4,331 texts · Page 81 of 91
R. Shimeon b. Yob ai prevented tribulations overtaking the world and therefore no rainbows appeared to warn it of calamity. The prophet Elijah and R. Joshua b. Levi met him and he ...
f. 141a. R. Shimeon b. Yohai and son hid in a cavern for 13 years fearing Roman persecution. One da}f •they saw a fowler catching birds, who was successful only after a voice from ...
The Roman Emperor sent word to the Jewish sages: "Send me a luminary — your wisest man." The sages debated and chose Rabbi Meir, whose very name meant "one who illuminates." He was...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were sailing across the Mediterranean when a terrible storm seized their ship. Winds howled, waves crashed over the deck, and the vessel was driven...
The prophet Elijah — who never died but was taken alive to heaven (2 Kings 2:11) — appears throughout rabbinic literature as a mysterious figure who walks the earth in disguise, te...
A man cleared stones from his own field and threw them onto the public road. A pious man passing by saw this and rebuked him: "Fool, why do you throw stones from a field that is no...
A man earned sixty dinars. He divided them into three equal portions: twenty for food, twenty for his house, and twenty he saved for his children. It was a sensible arrangement — f...
Simeon ben Rabbi forgot to invite Bar Kappara to dinner. The latter wrote on the door: ‘‘After joy death.” Invited afterwards to another dinner, he kept the guests so amused by his...
A Roman official named Hadrakitilios wrote a letter to the Emperor Hadrian about the Jews. "Your Majesty evidently hates the Jews," Hadrakitilios wrote, "because they refuse to con...
Bar Hedya made his living interpreting dreams — and the Talmud (Berakhot 56a) reveals his shameful secret. His interpretations had nothing to do with the dreams themselves. They we...
Ben Dama came to Rabbi Ishmael in a state of great distress. He had experienced a dream so vivid and so disturbing that he could not shake it from his mind. In the dream, he had wa...
A heretic — the Talmud calls him a "Min" — came to Rabbi Ishmael with a series of strange dreams, seeking interpretation. The dreams were vivid, unsettling, full of bizarre imagery...
King Shapur of Persia once asked the sage Shmuel: "Tell me what I will see in my dream tonight." It was a test — could a Jewish sage truly predict what a foreign king would dream? ...
A woman came to Rabbi Eliezer with a dream that troubled her. She described its images, its strange sequences, its unsettling feeling. Rabbi Eliezer listened and then interpreted: ...
Story of R.b. Nahman, who was accused of keeping people away from work for two months, and of detaining them in the village. He fled and was overtaken by the Angel of Death whilst ...
Rabbi Gidal had a practice that scandalized some of his contemporaries. He would sit at the entrance to the women's bathhouse, directing traffic, showing women where to go. Day aft...
Rabbi Yohanan was the most beautiful man in Israel. The Talmud describes his appearance in terms usually reserved for angels — radiant skin, luminous eyes, a face that literally se...
Rabbi Yohanan went to visit Rabbi Elazar, who lay gravely ill in a dark room. The sick sage had been declining for days, his body wasting, his spirit dimming. The room was as dark ...
R. Johanan was one of the last beautiful men of Jerusalem. Rish Lakish, a robber, surprised him in the bath thinking him to be a woman. He was converted to study on the promise of ...
Rabbi Nehemia was a man of simple tastes. He ate plain food, lived modestly, and saw no reason to indulge in luxuries. One day, he invited a well-known gourmand — a man famous for ...
A man came before Rabba and declared: "I am poor, yet every day I eat fattened fowl and drink aged wine." Rabba was skeptical. How could a poor man afford such luxuries? The man ex...
Mar Ukba was a man of extraordinary generosity, but his generosity had one absolute rule: the recipient must never know who gave. Every day, Mar Ukba would slip coins under the doo...
Mar Ukba learned that a certain poor man in his town had once been wealthy — a man accustomed to fine food, comfortable furniture, and the pleasures of an affluent life. Poverty ha...
Rav Huna once sent Rav Sheshet on a mission that neither man took lightly: to consult Anan on a question of law, with the threat of excommunication hanging over Rav Sheshet's head ...
The students of Rabbi Ishmael undertook a task that sounds shocking to modern ears but was, in the ancient world, a contribution to medical and religious knowledge. When a prostitu...
R. Ishmael and R. Elazar b. Azaryah did not act uni- alike while reciting prayers, in order that the pupils should not follow the way of one alone, as they would have done if they ...
Pinhas b.Jari's ass, when stolen by thieves, refused to eat for 3 days because the thieves’ provender had not been tithed. 236 f. 160b. Joshua b. Hananya owned to having been taugh...
Beruria — the brilliant, sharp-tongued wife of Rabbi Meir — encountered Rabbi Yose HaGelili on the road one day. He asked her a simple question, but he asked it in five words when ...
A father prepared a wedding feast for his son. Guests arrived from distant cities. Music filled the courtyard. Wine flowed. The bride was radiant, the groom joyful, and the father'...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was invited to a brit milah — the circumcision ceremony of a newborn child. He came, he prayed, and through the power of his prayer, the life of the infant...
Rabbi Akiba laughed when everyone else wept — and his laughter changed the course of Jewish faith. The first time was in Rome. Rabbi Akiba and his colleagues walked through the str...
The sages would not allow a girl to do as she wanted or to expose herself before the man, who had become lovesick and very ill in consequence. Licentiousness was not to be encourag...
The death of Rabbi Akiba in a Roman prison was one of the most sacred and terrible events in all of Jewish history. The greatest sage of his generation, the man who had laughed on ...
The sages preserved a curious historical note about a girl named Justina, the daughter of Asverus, who was married at the age of six and gave birth to a child at the age of seven. ...
Rabbi Akiba was brought a case that tested the limits of both law and compassion. A girl, only three years old, had been presented to the priestly authorities as a candidate for ri...
The Exempla of the Rabbis preserves a sprawling collection of tales about Solomon and the power of the divine Name. In these stories, Solomon commands demons, builds the Temple wit...
Two brothers lived in Cou$y in the year 893(1). Moses was a scholar and poor and Haim very rich. The latter asked his brother to act as his adviser and he would provide for his fam...
When God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, the scene was unlike anything the universe had ever witnessed. The entire nation of Israel stood at the base of the mountain, and when the v...
A Jewish man who was lame heard a rumor that spread through the cities of the ancient world: an idol in a certain temple was healing the lame. Pagans who could not walk entered the...
A man entrusted a single dinar to a woman for safekeeping. She placed the coin in a jar of flour — a common hiding place in the ancient world — and promptly forgot about it. Days l...
III. 2. A rich man on his death bed, ordered his son never to take an oath. Swindlers came and robbed him of all his property, claiming debts from his father, he refusing to swear....
On a Sabbath day, several children fell into a well. The community was thrown into a terrible dilemma: the Sabbath prohibits most forms of work, including the kinds of physical lab...
IV. 4. A man called Joseph Mokir Shabba (“honourer of the Sabbath") lived next to a rich Parsee. The latter was told that all his property would go to Joseph. He, therefore, sold a...
V. 1. A man on his deathbed commanded his son to cast bread upon the waters. He did it daily and one fish caught it regularly and grew very big and persecuted the other fishes. The...
V. A man fed his father daily with two doves. When asked where he got them, he replied, “Evil—eyed dog, *) From shorter recension B. ed. Jellinek. vide p. 7, § 19. - 147 “ eat and ...
VII. 2. R. Meir on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem used to lodge with Judah the butcher, whose wife looked after him. She died and Judah married a second time and entreated by him Meir...
X. A scholar travelling in a boat was mocked at by his fellow travellers who had asked him where his merchandise was and could not find any in the place he had indicated. On landin...
2. A merchant whilst travelling, is asked by an innkeeper to be allowed to go with him. Near a town they meet a blind man. The merchant gives him something; the other refuses sayin...
