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Rabbi Judah the Prince — redactor of the Mishnah around 200 CE — and his colleague Rabbi Chiya once found themselves stuck on a point of halakhah. They had forgotten a teaching, or...
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was one of the Ten Martyrs executed during the Hadrianic persecutions in the second century CE. Rome had decreed that teaching Torah in public was a capi...
A later midrashic legend reimagines Joab, the great general of King David, on one of his hardest campaigns. He had been hurled by the Israelites into a city called Kinsari, a forti...
Rabbi Abraham of Ashkelon was known in his city for the regularity of his prayers. He never missed the appointed hours; his Shacharit, Minchah, and Maariv were as steady as the sun...
A dying father called his only son to the bedside and left him two pieces of advice: occupy yourself with Torah study, and give generously to tzedakah. The inheritance he handed on...
In the house of Rabbi Elazar a strange filly was born. Every attendant who came near it was killed. Rabbi Elazar, unable to tame or destroy the beast, presented it to the king. At ...
Two brothers hated each other. Their father, growing old, asked each of them privately why. The elder said he did not know the reason — only that the hatred was so deep he would gl...
Rabbi Meir, on his yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, used to lodge with Judah the butcher, whose wife took loving care of him. One year Judah's wife died. Judah remarried, and when R...
A young boy was traveling by ship when a terrible storm overtook them. The other passengers were wealthy merchants. Each one reached into his bag and took out a small idol — some c...
A poor man, driven by his weeping wife and starving children, went to the marketplace in despair. He had nothing to sell and no trade to offer. He prayed to God for help, and the p...
A great scholar who spent all his days teaching Torah had a son late in life. He cherished the boy and kept him inside the study house, afraid that the world would distract him. Hi...
Rav Huna, the third-century head of the Babylonian academy at Sura, owned a vineyard and hired laborers to work it. One harvest day he refused to share wine with the men who were w...
The sages taught a secret about Friday night that changes the way you walk home from synagogue. Every Jew is escorted by two angels — one good, one evil — who follow him from the B...
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day (Deuteronomy 4:4). The verse is beautiful until you read four lines later: For the Lord thy God is...
When Abraham left Ur Kasdim and the idol-shops of his father Terach, he did not simply walk away. He pitched a tent, and the tent became a doorway. The rabbis imagined the scene th...
The Talmud tells of four sages who entered Pardes — the orchard — and only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Rashi read the story literally: they ascended to heaven in ecstatic vision. Bu...
There was a season when Solomon was not Solomon. The demon king Ashmedai had stolen his signet ring — the one engraved with the Ineffable Name — and taken his place on the throne o...
Ten measures of every quality came down into the world, said the sages in Kiddushin 49b, and nine of each were claimed by one nation while the rest of humanity had to share the las...
Somewhere beyond the known world, the sages said, there runs a river that refuses to behave like a river. It is called the Sambatyon, and it does not flow with water. It rushes wit...
The sages defended Rav Saphra for his devotion to Oral Torah over Scripture, and in doing so they staked out one of Judaism's most startling claims. Tradition, they argued, is not ...
There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had ...
Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — known simply as Rabbi, the Holy One, the redactor of the Mishnah — sat one evening at his table with two of his youngest guests: Yehudah and Chiskiyah, the s...
Four rabbis were on the road to Rome. Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva traveled together, and while they were still one hundred and twenty ...
There is a moment in Chullin 90b where Rava calls out his fellow rabbi for exaggeration. The Mishnah had just described the heap of ashes that accumulated on the Temple altar — som...
Rabbi Simlai delivered one of the most famous homilies in the Talmud (Makkot 23b). Moses, he said, was given 613 commandments at Sinai. And the number is not arbitrary. Three hundr...
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God — who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant...
The moment when Joseph's brothers recognized him in the palace at Memphis was, according to the midrash, more violent than the Torah lets on. Some of the brothers, the sages said, ...
When Solomon completed the First Temple and prepared to carry the Ark of the Covenant through the main gates, he opened his mouth to sing the words of Psalm 24: Lift up your heads,...
The kabbalists posed a problem that sounds simple until you sit with it: no one is truly perfect unless he has observed all 613 mitzvot. And yet — who has ever done so? Not even Mo...
The sages said of Rabbi Tarfon that though he was a very wealthy man, he was not generous according to his means. There is a gentle reproach in that line. A man who could give thou...
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin taught in the name of Rabbi Levi that when the Holy One, Blessed be He, prepared to fashion the first woman, He held a quiet council with Himself about an...
Four small teachings, stitched together like beads on a string, preserve what the sages thought mattered most in daily life. Rava said the man who pursues wisdom will receive the b...
When Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah into exile, his officers wanted the captives dead. These men are men of death, they said. They refuse to obey the king's order. Execute them. One ...
The Second Temple had a section called the Ezrat Nashim, the Court of Women — a gallery where women could gather for the great ceremonies while men stood on the lower floor. During...
A Roman emperor once challenged Rabban Gamliel with a question that sounds modern. If there is a God in the world, why does He not reveal Himself directly? Why not speak face to fa...
A Jewish man named Nathan traveled to an island and was on the brink of committing a serious sin with a famous courtesan. The room was prepared. The door was closed. He was about t...
Two prominent rabbis, Rav Huna and Rav Chisda, once refused to return the greeting of a colleague named Gniba. Perhaps they considered him insufficiently respectful, or perhaps the...
When the Roman siege tightened around Jerusalem in 70 CE, wealth stopped meaning anything. Doeg ben Yosef was a rich man, and in the final weeks of the siege he stood in the street...
Elazar, son of Shimon bar Yochai, had inherited from his mystical father not only the secrets of Torah but a body of extraordinary strength. The Talmud says his belly was so large ...
Rabbi Tarfon was walking through his own vineyard one day when his farm supervisor — who did not recognize him — assumed he was a trespasser and gave him a beating. Tarfon said not...
Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair was one of the strictest ascetics in the Talmud. He never touched another person's bread. He would not allow his donkey to eat untithed fodder — the animal i...
Two of Rabbi Meir's sons died on Shabbat afternoon. They had been in the house while their father was at the synagogue leading the congregation. When Rabbi Meir came home, he asked...
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa was a miracle-worker from the Galilee in the first century, known for a faith so exact that his prayers came true almost by default. He lived in poverty. He ...
A student once came to Rabbi Preida and asked him to teach a particular passage of Mishnah. Rabbi Preida sat with him and went through it slowly. The student did not understand. Th...
A woman had been married for ten years and could not conceive. Her husband, following the ruling that a childless marriage of ten years permits divorce, declared his intention to s...
In the town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, a dangerous group practiced sorcery. Among their victims was Chananya, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua. They cast a spell on him — the ...
The Roman Emperor Hadrian outlawed the teaching of Torah after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE. Rabbi Akiva refused to stop. He gathered students in public and taugh...
Hillel the Elder — the Babylonian immigrant who rose to lead the Jewish people in the first century BCE — had eighty students by the end of his life. The Talmud in Sukkah 28a divid...
