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The Roman emperor Antoninus had a private and unusual friendship with Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, the compiler of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law). They met in secret and d...
Two Sisters & Waters of Ordeal. Tanh. Numb. Naso, § 6, f. *81 b. Numb, R. ch. 9 § 9. Tanh. Eccles. § 10. Yalk. II, § 978. Simhat Hanefesh (the vital soul), f. 30. Yalk. Sip. IV, p....
Blood Test. Baba Batra, f. 58 a. Parables of Solomon, I. Zabara, Shaashuim, LXII. ed. Davidson. Simhat Hanefesh (the vital soul), p. 12. Sef. Hasidim, ed. Hil- desheimer § 291. Far...
Three chests were placed before a person who was told to choose one — and the story of that choice became a famous parable about the difference between appearance and reality. The ...
Angelology constitutes the theological branch examining "superhuman beings dwelling in heaven, who, on occasion, reveal to man God's will and execute His commands." This doctrine d...
This comprehensive article examines demons across biblical, rabbinical, and comparative religious contexts, written by Emil G. Hirsch, Richard Gottheil, Kaufmann Kohler, and Isaac ...
This comprehensive article examines cosmogony (theories of universe origin) across biblical, post-biblical, and rabbinical Jewish traditions, comparing them with Babylonian and oth...
Lilith is described as a female demon in Jewish tradition. The name appears in (Isaiah 34:14) and derives from Assyrian demon mythology, though scholars debate whether it connects ...
The article presents Eden as an "earthly paradise" described in Genesis ii-iii where Adam and Eve resided before their fall. The term "Eden" likely derives from Assyrian "edinu" (m...
The forecasting of the future by certain signs or movements of external things, or by visions in certain ecstatic states of the soul (see Dreams and Prophecy). Divination rests on ...
This word occurs only once in the Bible, in Ps. cxxxix. 16, where it means "embryo." In tradition everything that is in a state of incompletion, everything not fully formed, as a n...
The name of a supernatural being mentioned in connection with the ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.). After Satan, for whom he was in some degree a preparation, Azazel enjo...
The Throne of Glory is an important feature in the Cabala. It is placed at the highest point of the universe (Ḥag. 12b); and is of the same color as the sky—purple-blue, like the "...
Divination using the deceased was reportedly widespread among Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The Israelites likely adopted this practice from Persian sources and engaged in it exten...
A class of celestial beings appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the prophet Isaiah's visionary experience (Isaiah 6:2 onwards). Isaiah observed multiple seraphim...
A psalm of David, written after Doeg the Edomite betrayed him — that's where Aggadat Bereshit anchors the story of Jacob's ladder. Strange placement. But the rabbis had a method. D...
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...
Abraham was ninety-nine years old when God renewed the covenant (Genesis 17:1). The sons of Korah composed a psalm about this moment — "Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty on...
When Sarah died, Abraham aged overnight. The midrash says it plainly: old age came upon him the moment he buried her, as the verse notes — "Abraham was old, coming with days" (Gene...
"Until the day breathes and the shadows flee" (Song of Songs 2:17). Israel in exile asks: how long? The kingdoms that rule over them are the shadows — empire after empire, each cas...
"These are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham; Abraham begot Isaac" (Genesis 25:19). The verse says it twice, and the rabbis asked why. Their answer: to show that the gift gi...
When the righteous multiply in the world, good things multiply with them. This is Aggadat Bereshit's reading of "When the righteous are many, the people rejoice" (Proverbs 29:2). N...
Joseph was brought down to Egypt (Genesis 39:1). Lamentations gives the frame: "Good is the man who sits alone and is silent, for he will bear the yoke upon himself. He will put hi...
After two full years in prison, Pharaoh dreamed (Genesis 41:1). The midrash reads this through Psalm 73: "As an endless dream, the Lord despised their form." God does not reveal Hi...
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...
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...
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, pr...
A pious couple in the Gaster manuscripts had been childless for many years. The husband, desperate, went to the cemetery and prayed at the tombs of the righteous through a long nig...
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...
The Roman emperor Hadrian (may his bones be ground, the rabbis add in a growl) was fond of cornering Jewish sages with theological questions. One day he turned to Rabbi Joshua ben ...
The Emperor Antoninus once pressed Rabbi Judah the Prince with a sharp question. At the day of judgment, he said, neither body nor soul could be justly punished. The body would ple...
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...
The Talmud tells a parable about a king who planted a magnificent garden and hired two guards — one lame, one blind — reasoning that neither could steal the fruit. One day the lame...
Rabbi Yochanan went to visit his colleague Rabbi Elazar, who was gravely ill. The room was dark — shutters closed, lamps unlit, the particular dimness that comes when a household h...
Elazar ben Dordaya was, by his own admission, a man who had lived as low a life as a Jewish soul could live. He had chased every pleasure, broken every fence of decency, and finall...
A Sadducee came to Rabbi Abahu with a sharp question. "You rabbis teach," he said, "that the souls of the righteous are treasured up beneath the Throne of Glory. If that is so, how...
When the son of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai died, the sages came to the house of mourning in waves. Each tried to comfort the old master. Each failed. He sat in his grief like a ston...
The story is told in Tanna d'vei Eliyahu. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was walking one day when he saw a man gathering wood in the forest. He called out a greeting. No answer. He call...
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi — the editor of the Mishnah — conducted long conversations with the Roman emperor Antoninus. Their friendship is one of the warmest cross-cultural exchanges in ...
"Those passing through the valley of weeping make it a well; also blessings shall cover the teacher" (Psalms 84:6). Rabbi Yochanan read the verse and pressed on its first image. Th...
The anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings preserve a parable about five sets of passengers who embark on a long sea voyage. When the ship puts in at a beautiful island midway t...
Four tannaim ascended into the Pardes, the orchard of mystical contemplation, and Rabbi Akiva warned his companions before they entered. "When you come to the pavement of pure marb...
Rabbi Judah was asked a difficult question about divine justice: how can body and soul be judged together when one is mortal and the other eternal? He answered with a parable. A ki...
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was one of the Ten Martyrs executed during the Hadrianic persecutions in the second century CE. Rome had decreed that teaching Torah in public was a capi...
In the house of Rabbi Elazar a strange filly was born. Every attendant who came near it was killed. Rabbi Elazar, unable to tame or destroy the beast, presented it to the king. At ...
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 Da...
The rabbis counted the ways a human being can leave this world. They arrived at nine hundred and three, derived from the verse, “Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death&...
The Torah says God formed man from the dust of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:7) takes this one sentence and turns it into a cosmic geography. "The Lord God create...
