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“Lad and elder lay on the ground in the streets, my young women and my young men fell by the sword. You killed on the day of Your wrath, You slaughtered, had no compassion” (Lament...
“The precious sons of Zion, who were valued in gold, how are they considered earthenware jugs, the handiwork of the hands of the potter?” (Lamentations 4:2).“The precious sons of Z...
“Be glad and rejoice, daughter of Edom, who resides in the land of Utz: the cup will pass to you too; you will get drunk, and you will be overturned” (Lamentations 4:21).“Be glad a...
“We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows” (Lamentations 5:3).“We have become orphans, fatherless.” Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Levi: The Holy O...
“They ravished women in Zion, maidens in the cities of Judah” (Lamentations 5:11).“They ravished women in Zion.” Nevuzaradan commanded his legions, saying to them: ‘The God of thes...
“On a floor of alabaster, marble, mother-of-pearl, and onyx.” Rav Naḥman said: Come and see what the comfort of that wicked one was like. His house was paved with precious stones a...
“Also, Vashti the queen made a women’s banquet in the royal palace of King Aḥashverosh” (Esther 1:9). Rabbi Yehuda son of Rabbi Simon began: “My people, its oppressors are babes an...
“[Also [gam], Vashti the queen] made a women’s banquet,” she fed them kinds of soup [gema’in]. Rabbi Yitzḥak said: She fed them kinds of sweets. “In the royal palace” – she situate...
“For the queen’s deed will get out to all the women, making their husbands contemptible in their eyes; that King Aḥashverosh said to bring Queen Vashti before him, but she did not ...
“He fostered Hadassa, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother, and the girl was fair and beautiful; and with the death of her father and her mo...
Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Levi: The Holy One blessed be He said to them, to Israel: You wept and said: “We have become orphans, fatherless” (Lamentations 5:3). By yo...
“With the arrival of the turn of Esther, daughter of Aviḥayil uncle of Mordekhai, who had taken her as his daughter, to go to the king, she did not request anything except that whi...
“The king loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and grace in his eyes more than all the virgins. He set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen in place...
“Esther’s young women and her chamberlains came and told her, and the queen was greatly shocked” (Esther 4:4).The Rabbis from there2From Babylonia. say: She menstruated. The Rabbis...
“It was on the third day, Esther donned royalty and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, facing the king’s palace, while the king was sitting on his royal throne in the t...
“Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had befallen him. His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him: If Mordekhai, before whom you have begun to fall, is...
Ahasuerus was a hypocrite. Not in the casual sense of the word, but in the specific, devastating way that Esther Rabbah defines it: a ruler who kills his wife for his friend, and t...
It’s a question that has echoes through Jewish tradition, and one that comes up in a fascinating discussion about bowing down, prostration, and the very nature of God’s glory. The ...
When Genesis says, "when they were created," it's almost teasing us. It's like saying, "Yeah, things were created, but when exactly? We're not really pinning it down." for a second...
Philo, a Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria in the first century CE, certainly did. And in his writings, particularly in what we now call The Midrash of Philo, he offers a fas...
God takes a rib from Adam and fashions it into Eve. Simple enough story. But what if there's so much more hidden beneath the surface? The Torah tells us in (Genesis 2:21-22) about ...
That’s the question posed in the ancient text known as The Midrash of Philo, specifically in fragment 22. A seemingly simple question, but one that unlocks a whole world of underst...
The ancient sages did. They saw in the creation of Adam and Eve, not just the beginning of humanity, but the blueprint for a thriving, balanced life. Philo, a Jewish philosopher fr...
Why wasn't she just... there? Well, according to a fascinating interpretation found in the Midrash of Philo 22, it's not just a random detail. It speaks to something much deeper ab...
But the ancient rabbis, those masters of hidden meanings, saw layers upon layers in even the simplest verses. to just one little phrase from the story of creation and see what they...
Stunning, vibrant, utterly unlike anything you've ever encountered. What goes through your mind? The Midrash of Philo, a fascinating exploration of the early chapters of Genesis, w...
What’s the deeper, almost mystical, undercurrent?We're going to look at a teaching that grapples with the verse from Genesis (2:24): “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his...
Our starting point here is a fascinating text referred to as "The Midrash of Philo." Now, when we say "Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary)," we're talking about a particular...
The Torah tells us plainly, but the why is left hanging, ripe for interpretation. And oh, have the interpretations grown! One fascinating perspective comes to us from, well, Philo....
a passage that offers a rather… pointed perspective. The Midrash of Philo, a collection of interpretations attributed to Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher from the 1st cent...
Philo, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt during the Roman era, tried to harmonize Greek philosophy with Jewish scripture. The text we're looking at here – let's call it Midra...
But in Jewish tradition, nothing is ever just simple. There's always a deeper layer, a hidden meaning waiting to be uncovered. So, why this order? The Midrash of Philo, a collectio...
to what some of our sages have said about it. The verse reads, “Unto the woman He said: ‘I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; ...
Take the very first name ever given to a woman: Chava, or as we know her, Eve. Philo, the great Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, Egypt, writing around the first century CE, give...
One such answer comes from a text attributed to Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt during the first century. While scholars debate whether he actually pen...
In (Genesis 7:13), when describing who enters the ark, we read about Noah and his sons first, “and after them his wife and his sons’ wives.” But (Genesis 8:18) flips the script whe...
But, like so many things in the Torah, there's a deeper layer, a hidden meaning waiting to be uncovered. The ancient sages, particularly those who engaged in midrash (rabbinic inte...
Let’s pull up a chair and delve into one of those moments – a complicated one, to be sure, involving Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar. The question before us is this: Why did Sarah, barre...
Philo, a Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, writing way back in the first century CE, thought so. He saw these narratives as having layers of meaning, a literal interpretation and...
They're not just labels, you know. In Jewish tradition, a name can be a destiny, a reflection of character, a clue to understanding the deeper story. Take Sarah, for example. Why i...
This particular piece tackles the tricky subject of a virtuous man taking a concubine, even though he already has a wife. How could that possibly be seen as righteous? Well, Philo ...
Our question comes from (Genesis 16:4): "When she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes." Seems simple enough. Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant, becomes pregn...
The Torah, in its often subtle way, touches upon this very question. Our passage focuses on a seemingly small detail in the story of Sarah and Hagar. You remember the story. Sarah,...
We're turning to the Midrash of Philo, a fascinating collection of interpretations that expands on the stories we find in the Hebrew Bible. Specifically, we're looking at a moment ...
The story, of course, revolves around Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar. Sarah, unable to conceive, gives her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham. But as we know, things get complicated. Hagar con...
We all know the story of Abraham, or Avraham as we say in Hebrew, and his wife Sarah, or Sarah. They longed for a child, but time was passing. So Sarah, following the customs of th...
Our story revolves around a "wise man" – and we aren't explicitly told who, which almost makes him universal. He's speaking about a woman who has conceived a child with him. Now, h...
We often think of affliction as purely negative, something to be avoided at all costs. But what if I told you that, according to some ancient wisdom, affliction can actually be… be...
