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What's the worst thing that could happen to you? Most of us probably wouldn't pick poverty. We might think of illness, or losing a loved one. But in the ancient world, and perhaps ...
The Jewish tradition offers a fascinating answer, one beautifully illustrated in the story of Moses, the great lawgiver. Before he led the Israelites out of Egypt, before the burni...
Even Moses, arguably the most important prophet in Judaism, tried to avoid his divine calling. And, as the Legends of the Jews (Ginzberg) tells us, he paid a price for that relucta...
According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, the day Moses and Aaron made their grand entrance was actually Pharaoh's birthday. Can you imagine the pomp and circumstan...
It’s easy to see them as just random acts of divine power, but Jewish tradition teaches us there’s so much more going on. It's not just about punishment, it's about midah k'neged m...
We all know the story: God sends these devastating plagues upon Egypt until Pharaoh finally relents and lets the Israelites go. But there's so much more to it than just a simple "p...
Plagues, parting of the Red Sea, freedom! But the details…they’re wild. Imagine the scene: the Egyptians, fresh from the devastation of the tenth plague, practically shoving the Is...
The Sefer Yetzirah, the "Book of Creation," offers a mind-bending blueprint. It's a short but incredibly dense text of Jewish mysticism, traditionally attributed to the patriarch A...
The Sefer Yetzirah, the "Book of Formation," that ancient and mysterious text of Jewish mysticism, gives us a glimpse. It paints a picture of a universe governed by intricate relat...