In the Babylonian Talmud, we find two statements of Rabbi Tarfon that are parallel to those of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew. It is somewhat surprising, in general, that there’s a...
In this week’s issue of the Jewish Journal, there were not one, but two references to gender in rabbinic literature(!), which is certainly exciting that rabbinic literature is getting some attention in Jewish newspapers. However, I found the description of...
When it comes to lighting candles on Hanukah, the amount of candles lit is now commonly done in an ascending manner according to the night. The original source for this is the following text (bShabbat 21b): תנו רבנן: מצות חנוכה...
For its tenth episode, “The Joy of Text” went with its second ever mini-episode focussing on a Talmudic text. This month’s episode, which was published a week ago, focussed on the following Talmudic text on one of the ways that...
Having written earlier about one rabbi in the Talmud who was recorded as having stated nine religious aspirations, I wanted to briefly look at how the Talmud discusses one of them, in particular. One of them is that his portion is...
There is a fascinating text found in the Babylonian Talmud that I wanted to explore a little bit, share some thoughts, and, hopefully, at a later point in time, have researched it to provide a greater sense of it. Here...
Not infrequently in the Babylonian Talmud is the Hebrew Bible quoted. But how much of it is quoted? Recently, the numbers were crunched over at Sefaria and they came up with the results. While more than a quarter of the...
A seemingly often overlooked text found in the Talmud relating to adultery/cuckoldry is the following text which expands the notion of adultery/cuckoldry (bNiddah 13b): תנא דבי רבי ישמעאל: לא תנאף – לא תהא בך ניאוף בין ביד בין ברגל It...
There is a Talmudic tradition that 24,000 students died in the early part of the second century in the land of Israel all within a springtime period. According to that tradition, they died between Passover and Shavuot, the latter of...
A common midrash that appears in discourse around Purim and especially Shavuot (which is coming up very soon) is that of Rav Avdimi, son of Hama, son of Hasa, as recorded on bShabbat 88a, expounding on Exodus 19:17: וַיִּתְיַצְּבוּ, בְּתַחְתִּית...
