1,435 texts · Page 30 of 30
Continue browsing kabbalah texts from Jewish source collections. Page 30 includes additional passages with source attribution, category metadata, and links to individual text pages.
When the Babylonians breached the walls of Jerusalem and stormed the Temple, they found something in the courtyard that stopped them cold. A pool of blood. Bubbling. Boiling. Churn...
Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish, the sage and the former bandit, formed one of the most famous study partnerships in the Talmud. Their relationship began in the most unlikely way: Ra...
The Talmud in tractate Baba Batra (8a) records a teaching about almsgiving that medieval Jewish communities took very seriously. So seriously that it became the foundation for how ...
Bar Kappara was walking along the seashore when he encountered the survivors of a shipwreck, strangers, soaked and shivering, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had ...
Joab, the mighty general of King David, figures in rabbinic legend as a warrior of such ferocity that even the angels feared him. The Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) pre...
The meeting, whether real or legendary, between Rabbi Eleazar of Worms and Maimonides represents one of the great contrasts in Jewish intellectual history. Eleazar, the Ashkenazi m...
The Angel of Death came to an inn. And found the innkeeper so stingy, so devoid of charity, that even the angel was disgusted. The story, preserved in medieval Jewish ethical colle...
Charity rewarded, the phrase appears throughout rabbinic literature because the sages considered it not a pious hope but a cosmic law. The Talmud (Taanit 24a, Jerusalem Talmud Hora...
One of the stranger teachings in the later Kabbalah concerns gilgul, the transmigration of souls. The Nishmat Chaim of Rabbi Menashe ben Israel, published in Amsterdam in 1651, pre...
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 ...
A man should study less on Friday, the kabbalists teach, and spend the saved hours preparing for the Sabbath. This is one of the stranger reversals in Jewish life. Normally Torah s...
A kabbalistic manual preserved in Kitzur Shalah (an abridgment of the early seventeenth century ethical-mystical work Shenei Luchot HaBrit by Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz) describes the p...
In the days of Maimonides. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1138-1204 CE, evil decrees were issued against the Jews of his city. The laws were designed to humiliate. If a gentile were so mu...
The Kabbalists, the sages of truth, as the tradition calls them, noticed something about the Hebrew letters of Adam. The word אדם spells three names. Aleph for Adam. Dalet for Davi...
A medieval Jewish legend tells of a king of Poland who fell under the influence of a sorcerer — a wizard — and issued a decree: the Jews of his kingdom must convert, be...
The Torah says cryptically of Enoch: "he walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us where he went. "Hanok served in the trut...
There are teachings the rabbis whispered. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 10:1 preserves one of them, a conversation so startling that its transmission was, for centuries, deliber...
(Genesis 2:4) says the heavens and the earth were created behibbar'am, "when they were created." But the Hebrew word is spelled with an unusual small letter heh (ה) in the middle. ...
It's in those little quirks that readers often find hidden depths. Take the census of the Levites in the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar, for example. Specifically, Bamidbar Rabbah 6 shi...
It all starts with the verse: “Moses took the carts and the bulls, and gave them to the Levites” (Numbers 7:6). Simple enough. But the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) ne...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to The Two Inclinations Woven Into Human Nature. The yetzer hatov, the good inclination, and the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. Now, "evil" can be mislead...
Bereshit Rabbah turns to Birth of Ham. "And Canaan begot Sidon his firstborn, and Ḥet," the Torah tells us (Genesis 10:15). Then comes a whole string of "ites": "And the Yevusites,...
Kohelet Rabbah, the commentary on Ecclesiastes, gets it. It starts with the line "all matters are wearying." But it doesn't stop there with the doom and gloom. It actually dives in...
Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet as we know it in Hebrew, is full of Solomon's reflections on life, often tinged with a certain weariness. And one particular verse, (Ecclesiastes 2:25), re...
“Jerusalem has committed a sin, therefore she has become a pariah. All who honored her demean her because they have seen her nakedness. She, too, sighed and turned back” (Lamentati...
“You have called, as on the appointed day, my fears from all around, and there was no refugee or remnant on the day of the Lord’s wrath. Those whom I nurtured and reared, my enemy ...
“For if you are silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s house will perish; who knows if it was for a time ...
Rabbi Chaim Vital, the principal disciple of the great Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the ARI) grappled with this very question. In his monumental work, Etz Chaim ("Tree of ...
And I will make my covenant between Me and thee (Gen. 17:2). Scripture says elsewhere in allusion to this verse: The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and His covenant...
And Isaac trembled very exceedingly (Gen. 27:33). What is written before this? Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac, his father (ibid., v. 30). This indicates t...
And Jacob sent messengers (Gen. 32:4). Scripture states elsewhere in allusion to this verse: And the Lord uttereth His voice before His army; for his camp is very great, for He is ...
Come, let us deal wisely with them (Exod. 1:9). In saying this he blasphemed against the On High. The Holy One said to them: No matter what you plan to do against Israel, it will i...
The horse and his rider (Exod. 15:1). Was there only one horse? (Of course not!) All the horses were considered by Him as one, as in the verse When thou goest forth to battle again...
Our sages of blessed memory said: “Observe that the way of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not the way of man.” It is not man’s way to heal with what he wounds. If he wounds with a...
And the Lord spoke unto Moses: “Go, get thee down…. I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people” (Exod. 32:7–9). R. Tanhuma the son of Abba began the discussio...
(Lev. 8:3:) “And assemble the whole congregation.” He said to him, “Where?”30See Lev. R. 10:9; cf. Gen. R. 5:7. He said unto him, “Unto the door of the tent of meeting.” Moses our ...
Another interpretation (of Lev. 19:23), “When you come into the land.” This text is related (to Jer. 3:19), “But I said how I would put you among the children and give you a desira...
(Numb. 30:3:) “When someone makes a vow (neder) to the Lord.” Let our master instruct us: How are konamot (i.e. vows of abstinence) and vows (nedarim)? Thus have our masters taught...
(Numb. 32:1:) “Much livestock.” This text is related (to Ps. 75:7), “For it is not from the east or from the west [or from the wilderness that there comes an exaltation (harim)].” ...
(Deut. 1:1:) “These are the words (elleh hadevarim).” May the name [of the Holy One, blessed be He,] be blessed and may His memory be exalted. All the miracles that he did for Isra...
(Deut. 1:1:) “These are the words that Moses spoke….” Israel said, “Yesterday you said (in Exod. 4:10), ‘I am not a man of words.’ And now you are speaking so much?” Rabbi Isaac sa...
(Deut. 2:3:) “You have had enough of going about this mountain.” This text is related (to Cant. 2:7=3:5), “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem by gazelles or by hinds of the fie...
“When a camp goes out against your enemies, you shall beware of everything evil” (Devarim 23:10). There should be no levity among you so that you do not incur any liability. From w...
