4,331 texts · Page 86 of 91
The birth of Moses was no ordinary event. According to the ancient chronicles preserved in Jerahmeel and the writings of Josephus, the arrival of Israel's greatest prophet was prec...
When Moses and Aaron walked into Pharaoh's palace to demand the release of the Israelite slaves, they were not entering a building. They were entering a fortress designed to intimi...
King Solomon, the wisest of all kings, once taught a lesson about wealth and poverty using the simplest of demonstrations: two meals. The first meal was served in the house of a ri...
The sages of the Talmud debated a question that still echoes through the ages: at what age may a child be considered ready for marriage? The discussion in Tractate Niddah (45a) pre...
A woman came before Rabbi Akiba with a question that touched on ritual purity. She had found a blemish on her body and feared that it rendered her impure, which would separate her ...
Judith Legend. Sabbath, ch. 2. Megillat Taanit, ch. 6. Orehot Hayim, f. 118 a. Kolbo § 44, f. 43d. R. Samuel in Tosafot to Megilla, f. 4a. Nissim, f. 22 b. Nissim to Alfasi. Ben At...
Elazar ben Dordaya was a man consumed by desire. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 17a) records that he was so enslaved to his passions that he traveled across seven rivers to visit a parti...
A group of pagan astrologers — men who read the stars and claimed to know the future — once came before a Jewish court. They had traveled from distant lands, driven by a question t...
Rabbi Akiba once invited his students to a meal. The first course arrived half-cooked—the lentils were hard, the bread was doughy, and the vegetables were barely warm. Most of the ...
Hillel the Elder was famous for his patience. The Talmud records that no one ever saw him angry, no one ever heard him raise his voice, and no situation — however absurd or provoca...
Hillel the Elder had eighty students. This number is repeated across multiple sources — Baba Batra (134a), Sukkah (28a), and Avot de Rabbi Nathan (chapters 14 and 29) — with a cons...
The philosophers of Alexandria were famous throughout the ancient world for their cleverness, their logical traps, and their determination to humiliate any thinker who could not ma...
Rabbi Akiba was once traveling by ship when a terrible storm struck. The waves rose like mountains, the wind tore at the sails, and the vessel broke apart beneath the passengers' f...
The Talmud (Shabbat 33b) records a conversation that nearly got three sages killed — and did send two of them into hiding for thirteen years. Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yose, and Rabbi Sh...
The Talmud in tractate Baba Batra (8a) records a teaching about almsgiving that medieval Jewish communities took very seriously — so seriously that it became the foundation for how...
The rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) debated endlessly over the mystery of how God created the world — and what existed before creation began. According to ...
The Leviathan — the great sea creature that God created on the fifth day — was so enormous that the sages struggled to find words adequate to describe it. The Talmud (Bava Batra 74...
The Talmud in Sanhedrin (f. 97a) tells of a place called the City of Truth — a settlement where no one had ever spoken a lie. Every word uttered within its walls was honest. Every ...
The Roman emperor Antoninus had a private and unusual friendship with Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, the compiler of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law). They met in secret and d...
After Abraham sent Ishmael away into the wilderness with his mother Hagar, the patriarch did not forget his firstborn son. According to Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer and the Midrash Haga...
The sage known for his extraordinary carefulness was Rav, and his caution extended even to the smallest details of daily life. The Talmud in Hullin (95b) preserves a teaching about...
In the days when the Israelites brought their first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem, a remarkable custom prevailed. The wealthy arrived with their offerings displayed in baskets ...
High Priest Simeon & Alexander. Taanit, f. 7 b, 88 b. Meg. Taanit, ch. 9, 21 st Kislev. Yoma, f. 69 a. cf. 61 a. cf. J. Berakhot, IV, 1. cf. Pesikta, Parah. Pesikta Zutta to Exod. ...
The sages taught that wealth spent on Torah study is the only wealth that endures. The Midrash (Pesikta 28, Leviticus Rabbah 30) tells of a man who possessed great fortune and face...
Onkelos — known in some traditions as Aquila — was a Roman nobleman, a nephew of the Emperor himself, who converted to Judaism. His conversion scandalized the imperial court and be...
The martyrdom of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon is among the most harrowing passages in all of rabbinic literature. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 17b-18a) describes his execution with the k...
When the Romans decreed that teaching Torah was punishable by death, Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon did not stop. He gathered his students in the open, placed a Torah scroll in his lap...
Beruria, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, had a sister who was captured by the Romans and sent to a brothel in the city. Beruria turned to her husband and pleaded with him to resc...
Of all the questions that have haunted the Jewish people across the centuries, none has burned hotter than this one: when will the Messiah come? The Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin (3...
Bar Kappara was walking along the seashore when he encountered the survivors of a shipwreck — strangers, soaked and shivering, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had...
A desperately poor man had nothing — no food, no money, no prospects. He prayed to God for help, but heaven seemed silent. Then the prophet Elijah appeared to him, as Elijah so oft...
Three Clever Tricks. Midr. Lament. I. Lament. R. I § 4. Yalk. Sip. IV, p. 86. Maase Buch No. 187. Helvicus, Historien, I, ch. 21, p. 91. Grunbaum, Jiid. Dtsch. Chrest. p. 428. Tend...
Joab, the mighty general of King David, figures in rabbinic legend as a warrior of such ferocity that even the angels feared him. The Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) pre...
A drunkard wandered into a cemetery — the one place in the ancient world where no sane person would voluntarily spend the night. The dead were there, and so were the spirits, and s...
The rabbis spoke often of two invisible forces that shape every human encounter: the good eye and the evil eye. The Maase Buch (No. 196) preserves a tale that illustrates the diffe...
Demon in Tree. Ben Atar, No. 15. Maase Buch No. 190. Ben Gorion II, p. 203, 353- cf. Aesop, Fab. 21. Babrius, Fables, No. 1 19. Benfey, Pantschat. I, 476 f; II, 321. Finamore, Trad...
A dying father left his entire estate to one of his sons, but several men came forward each claiming to be the rightful heir. The question reached the courts: which one was the rea...
A Jew once owned a cow that refused to work on the Sabbath. The story, preserved in the Midrash (Pesikta Rabbati 14) and the Maase Buch, became one of the most beloved animal tales...
Wicked-Brother-in-Law. Holeh Tamim u. Poel Sedek. • m Eisenstein, Oser, P. 343. Husin, Maasim Tobim, No. 2. Maase Buch No. 204. Levi, R. E. J. XXXIII, p. 234 ff. Ben Gorion I, p. 2...
The sages taught that God created no creature without a purpose — not the serpent, not the spider, not the scorpion. The story preserved under the title "Saved from Serpent" illust...
Rabbi Meir had a principle: never trust a person whose name contains the word for evil. The Talmud (Yoma 83b) tells the story of how this principle was tested — and proven devastat...
Frog Princess. Eisenstein, Oser, p. 344. Maase Buch No. 143. Helvicus, Historien I, ch. 14, p. 64. Eisenmenger, I, p. 399. Tendlau, Fellmeier, No. 1. Griinbaum, Jiid. Dtsch. Chrest...
Seven Good Years when Young. Midr. Zutta (Ruth) ed. Buber, p. 55. Nissim, f. 36b. Yalk. II, § 607. Rappaport, R. Nissim. Husin, Maase Nissim, No. 33. Yalk. Sip. Ill, pp. 107, no. c...
Rabbi Akiba was the greatest sage of his generation, but even he could not escape the anxieties of a father. The astrologers had warned him: his daughter was destined to die on her...
A desperately poor woman came before the prophet Elijah with nothing in the world except a single coin. She had no family to support her, no trade to sustain her, and no prospect o...
The tale of "Wickedness Defeated" follows a pattern known across many cultures: a contest between cleverness and brute evil, in which the clever hero outwits a far more powerful ad...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan to scout the territory before the Israelite invasion, ten of them came back terrified. "We saw giants there," they reported. "T...
The Midrash (Pesikta Rabbati 19, Tanhuma Pinehas) tells a cautionary tale about gluttony — the sin of making the stomach into a god, of subordinating every other value to the next ...
