5,700 texts · Page 78 of 119
When Israel went out of Egypt, Moses said ‘and in the wilderness, where you saw how God your God carried you, as a man carries his son’(Deuteronomy 1:31); and when they went out of...
When they went out of Egypt, Moses said ‘while you, who held fast to God your God, are all alive today’ (Deuteronomy 4:4); and when they went out of Jerusalem, Jeremiah said ‘the t...
When they went out of Egypt, Moses said ‘and the cloud of God was on them by day’ (Numbers 10:34); and when they went out of Jerusalem, Jeremiah said ‘[You have screened Yourself o...
When they went out of Egypt, they broke out in song, as it is written: ‘then Moses and the children of Israel sang the song’ (Exodus 15:1); and when Israel went out of Jerusalem th...
The people of Israel are one ship. Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Rabbah 11:25 makes the image almost painfully simple. If a hole opens in the lower hold, nobody on the upper deck gets to say...
Avot d'Rabbi Natan: One of the minor tractates in the Babylonian Talmud under the order of Nezikin. It serves as a kind of Braitot or Tosefta (supplementary teachings to the Mishna...
We are taught that R. Jose says: "once upon a time I was walking on a road and I entered one of the ruins of Jerusalem to pray. Elijah, blessed be his memory! came and watched me a...
[It is written] (Ps. 66:1) A prayer of David, preserve my soul, for I am pious. R. Levi and R. Isaac both explain this passage. One said : "Thus said David before the Holy One, pra...
(2) (Fol. 3b) R. Abahu said: "Cyrus was a worthy king, and therefore were his royal years counted in accordance with those of the kings of Israel [beginning with Nissan]." R. Josep...
(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...
Come, listen. The proselyte Beluria asked Rabban Gamaliel: "It is written in your Torah (Deut. 17) The Lord who forgiveth no persons and taketh no bribe; and it is also written (Nu...
(20) MISHNAH (the earliest code of rabbinic law): For the proclamation of six New Moon days, messengers are sent out: for Nissan, on account of the Passover; for Ab, on account of ...
(22) We are taught in a Baraitha, R. Simeon b. Jochai said: "There are four matters that R. Akiba expounded, but which I interpret differently. The fast of the fourth, means the se...
What is meant by 'a wicked bond'? Shebna taught to twelve myriads, while Hezekiah taught to eleven myriads. When Sennacherib came and besieged Jerusalem, Shebna wrote on an arrowhe...
Nakdimon ben Gorion was one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem, and he had made a dangerous bargain. He borrowed twelve wells of water from a Roman nobleman — the Hegemon — promisi...
Hananya, the nephew of Rabbi Joshua, was a respected scholar living in Babylon. And one day he made a decision that nearly split the Jewish world in two. He decided to set the cale...
The prophet Elijah — who never died but ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire — appeared to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, one of the greatest sages of the third century, and offered him...
Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha was captured as a child during the destruction of Jerusalem. He was sold into slavery, separated from his family, and taken far from the Land of Israel. Hi...
When the Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem and cut off every supply route, the famine inside the walls became unspeakable. People chewed leather. They ate grass from between the s...
Kamsa&Fall of Jerusalem. Git tin, f. 55b, 56b, 57. Sanhedrin (the supreme rabbinic court), f. 104. Pirke de R. Eliezer, ch. 49. Tanh. Numb. Hukkat § 1. and B. ibid. p. 99. Midr. Ha...
After the destruction of the Temple, the wealthy families of Jerusalem were reduced to utter destitution. The Talmud (Ketubot 66b) records the most heartbreaking example: the daugh...
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was the son of a wealthy landowner who wanted nothing more than for his boy to work the fields. But Eliezer wanted Torah. At the age of twenty-two — far older ...
The Prophet Elijah, who never died but was taken up to Heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11), was known to appear to the righteous in moments of great need. One such visit was...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 75a) records a breathtaking vision of the future Jerusalem: its gates would be made of single pearls, each pearl so enormous that it could be carved into a g...
Rabbi Akiba shocked his companions by laughing at moments when any sane person would weep. The Talmud (Makkot 24a-b) records two instances of this extraordinary laughter, and both ...
During the nights of Sukkot, the Second Temple in Jerusalem lit up like nothing the world had ever seen. In the Court of the Women stood four giant golden lamp-stands, each crowned...
When Jacob died in Egypt and his sons carried his body back to the land of Canaan for burial, an unusual procession formed. The sons of Esau, the sons of Ishmael, and the sons of K...
Hananiah, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, was living in Babylonia in the second century CE when he began doing something the Sages in the Land of Israel could not toler...
Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose, the son of the great Galilean sage Rabbi Yose, was walking on pilgrimage toward Jerusalem when a Samaritan stopped him on the road near Mount Gerizim. The ...
The Rabbis teach that King Solomon, for all his wisdom, committed three transgressions of kingship that the Torah had warned against. He multiplied horses. He multiplied wives. He ...
Two great sages, Rav Ami and Rav Assi, sat one day in the company of Rabbi Isaac Naphcha, and the three men fell into conversation. One of them turned and said, "Rabbi, tell us a b...
The Talmud (Shabbat 89a-b) notices something strange: the mountain where Israel received the Torah is called by five different names in the Hebrew Bible. Why? Because a single moun...
The prophet Hosea was instructed to buy back his unfaithful wife for a price that seemed arbitrary — fifteen pieces of silver, and an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley (...
Joseph's brothers had carried their father's coffin up from Egypt to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah. At the mouth of the cave, Esau was waiting. "This grave is mine," Esau said....
When Alexander of Macedon marched east, the Samaritans — called in the Talmud the Kutim — saw a political opening. They sent word to Alexander asking him to destroy the Temple in J...
"And it came to pass, when Abram was come into Egypt" (Genesis 12:14). So the verse tells us, matter-of-factly. But where was Sarah? The midrash fills the silence. Abraham, knowing...
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had a habit the other sages envied: the prophet Elijah came to him as a companion. The Exempla preserves the memory of one of their walks. Elijah took Rabbi J...
In Jerusalem there was a great courtyard called Beit Yaazek, and its only business was to receive witnesses. Every month, two Jews who had seen the thin sliver of the new moon hang...
Three times a year, the Torah commanded, every Jewish man should make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals (Deuteronomy 16:16). Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot drew tens of th...
The prophet Isaiah puts a complaint into the mouth of Zion. The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me (Isaiah 49:14). The community of Israel, in the Talmud's reading, spe...
Rabbi Yochanan once taught that the royal mount of King Yannai (the Hasmonean Alexander Jannaeus, who reigned 103 to 76 BCE) contained sixty myriads of cities. Each city held a pop...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the sage who rescued Torah study from the ashes of Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE by founding the academy at Yavneh, once taught that in the future, wh...
For seven years after the destruction of the First Temple, the Sages say, the nations of the world cultivated their vineyards with no other manure than the blood of Israel. The soi...
At the very end of Genesis, Joseph — viceroy of Egypt, the savior of the known world during the famine — calls his brothers to his deathbed. Instead of dispensing political advice ...
Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Korcha, heard the story from an old man of Jerusalem who had lived through the Babylonian destruction. In the valley below the city, Nebuzaradan — captai...
A pious man was walking along the shore of Haifa, the harbor city on the Mediterranean coast of the Galilee. As he walked he was thinking about a rabbinic tradition — a well-known ...
Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, quoting Rabbi Yehoshua, said something that should stop us: since the destruction of the Temple, not a single day has passed without a curse (Sotah 48a). ...
In the days when Alexander the Great marched through Asia, the Ishmaelites came before him with a lawsuit. They claimed Canaan. They were descended from Abraham, they argued; the I...
