United States or Cocos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
These characters served for many years as weapons in the hands of the combatants enlisted in the army arrayed for "the struggle between light and darkness." The waves of the Renaissance and the Reformation sweeping over Russian Jewry reached even the sacred precincts of the synagogues, the batte midrashim, and the yeshibot. The Tree of Life College in Volozhin became a foster-home of Haskalah.
Like the poimaniki, the poor and the orphaned were compelled, or induced, to fill the class-rooms shunned by the rich and respectable, and though the Government not only condemned the ancient Hebrew institutions, but declared the twenty thousand teachers who imparted instruction in them to be outlaws and criminals, the melammedim pursued their vocation as ever, and the hadarim, Talmud Torahs, yeshibot, and batte midrashim swarmed with students of the prohibited learning.
It forms an ingredient of the smoke which exorcises the demon that is troubling the heroine Sarah. I have not come across any passage in the Jewish Midrashim that ascribes to "heart-eating," even in folk-lore, the virtue of bestowing wisdom.
His biographers make him quote them according to the translations in the Aramean tongue; his principles of exegesis, as far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much resembled those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the Targums and the Midrashim. The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the synagogues.
Not everyone is possessed of the postmen assigned in Midrashim to King Solomon, who pressed demons into his service, and forced them to carry his letters wheresoever he willed. Chasdai experienced considerable difficulty in transmitting his famous letter to the king of the Chazars, and that despite his position of authority in the Spanish State.
Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which Rabbi Jose bore so conspicuous a part is repeated in the Midrash Rabba alone not less than four times, besides appearing in other Midrashim. It will be as well, then, to reproduce the passage in a summarized form, for it may be fairly described as the locus classicus on the subject.
Alexander the Great became a notable figure in the Talmud and Midrashim, and many a marvellous legend was told about his passing visit to Jerusalem during his march to Egypt.
But the great mass of the Haggadah, the Pesikta, the Mekilta, and the other Midrashim, were all later compilations, some of them as late as the fifth and the sixth century. Are we to say, then, that where they correspond to Philo they show his influence? At first this would appear the natural conclusion.
Yet Philo, save in one doubtful case which will be noticed, is not mentioned by any Jewish writer between Josephus in the first and Azariah dei Rossi in the sixteenth century. The compilers of the Midrashim and the Yalkut, the philosophers of the Dark and Middle Ages, finally the Cabbalists, are continually reminiscent of his doctrines, but they do not mention his works or his existence.
If, on the other hand, I were really to make clear the matters that require explanation, the result would not be suitable for the masses, for whom those treatises were intended. Besides, those Midrashim when read by an ignorant man are harmless because to such a person nothing is impossible. And if they are read by a person who is learned and worthy, one of two things is likely to happen.
Word Of The Day