of God in their troubles, then He is afflicted with th...
When the offering was completed (1 Chronicles 18:26), the midrash reads it through Song of Songs: the thread of crimson, the image of the veil that separated the holy from the prof...
One small Hebrew word — kalot, "completed" — carries an entire wedding, an entire exorcism, and the steadying of the whole world. In Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:5, the sages pry open (...
When the tribal chieftains of Israel brought their gifts to the newly raised Tabernacle, they came with an oddly specific number of things. Six covered wagons. Twelve oxen. One wag...
A Roman matrona once came to Rabbi Yosei bar Chalafta with a question that sounded innocent and was not. "In how many days did your God create the universe?" she asked. Rabbi Yosei...
A Roman Emperor once tried to embarrass Rabban Gamliel with a joke that sounded, at first, like a theological objection. "Your God is a thief," the Emperor said. "He put Adam into ...
(Genesis 6:6) is one of the most unsettling verses in the Torah: And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. How could the All-Know...
The prophet Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, saw the heavens open and a chariot descend. Beneath it were four living creatures, and each creature had four faces. As for the likeness o...
