4,128 texts · Page 41 of 86
"This month": Nissan. You say it is Nissan. But perhaps it was some other month of the year? It is written (Exodus 23:16) "And the festival of the ingathering (Succoth) at the end ...
R. Nathan and R. Tzaddok say: Also for house rentals (i.e., If one says: I am renting it to you for this year, the understanding is until the beginning of Nissan.) But this does no...
R. Nathan says "Observe the month of Aviv"—Observe the month which is closest to Aviv. And which is that? Adar. But we have not heard how many (days) are to be intercalated. From "...
R. Yirmiyah says: Just as uncleanliness constrains (the offering of the Pesach (Passover) [viz. (Numbers 9:10)] and (the advent of) spring constrains, then just as the (constraint ...
Rabbi Yossi Haglili agreed with the established timeline of the first Passover: God spoke on the first of the month, the lamb was selected on the tenth, and the slaughtering occurr...
(Ibid. 3) "On the tenth day of this month, they shall take": This tells me that only the tenth day is kasher for taking. Whence do I derive (the same for) the fourteenth day? It fo...
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 ...
The Torah introduces a practical problem in the laws of the Passover sacrifice. What happens when a household is too small to consume an entire lamb? (Exodus 12:4) addresses this d...
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...
The Torah instructs that when preparing for the Paschal lamb, if a household is too small to consume the entire animal, they should share it with "the neighbor near his house" (Exo...
The Torah uses an unusual word — "michsah" — when describing how the Passover lamb should be allocated. (Exodus 12:4) says the lamb must be divided "according to the michsah of sou...
What is the intent of "according to the count of souls"? From (Ibid.) "A man (according to his eating"), I might think only a man. Whence do I derive (the same for) a woman, a tumt...
Rabbi Yishmael preserved a practical but fascinating rule about how the original Passover sacrifice worked in Egypt. The Paschal lamb was not a solo affair — families and neighbors...
(Ibid. 5) "seh": Included in "seh" is a goat and a sheep, viz. (Devarim 14:4) "the seh of the sheep and the seh of the goats." "unblemished": to exclude a blemished animal. "male":...
The Torah specifies that the Passover offering must come "from the lambs and from the goats" (Exodus 12:5). Does this mean both species are required together, or can either one suf...
Rabbi Yishmael confronted a puzzle in (Deuteronomy 16:2), which says: "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." But the Passover offering is supposed t...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — offered an alternative reading of (Deuteronomy 16:2): "And you shall slaughter the Passover to your God — sheep and cattle." Rather than identifying ...
Rabbi Nathan offered a striking interpretation of the erotic poetry of Song of Songs that transformed it into a lesson about the sanctity of marriage. When the verse says "a locked...
The Israelites spent twelve months in Egypt after Moses first appeared before Pharaoh. Twelve months of escalating plagues, mounting chaos, and growing anticipation of departure. D...
The Mekhilta identifies one of the hidden miracles of the Egyptian exile: the Israelites never abandoned the Hebrew language. Despite living for centuries among Egyptian speakers, ...
The Mekhilta takes a phrase from the Passover laws — "it shall be to you for a keeping" (Exodus 12:6) — and asks what seems like a technical question with surprising depth. Does "k...
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, one of the most brilliant and mystically inclined sages in all of rabbinic literature, offers a reading of the Passover timeline that is as precise as a wa...
Ben Betheira tackled one of the most practical and debated questions in all of Passover law: when exactly should the Paschal lamb be slaughtered? The Torah gives a poetic instructi...
On the night that would change everything, God told the Israelites to paint blood on their doorframes. But where exactly? On the inside of the doorposts and lintel, or on the outsi...
The Mekhilta notices a detail in the Passover laws that most readers skip right past. The Torah says the blood should go on the doorframes "of the houses in which they eat it" (Exo...
The Torah's instructions for eating the Passover lamb include a phrase that seems straightforward but contains a legal depth charge: "with matzoth and maror shall they eat it" (Exo...
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 ...
Rebbi — Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) and the most authoritative sage of his generation — weighs in on the Passover cooking ...
"uvashel": "bashel" (here refers to flesh that was) roasted (before, the understanding being that it is forbidden to cook it even if it had been roasted previously), as in (Devarim...
The Torah gives strict instructions about Passover leftovers: "You shall not leave over anything of it until the morning, and what is left over of it until the morning, in fire sha...
Rabbi Yitzchak enters the debate about burning Passover leftovers with yet another angle of attack, proving the same conclusion through a different logical comparison. His argument...
"And thus shall you eat it" (Exodus 12:11) — the Torah prescribes not just what to eat on Passover night, but how to eat it. Loins girded. Sandals on your feet. Staff in hand. Eat ...
The Mekhilta catches a redundancy in the Torah's Passover instructions that most readers would never notice — and from that redundancy, it extracts a legal ruling about where God's...
The rabbis of the Mekhilta press deeper into the logic of the festival offering, deploying one of the Talmud's most powerful reasoning tools: the kal va-chomer, the argument from l...
Rabbi Yossi HaGlili tackles a puzzle buried in the Torah's festival calendar. The verse in (Deuteronomy 16:15) commands, "Seven days shall you celebrate to the Lord your God." On i...
The Torah says that Passover must be observed "for your generations" (Exodus 12:14), and the Mekhilta immediately spots a potential loophole. The Hebrew word for "generations" is "...
The Torah commands in (Exodus 12:15), "Seven days shall you eat matzot." But which grains actually qualify for making matzah? The Mekhilta digs into this question with characterist...
"Seven days (shall you eat matzoth"): including the first day of the festival. You say this, but perhaps (the meaning is) excluding the first day? It is, therefore, written (Ibid. ...
It must, therefore, be written "Seven [and not six] days shall you eat matzoth." (Ibid. 15) "Only on the first day": This makes (the eating of matzoth on) the first day mandatory a...
Two verses in the Torah appear to contradict each other on a basic question: how many days must one eat matzah during Passover? One verse says six days. Another says seven. The Mek...
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 Yossi HaGlili confronts the timing question head-on: when exactly must a person eliminate chametz from their home before Passover? His answer hinges on a single Hebrew word t...
Rabbi Yehudah argues that the Torah's command to "eliminate leaven from your houses" means one specific thing: you must burn it. Not scatter it, not crumble it into the wind, not t...
Would you say that? There is a difference (between neveilah, [from which benefit may be derived] and chametz, [from which benefit may not be derived,], so that the resultant equati...
The Mekhilta continues its relentless cross-examination of Rabbi Yehudah's position that chametz must be destroyed specifically by burning. A new argument emerges — and a new count...
I will derive four determinants from four like determinants. Nothar is forbidden in eating, and in derivation of benefit, and it is subject to kareth, and it is time (i.e., Pesach ...
