Magdalene Midrash
מדרש מגדליתא
Encountering Maryam,
Beloved Companion of Jesus,
within her original Jewish world
Semitic love mysticism and temple prophetic traditions. Inner wisdom and the path of the perceptive heart. Eros as sacred practice. Embodied devotion, beyond religious frameworks.
About
Shlama and welcome.
This is a project of devotion, born from one who has been loved much, as a gift for the one who loved even more.
Magdalene Midrash is a multimedia exploration of the life of Maryam—a passionate and visionary Jewish woman who loved the world’s most famous rabbi, Jesus. We know her epithet in English as Magdalene, which comes from the Greek. But the same word in her native Aramaic is Magdalita, which can be translated as Exalted One.What is shared here about her life and wisdom is known through the heart—and the visionary perception that flows from it—not through the mind. May the witness that appears on these pages be blessed, broken, and shared with all who hunger for clear seeing and truly divine love.Readers are invited to envision and encounter Maryam Magdalene not through Western Christianity, Messianic ideologies, feminism, or esoterica … but as a woman deeply shaped by a prophetic, visionary, heart-centered approach to the covenantal Jewish path.This site houses overviews and links to each offering, with the full multimedia experience living on Substack.
Project vision
Magdalene Midrash is anchored by a series of multimedia articles that unite devotion, artistry, and scholarship.
The exploration is further enriched by periodic intuitive wisdom teachings received through encounters between Magdalene and a modern scribe, within the innermost chamber of her heart — the place Jesus once called “the Kingdom of Heaven.”Such personal transmissions were common in Israelite and early jewish mysticism, and became so again in the early centuries of the Jesus movement. They have continued throughout history — albeit in subtler ways — even after the early rabbis and patristic fathers redirected their respective communities away from visionary pursuits, toward text-based methods of perceiving.The primary aim of Magdalene Midrash is to shift the story of this pivotal, visionary woman out of two contexts vying for "power" over her narrative: traditional Christianity, which downplays or obscures her, and modern feminist spirituality, which seeks to install her as the true successor of Jesus.Exploring her wisdom within her own lived context of first-century Judaea and Galilee is a move meant to sidestep narratives rooted in later religious imagination and power-brokering. By unbinding Magdalene from the need to be a scapegoat, or a symbol "feminine power," we allow ourselves the chance to truly listen as she speaks.And yes, two thousand years later, she does still speak.As a teacher.As a lover.As a woman.And as a walker between worlds.The deeper aim of this project is the modern scribe's own recovery and embodiment of a five-thousand-year-old Semitic field of erotic love mysticism in which Magdalene lives and moves. This field forms the inner engine of Jesus' message and Magdalene's witness, and later shows up again in a multiplicity of forms across Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.Magdalene’s path was likely one of many relational, deeply interior, and difficult-to-institutionalize expressions of the Jesus tradition that did not remain visible through the doctrinal consolidation campaigns of early patristic leadership. Often labeled “gnostic,” these streams of wisdom may be better understood as distinctly Semitic mysticisms — heirs, in particular, to earlier visionary Jewish schools such as the Merkava mystics.Though Magdalene’s path did not endure in public form, I believe it has always remained accessible to those who sincerely desire to “see with the heart.”This work consciously honors the Jewish context of Maryam and her teacher, beloved, and rabbi Jesus — a context that has often been minimized, overlooked, complicated, or obscured within later traditions.Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear ... let them be blessed.
Latest midrash
Read the full midrash for each preview on Substack:
16 April 2026
Return to (Magdalene's) place
Beyond religion, feminism, and esoterica ... and back to her perceptive heart
In the earliest preserved book of Jewish mysticism, long before Kabbalah had made its mark upon the world, we find a stunning teaching on the nature of the heart—and how to return, again and again, to that place of inner stillness. For me, Mary Magdalene is that place ...
Share your heart
If you would like to share a thought, personal experience, or question with the scribe of Magdalene Midrash, please contact her at:[email protected]Responses will be returned as she is able, with priority given to messages shared in a spirit of חִסְדָּא (chisda) in Aramaic or חֶסֶד (chesed) in Hebrew. That is, lovingkindness.