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Elisha ben Abuyah had once been one of the greatest scholars of his generation, a colleague of Rabbi Akiba. Then he turned away from the tradition so completely that the rabbis sto...
A man walked into a public eating house and sat down to eat. Before sitting, he neglected to perform netilat yadayim, the ritual washing of the hands that observant Jews perform be...
A man in a Jewish town conceived an intention to commit adultery. He approached a woman who was not his wife and arranged to meet her secretly at a set hour in a set place. The Exe...
Rabbi Hananyah taught a puzzle that his students were expected to unravel. "Some children feed their parents badly," he said, "and still go to Paradise. Others feed their parents w...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were aboard a ship when a storm drove them far out into the open ocean. The wind pushed them into waters no Jew had reason to visit. Rabbi Eliezer,...
Rabbi Nehemiah was a humble man and a simple eater. He kept a plain table. He served plain food. One day he invited a man to share his meal, and the man accepted. The guest was a g...
A young man fell in love with a young woman of his town. His feelings were so intense that he became physically ill. He stopped eating. He grew feverish. His family feared he would...
Two astrologers were sent on a delegation to Rabbi Gamliel in the town of Usha. Their mission was to study Jewish law from its source, to examine it in detail, and to report back t...
After Abraham had sent his son Ishmael away to live with his mother Hagar, Ishmael settled in the wilderness and married a Moabite wife. Years passed. Abraham wanted to see how his...
A Roman noblewoman, a matrona, came to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta with a question. She had been reading the book of Genesis, and she was curious about the birth of Rebecca's twins. "Wh...
Elijah the prophet and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi traveled together for a time, and Elijah agreed to be his companion on one condition: the rabbi must ask no questions. Rabbi Yehoshua...
A man named Yochanan sat at the bedside of his dying father. The father made one strange request. "When I am gone, go to the marketplace on a day you choose, and whatever is the fi...
Pinhas ben Yair was a second-century rabbi remembered for an unnerving combination of piety and practical wisdom. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, and stories abou...
Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, the great twelfth-century Spanish Jewish scholar, once wanted to know who his equal might be in the world. He was told: Maimonides. He set out at once to fi...
In one Jewish town, the leaders of the community had developed a custom of carrying a Torah scroll with them when they went to meet the king on ceremonial visits. The Torah in its ...
A group of children in a Jewish village were playing on Shabbat. As the sun rose higher over the day of rest, they wandered too close to the edge of an old well and fell in. The we...
A wicked man lay on his deathbed. He had lived a long life of greed. He had never given charity. He had never sent food to a poor neighbor. His door had remained closed against eve...
A woman in a certain town had a reputation for extraordinary piety. She visited every household in which a woman had gone into labor. She prayed by the bedside. She comforted the m...
A pious man on a journey found a cave in the mountains. He entered. Inside was a small pool of water, and behind it, a narrower dark inner chamber. He stepped into the inner chambe...
A pious man in a certain town gave charity every day to the poor. The townspeople hated him for it. They passed a decree that anyone who gave charity would be cast into the sea or ...
A man in a certain Jewish town had produced a good harvest. His cellar filled with casks of oil pressed from his olives and wine fermented from his grapes. The harvest was private....
When Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai lay dying, his disciples came to gather at his bedside. They expected composure from the man they called the Light of Israel, the Pillar of the Right...
On the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham threw open his tents and invited every household in the land. It was meant as a celebration, but rumor crawled in with the guests. Whispers pas...
There are three, the sages teach, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, singles out by name and calls virtuous. The first is the unmarried man who lives in a great city and does not si...
The sages taught that four things cancel an evil decree sealed in Heaven, and they built each proof from Scripture itself. The first is tzedakah, the righteous gift. "Righteousness...
King Solomon needed the Shamir, a creature no larger than a barley grain but strong enough to split any stone, because the Torah forbade iron tools on the Temple's stones. To find ...
The prophet Joel called him "the hidden one," and the sages took the phrase at its full weight. "I will remove far from you the hidden one, and I will drive him into a land barren ...
A devoted couple in the Galilee had lived together for years without a child. Finally the husband came to Rabbi Shimon and said they had agreed to separate, since the marriage had ...
Caesar once said to Rabbi Tanchum, "Come, let us become one people." The rabbi answered calmly. "Very well. But we are circumcised, and we cannot simply become as you are. If, howe...
In the Temple service, everyone bowed thirteen times, corresponding to the thirteen shofar-shaped collection boxes and the thirteen tables arrayed in the sanctuary. Yet those who b...
Midrash Rabbah on Deuteronomy preserves a strange detail about the fall of the First Temple. When the Babylonian conquerors carried away the holy vessels, they did not carry away t...
Scripture says that Jacob's family went down to Egypt numbering seventy souls (Genesis 46:27). When the sages sat down to count the names listed in the chapter, they reached only s...
The Talmud counts carefully. King David composed one hundred and three psalms, and only after the hundred and third did he allow himself to utter the word Hallelujah. What made him...
The sages collected sharp observations about who people tend to be and why. Most donkey drivers, they said, are rough with their customers, but most sailors are pious, because anyo...
The sages were debating whether a certain oven, built in sections and joined with sand, could become ritually unclean. Rabbi Eliezer ruled it pure. The majority ruled it impure. He...
The sages loved to measure the enemies of Israel, because their sheer size made the victory more astonishing. When Sennacherib the Assyrian invaded Judah, he came with forty-five t...
When Esau came back from the hunt and saw that Jacob had taken the blessing, he plotted his revenge quietly. The sages, reading the reunion years later in Genesis 33, noticed that ...
The prophet Ezekiel writes, "I have set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations, and countries are round about her" (Ezekiel 5:5). Taken in its plain sense, the verse places the holy...
Rav Pinchas pointed out that King David called five times upon the Holy One to arise in the book of Psalms. "Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God" (Psalms 3:7). "Arise, O Lord, in Your...
A traditional prayer of personal return, drawn from the anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings, places the worshiper on his knees before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "E...
The sages taught that when a person stands at the judgment seat of the Holy One after death, six questions are put to the soul. They are not trick questions. They are the exam the ...
Before he launched his final assault on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused to consult the omens. He was a king of his age, and the practice of his age was belomancy, divination by arrows...
The anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings preserve a parable about five sets of passengers who embark on a long sea voyage. When the ship puts in at a beautiful island midway t...
A Roman emperor once boasted to Rabbi Joshua ben Chananiah that he wished to throw a banquet large enough to entertain the God of Israel. The rabbi looked at him gravely and said, ...
A gentile heard about the honor paid to the High Priest in Jerusalem and decided he wanted the office for himself. He came first to Shammai and asked to convert on the condition th...
The students of Rabbi Akiva were traveling along a road when a band of robbers fell in with them. The bandits were watching closely to see which way the students were heading so th...
There was once a farmer who paid his tithes with scrupulous care. Every year, on the appointed seasons, he set aside the priestly portion, the Levitical tenth, and the poor-tithe, ...
When Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, called the Great, lay dying, he gathered his students for a last round of teachings that has the quality of prophecy more than of instruction. He l...
