5,112 texts · Page 32 of 107
The longest and most carefully guarded section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh catalogs the divine names—the Shemot (שמות), the names of God through which creation was brought into being ...
The cosmology section of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh presents creation not as an act of physical labor but as an act of speech. God spoke, and the universe crystallized from divine langu...
Sefer Raziel HaMalakh contains something truly unusual for a mystical text—an alternative alphabet. Several of them, in fact. These are not the standard 22 Hebrew letters but speci...
The transmission narrative in Harba de-Moshe (the Sword of Moses) is one of the most elaborate chains of divine authority in all of Jewish literature. It traces a path from God to ...
The heart of Harba de-Moshe (the Sword of Moses) is its catalog of divine names—and the greatest of these is the Great Name, composed of 70 component names. The number 70 is not ar...
The sixth heaven of Sefer HaRazim is a realm of crystalline purity where the angels exist in a state of perpetual holiness. After the escalating intensity of the lower heavens—from...
Shimush Tehillim (שמוש תהלים), the Magical Use of Psalms, is a remarkable text that transforms the Book of Psalms from a collection of prayers and poems into a practical manual of ...
Shimush Tehillim devotes extensive attention to Psalms for healing and wisdom—two categories that, in Jewish thought, are deeply connected. The Hebrew word for healing, refuah (רפו...
The most esoteric section of Shimush Tehillim deals with the divine names hidden within the Psalms themselves—names that are not written explicitly but encoded through acrostics, g...
Strip away the medieval slander and a real tradition of Jewish magic emerges—one that Joshua Trachtenberg traced from the Bible through the Talmud and into the folk practices of me...
The most widely practiced form of Jewish magic required no special training, no secret names, no angelic invocations. It required only a Bible. As Joshua Trachtenberg documented, m...
The Hebrew word mazal (מזל) originally meant "constellation" or "star." Only gradually did it shift to mean "luck"—and the journey of that word tells the story of Jewish astrology ...
The ninth of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles says the Torah will never be changed. The Holy One will not alter His law, nor replace Moses' law with any other. Malachi himself seale...
Gaster's exemplum No. 365 preserves one of the most vivid Kabbalistic legends from medieval Ashkenazi Jewry — a tale about the Chasidei Ashkenaz, the mystics of the Rhine Valley in...
A Kabbalistic meditation preserved in Kitzur Shnei Luchot ha-Berit teaches that the 613 commandments of the Torah form a covenant between the Holy One, blessed be He, and Israel — ...
(Exodus 12:1) "And the L–rd spoke to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying": I might think that both Aaron and Moses were being addressed; it is, therefore, written (Exod...
(Exodus 12:2) "the beginning of months": I might think, for the minimum of months, two (i.e., the most distinctive of months, Sivan and Tishrei). It is, therefore, written (Ibid.) ...
How many lambs were needed for the first Passover? The Mekhilta tackles this question with characteristic precision. One might initially think that a single lamb would suffice for ...
What if a household was too small to eat an entire Passover lamb? The Torah addresses this in (Exodus 12:4): "Then he and his neighbor next to his house shall take it." Rabbi Akiva...
R. Akiva says: One verse states "And you shall slaughter the Pesach (Passover) to the L–rd your G–d, sheep and cattle," and another, "From the sheep and from the goats shall you ta...
(Exodus 12:6) "And it shall be to you for a keeping": Why does the taking of the Pesach (Passover) precede its slaughtering by four days? R. Matia b. Charash says: It is written (E...
Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar Berebbi posed a rhetorical question that reveals something extraordinary about the Israelites during their centuries of slavery in Egypt. Did Israel not poss...
The Mekhilta raises a question that cuts to the heart of the Passover story: why did God command the Israelites to select the Passover lamb four full days before slaughtering it? W...
"on this night": I might think, the entire night; it is, therefore, written (Ibid. 10) "You shall not leave over anything of it until morning, and what is left over of it until mor...
Whence is it derived that in the absence of matzoh and maror one fulfills his obligation with the Pesach (Passover)? From "shall they eat it" (in any event). I might think that if ...
The Torah uses an unusual doubled phrase when describing how the Passover lamb must not be prepared: "vashel mevushal" — literally something like "cooked, cooked" or "boiled, boile...
The Torah says the Passover lamb must not be "cooked in water" (Exodus 12:9). Water is specified. But Rabbi Yishmael immediately sees the problem: what about wine? What about fruit...
Rabbi Akiva, the towering sage who reshaped all of rabbinic Judaism, offers his own answer to the question of why the Torah only mentions water when prohibiting the cooking of the ...
Rabbi Akiva cuts through an elaborate derivation with a single, clean observation — a move that captures his characteristic directness as a legal mind. The question under debate is...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betheira flips the entire debate on its head with a single devastating observation. The other rabbis have been arguing that chametz must be burned — and only burn...
Rabbi Yoshiyah takes the verse "And you shall watch over the matzot" and performs one of the most beloved wordplays in all of rabbinic literature — a reading that transforms a law ...
The Torah describes the Exodus with the phrase "I took out your hosts." The Mekhilta asks a question that might seem obvious but carries deep theological weight: whose hosts are be...
R. Yoshiyah said to him: Why is this different from all of the "sayings" in the Torah, which were from Moses to say to Israel? Here, too, from Moses to say to Israel. Why, then, is...
"Draw forth and take for yourselves": "Draw forth"—he who possesses his own; "and take" (i.e., acquire)—he who does not possess his own. R. Yossi Haglili says (The meaning is:) "Dr...
The Torah instructs in (Exodus 12:22), "And you shall take a bunch of hyssop," referring to the bundle of hyssop used to apply the blood of the Paschal lamb to the doorposts in Egy...
The Mekhilta, the great halakhic midrash on the Book of Exodus compiled in the 2nd century CE, raises a deceptively simple question about the Passover blood ritual. The Torah comma...
The prophet Ezekiel delivered an oracle of terrifying certainty: "Behold, it has come; it has arrived, says the Lord God. This is the day of which I spoke" (Ezekiel 39:8). But when...
The Mekhilta traces one of the most elegant patterns in the Torah — a divine promise that spans decades before its fulfillment. The verse states (Genesis 21:1): "And the Lord did f...
(Exodus 12:26) "And it shall be, when your sons say to you, etc.": At that time, Israel was receiving bad tidings, that the Torah was destined to be forgotten. Others say they were...
The Mekhilta, the tannaitic midrash on Exodus, preserves a question from Rabbi Nathan that captures the emotional texture of the Exodus. The Torah describes the Israelites carrying...
"And the habitation of the children of Israel in Egypt and in other lands was four hundred and thirty years." This is one of the verses that they (the seventy-two elders changed) i...
(Exodus 12:43) "And the L–rd said to Moses and Aaron": There are some sections (in the Torah) which are generic in the beginning and specific after, and some which are specific in ...
Rabbi Yonathan addressed a legal puzzle hidden inside the Passover laws. The Torah says "let all of his males be circumcised, and then he shall draw near to offer it." A straightfo...
"One Torah shall there be for the citizen and for the stranger" (Exodus 12:49). This verse — one of the most sweeping declarations of equality in the Torah — might seem redundant. ...
God spoke to Moses with a command that sounds absolute: "Sanctify unto Me every first-born" (Exodus 13:1-2). Every first-born — of humans, of animals, of everything that opens the ...
Once, the disciples spent a Sabbath in Yavneh, R. Yehoshua not among them. When they returned to him he asked them: "What novelty did you hear in Yavneh?" They answered: "After you...
Rabbi Yitzchak found a verse that establishes blessings both before and after eating. (Exodus 23:25) reads, "And you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betheira noticed something peculiar in (Deuteronomy 8:10): "You shall eat and you shall be satisfied and you shall bless... for the good land." The verse already ...
