Why One-Fifth of Israel Died Before the Exodus
Not everyone wanted to leave Egypt. The midrash says four-fifths of Israel died during the plague of darkness. You cannot leave what you refuse to let go of.
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While God was still speaking, Abraham suddenly found himself back upon the earth. "O Eternal, Mighty One," he said, "I am no longer in the glory in which I was while on high, and w...
This is the weight of the story we're about to unpack, drawn from Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews. It begins with a warning, a plea really. "Therefore let these words of mine which ...
It's not just about a people escaping slavery. It’s a cosmic battle, a divine showdown. Think of it as a king going to war, but this king? This king is the Lord. According to Legen...
We all know the broad strokes: Pharaoh, Moses, plagues, freedom. But the details… oh, the details are where things get truly wild. The Torah recounts the ten plagues, each a devast...
It wasn't just random chaos raining down, oh no. Jewish tradition paints a picture of divine justice, a kind of cosmic quid pro quo. What had the Egyptians been doing to the Israel...
It’s easy to see them as simply divine punishments, but the ancient texts hint at a deeper, more symbolic layer. Let's take the plague of hail, for instance. We read in Legends of ...
Rabbi Yossi raises a startling possibility about the ten plagues. The destruction at the Red Sea, he argues, was not a separate event from the plagues in Egypt — it happened simult...
Rabbi Yossi HaGlili presents one of the most famous calculations in rabbinic literature. He asks: how do we know that the Egyptians were struck with ten plagues in Egypt and fifty ...
The Song at the Sea praises God not only for His power but for His patience. The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael highlights a detail that the Israelites themselves recognized as they san...
We all know the highlights – the Nile turning to blood, swarms of locusts, darkness… But the details, the why and how, are often richer and stranger than we remember. Take the plag...
That's kind of what went down between Moses and the Egyptian magicians, according to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinating early medieval text that delves into biblical narratives....
A man once said that if he wanted to lose his property nobody could stop him. Another replied that no one could fight against God's providence. The man, however, said he would try....
See, I have set thee in God’s stead to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet (Exod. 7:1). Just as the lecturer sits and lectures, and the interpreter explains his wor...