2,619 texts · Page 122 of 291
The ancient rabbis certainly did, and they found some pretty compelling answers hidden in the very first chapters of the Torah. to a fascinating passage from Bereshit Rabbah, a col...
The Book of Genesis touches on this very question, and the Rabbis of the Midrash, never ones to shy away from a good debate, certainly had opinions. Our story comes from Bereshit R...
And, according to Jewish tradition, Adam, the very first human, had the unique privilege of naming… well, just about everything! We find this idea in the book of Genesis (2:19): "T...
We all do it, usually for about a third of our lives. But what's going on when we drift off? Our sages pondered this deeply. In Bereshit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic commentari...
The Torah tells us, "The Lord God built the side that He had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man" (Genesis 2:22). Simple. But as is so often the case, our s...
It's not just some offhand detail in the Book of Genesis. Our sages saw a universe of intention packed into that single act of creation. The Midrash, specifically Bereshit Rabbah, ...
The Midrash, those collections of rabbinic commentaries and stories that expand on the Hebrew Bible, often offer surprising perspectives. Here, in Bereshit Rabbah, a midrash on the...
It's usually translated as "also," "indeed," or even "moreover." Seems harmless enough. But according to Rabbi Ḥanina ben Sansan, that seemingly innocent word, when uttered with a ...
It’s a question that's haunted readers of Genesis for millennia. The text tells us, "The woman said to the serpent: 'From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat'" (Genesis...