2,569 texts · Page 34 of 54
Rabbi Akiba was walking through a cemetery when he encountered something terrible — a dead man, naked and blackened, carrying an enormous load of wood on his back. He was running a...
Ben Sabar was traveling home one evening when he came upon a young orphan girl weeping by the side of the road. She had no family, no dowry, and no one willing to marry her. Withou...
The healing power of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa's prayer was so renowned that the greatest sage of his generation, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, relied upon it when his own son fell ill. T...
Hanina ben Dosa was the most famous miracle worker in all of rabbinic literature, and his signature miracle was healing the sick — not with medicine, not with herbs, not with any p...
The Talmud (Shabbat 156b) tells the story of a woman who consulted astrologers about her newborn son. They told her with certainty: "Your son will be a thief." She was devastated. ...
The Talmud in Hullin (f. 87a) preserves a curious exchange between a Min — a heretic — and a rabbi, concerning the nature of wind and divine power. The heretic approached the rabbi...
Two men came before Rabbi Eliezer to pray. One prayed at great length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that went on and on. The other prayed briefly — a few ...
The ancient rabbis taught a striking idea that reversed what most people assumed about the relationship between God and humanity. Most would say that humans wait on God — for bless...
The death and last will of Rabbi Judah HaNasi — simply called "Rabbi" — was one of the most solemn moments in the history of the Jewish people. The Talmud (Ketubot 104a, Jerusalem ...
Elazar ben Dordaya was a man consumed by desire. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 17a) records that he was so enslaved to his passions that he traveled across seven rivers to visit a parti...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in grinding poverty, but the treasures of Paradise were within his reach — literally. The Talmud (Taanit 24b-25a) records a series of miracles that occu...
Abba Hilkiah — the grandson of Honi the Circle-Drawer — inherited his grandfather's extraordinary ability to bring rain through prayer. But his methods were so peculiar that the sa...
In a time of devastating drought, the people of Israel came to Honi ha-Meagel — "Honi the Circle-Drawer" — and begged him to pray for rain. Honi drew a circle in the dirt, stepped ...
The flood waters had covered everything. Noah had been sealed in the ark for months — the rain, the silence, the slow recession of the water, the waiting. Then the text says simply...
Three figures pray and God delights in it: Moses, David, and the Messiah. This is the claim Aggadat Bereshit makes from (Proverbs 15:8) — "the prayer of the upright is His delight....
King Solomon stood before God and prayed at the dedication of the Temple. "Master of the Universe," he said, "let everything else be set aside and focus on my prayer and supplicati...
Before the world was created, God hid the Torah. Not in a vault, not in a distant heaven — hidden in the fabric of things, waiting for the right person to find it. And then Abraham...
When Israel fears God, the nations fear Israel. When Israel abandons its fear of God, the nations attack — and the enemy pursuing them is not a military power. It is the consequenc...
"The Lord says to my Lord: 'Sit at my right hand'" (Psalm 110:1). This verse launches one of the most complex readings in Aggadat Bereshit — about how the Holy One loves and exalts...
Hannah was barren for years. Her husband loved her and her rival taunted her and the priest Eli misread her prayer as drunkenness. The whole story is about a woman whose deepest lo...
"The righteous will give thanks to Your name; the upright will dwell in Your presence" (Psalm 140:14). The rabbis noticed something beautiful in this promise — God does not judge I...
"Blessed is the man who fears the Lord" (Psalm 112:1). The rabbis asked: what ultimately happens to him? And they landed on Ecclesiastes: "In the end, everything will be heard — fe...
"And your eyes shall see" (Malachi 1:5). The prophet promises that Israel will watch the fall of Edom — watch it with their own eyes, from their own territory, and say: "Great is t...
Leah was hated — or unloved, depending on the translation, but the Hebrew is harsh — and God saw it (Genesis 29:31). This is where Aggadat Bereshit begins: with the divine attentio...
David lifts his eyes to the mountains and prays — "A song of ascents" — and God answers him through a text he might not have expected: Moses's blessing of Judah. "And this is the b...
Rachel had watched her sister enter the wedding canopy and had not envied her — not then. But when the children came, one after another from Leah's womb, Rachel's patience broke. "...
Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt (Genesis 42:1). He saw it — but the midrash immediately pivots to a verse from Proverbs: "The ear that hears and the eye that sees — the Lor...
"I will make my opinions widely known" (Job 36:3). God called Abraham from the east — "calling a bird of prey from the east, a man of my counsel from a distant land" (Isaiah 46:11)...
The book of Proverbs throws out one of the great riddles of the Hebrew Bible. "Who has ascended to Heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in the hollows of his hands? Who ...
One small Hebrew word — kalot, "completed" — carries an entire wedding, an entire exorcism, and the steadying of the whole world. In Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:5, the sages pry open (...
Rabbi Yudan opened his teaching on Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:6 with a verse from Proverbs: "Choice silver is the tongue of the righteous; the heart of evildoers is worth little" (Pro...
Five times in the two psalms that open Bless the Lord, O my soul (Psalms 103 and 104), David addresses his own soul. Why five? The Rabbis of the Talmud (Berakhot 10a) answer: becau...
At the most joyful festival in the Jewish year — the Simchat Beit HaShoevah, the Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing, held on the nights of Sukkot — the Sages did things yo...
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...
Rav Yitzchak asked: what did David mean when he wrote, Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; further not his wicked device, lest they exalt themselves. Selah (Psalms 140:8)...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, the first-century miracle worker whom the Mishnah (Berakhot 5:5) calls a man whose prayers could heal from a distance, was once deep in tefillah — the silent...
Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah were teaching in the same academy — and during the set times of communal prayer, they deliberately did not pray in the same way. One wou...
Rabbi Akiva had a habit, whenever he taught, of binding the body to the soul. "If we who study Torah suffer," he would say, "how much more would we suffer if we neglected it?" He h...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri taught that the priesthood did not begin with Aaron. It began with Noah's son. "The Holy One, blessed be He," the Rabbi said, "set aside Shem, separating hi...
Open the book of Kings and read: And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem ...
The son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had fallen dangerously ill. His father, the greatest sage of his generation, prayed — and nothing happened. Yohanan then sent word to a strange,...
The prophet Isaiah met King Hezekiah outside Jerusalem. The meeting was not a diplomatic visit. Isaiah carried a message from God: Hezekiah's children would do evil. Hezekiah did n...
A drought had settled on the land. The sages, running out of options, remembered the legend that Abba Hilkiah — the grandson of the famous rainmaker Honi ha-Me'aggel — had inherite...
There was a time, the sages taught, when the Divine Name of twelve letters was taught openly to anyone who came to learn. A student could carry it home the way he carried any other...
The twelfth blessing of the Amidah, the eighteen benedictions prayed three times daily, is known by its opening Hebrew word V'lamalshinim — "and for the slanderers." Its language i...
Hanina ben Dosa, the humble hasid of the first century, was known for prayers that went through the roof. When Rabban Gamliel's young son lay gravely ill, burning with a fever that...
Two men once prayed at length before Rabbi Eliezer. The first stretched his Amidah far beyond the usual length, swaying and adding private petitions until the congregation grew res...
David and his son Solomon agreed on most things — but not on this one. David, in the Psalms, cried out: "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence" (Psalms ...
