4,923 texts · Page 486 of 547
The text starts with a rather striking image: "With a nation, naval, I shall anger them." Now, "naval" might seem like a strange word choice. The text quickly clarifies: these are ...
There's a fascinating passage there that plays with the Hebrew language to reveal a profound truth about the resilience of the Jewish people. The passage focuses on a verse that sp...
It talks about being "mezei with hunger and embattled by reshef." What does that even mean? The text interprets "mezei with hunger" as being so desperately hungry that you’re pract...
The ancient text of Sifrei Devarim, a commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, uses just such a feeling to illustrate a terrifying point. The passage we're looking at grapples with t...
Jewish tradition certainly acknowledges that precariousness, that sense of impending doom. It even has a word for it: lulei. Lulei. It means "were it not." But it carries so much m...
The ancient rabbis grappled with this feeling, particularly when thinking about the exiles of the Jewish people. They found echoes of this isolation, this sense of being utterly ab...
The ancient sages noticed this human tendency, too, and they saw it reflected in the relationship between Israel and the other nations. Sifrei Devarim, a legal midrash on the Book ...
It's easy to get caught up in the moment, to think that the way things are now is how they'll always be. But Jewish tradition encourages us to look deeper, to see the hand of somet...
Deuteronomy 32:29 says, "If they were wise, they would understand this." But understand what, exactly? The Sifrei Devarim (a collection of legal midrashim on the Book of Deuteronom...
