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Cover of "The Legends of the Jews: From t...

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Some time around 2001, while surfing the web for religious writing, I came upon a website called www.sacred-texts.com. I found a trove of incredible texts from Judaism, Christianity and every known religion in the history of mankind.

Having been born Jewish, I had always had an interest to read the Talmud and Midrash and compare them to the current available english translations of the Old Testament. Much to my dismay I never learned to read Hebrew although I did spend the first 3 years of elementary school at Anshe Emet Jewish Day School in Chicago which required Hebrew language study as part of the curriculum. I have always dreamt of learning Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek that would allow me to read the Vulgate and other old texts in the original languages.

After some time away from visiting the website I found a link to sacred-texts in some materials and paid the site another vists. I learned that the founder of the site died recently and thank God someone was able to keep the site alive. During this recent visit I came across The Legends of the Jews translated and compiled by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg in 1909.

The Legends of the Jews is compiled chronologically like the Old Testament so it starts with The Creation of the World and ends with the Book of Esther.

If you have never read the Talmud or Midrash, you will find much more in these writings. What you will find in the pages of this Haggada is scripture as it is written in the Old Testament, scripture stories as they are told in the Talmud and Midrash and stories from the oral history of Judaism. An example is the wonderful story of how God decided what letter to start the Book of Genesis in The Alphabet. (see Creation of the World.

A Preface by Louis Ginzberg along with the Contents can be found at the top of the blog called “Haggada”. To read the Haggada, refer to the Categories on the right margin of this page.

I trust you will enjoy reading these wonderful texts. If you wish to be notified when I add additional chapters or other texts to this blog, please subscribe and emails will automatically be sent to you with the updates.

Please feel free to add your commentary at the bottom of each posting.

Shalom

Steven Douglas, Blogger

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