Modern Compilations & Folklore
930 passages1924 CEHebrew / AramaicPublic Domain
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 1 of 20.
The passage opens the Exempla of the Rabbis with a sweeping survey of universal sovereignty across the span of history, naming ten kings who ruled, or will rule, over the whole wor...
The sages taught that ten kings have ruled. Or will rule, over the entire world. The list reads like a history of power itself, stretching from the beginning of time to its end. Fi...
There is a tradition, preserved in the Ma'aseh Book and cited in Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (no. 1, 1924), that ten kings will have ruled over the whole world before history fi...
At the very tail of Moses Gaster's 1924 Exempla of the Rabbis, tucked in among the short sayings that the editor gathered from the diverse Gaster manuscripts, comes a single senten...
Nimrod declared himself a god to be worshipped. He made a round tower of stone planted in the midst of the earth, and placed a throne of cedar on the stone, and upon this one of ir...
A. & B. Abraham & Nimrod. Pirke de R. Eliezer, XXVI. Midr. Hagadol, Gen. Lekh Lekha. Gen. R. 38 § 19. Gen. R. of Moses Hadar- shan to 11, 28 and 46, 28. Horowitz, Eked, I, 40. Jera...
Abraham stepped out of the cave where he had been hidden as an infant, and for the first time saw the world above ground. He looked up and saw the sun climbing, enormous and warm, ...
The emperor Adrianus, the Hadrian of rabbinic memory, commands his army to worship him as a god and boasts that within three years he will capture the Temple. Three philosophers st...
Rebuke not the wicked lest you make an enemy. Having thus spent all his money he went to another town. There a man asked a scribe to write a petition, offer- ding a small coin. The...
This tale, preserved among the Exempla of the Rabbis, recounts the vanity of Hiram, king of Tyre, who set out to imitate the heavens by his own craft. He built seven artificial fir...
Hiram, king of Tyre, was one of the most audacious men in all of scripture. God had given him wealth, beauty, and a lifespan that stretched across centuries, some sages say he live...
Hiram, king of Tyre, the Phoenician ruler who had once sent cedar and skilled craftsmen to his friend Solomon (1 Kings 5:1), grew so rich that he tried to build heaven for himself....
The Talmud in Gittin tells one of the strangest stories about King Solomon. The king, in his pride, once compelled Ashmedai, the chief of demons, to serve him. Through a chain of t...
Alexander the Great tied two eagles together with meat in front of them, so they fly upwards with him until his eyelids dropped from the cold. He then descends in a glass box to th...
Alexander Legend. J. Aboda Zara, III, 1. Midr. Psalms, 93, 6. Numb. R. ch. 13. cf. Ps. Callisthenes II, ch. 38 and 41. cf. Hebrew Alexander Legend ed. Gas ter, Romance of Alexander...
There is an old rabbinic legend about Alexander the Great that the Ma'aseh Book and other medieval collections loved to retell. The sources are summarized in the 1924 anthology The...
Alexander of Macedon, conqueror of empires, traveled beyond the known world and arrived at a place called Afriki, a kingdom in the far south. He had come, as he came everywhere, hu...
When Alexander the Great conquered the known world, he did not merely defeat armies, he rearranged the claims of nations. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 91a) records that after his conquest...
The story of Solomon's daughter and the bastard, the mamzer, is one of the most poignant tales in rabbinic literature. The Midrash (Tanhuma, Introduction) tells how Solomon, despit...
In the days when Alexander the Great marched through Asia, the Ishmaelites came before him with a lawsuit. They claimed Canaan. They were descended from Abraham, they argued; the I...
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), preserved from the Ma'aseh Book, tells a courtroom tale set in the court of Alexander. The people of Afriki, the descendants of Canaan who ha...
The Roman Emperor once challenged the Jewish sages with a question designed to mock their God. "Your God is described as all-powerful," the Emperor said, "a mighty warrior, a king ...
The emperor of Rome once put a mocking question to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananyah. "Why is your God compared to a lion? Any knight in my army can kill a lion. What kind of comparison ...
The Emperor once invited the Jewish sages to a grand banquet and posed what he thought was an impossible challenge. "I wish to prepare a feast for your God," he announced. "Tell me...
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, ...
This brief tale belongs to the Exempla of the Rabbis, a collection of short moral stories that Moses Gaster edited and published in 1924 from manuscript sources. It preserves a fam...
The sages taught that God is not like any light that human beings have ever seen. The sun can be blocked by a cloud. A lamp can be extinguished by the wind. Even the stars fade whe...
The daughter of the Emperor of Rome sought to mock the faith of Rabbi Joshua, one of the sages who often stood before Roman power to defend the teachings of Israel. The rabbis had ...
The Sefer HaMa'asiyot, the Book of Exempla, compiled by Moses Gaster in 1924 from medieval Jewish manuscripts, preserves a short and sharp story about the daughter of a Roman emper...
This brief disputation comes from the Exempla of the Rabbis, a collection of rabbinic tales gathered by Moses Gaster in 1924, and it preserves a classic encounter between a Roman e...
A Roman emperor, the Talmud does not always specify which one, once summoned the Jewish sages to answer a question that he believed would expose their faith as foolishness. "You sa...
A Roman emperor once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah a question designed to be unanswerable: do the dead truly return to life? "They have become dust," the emperor said. "How can d...
The Emperor asks R. Gamliel “If there is a God in the world why does He not show Himself and why does He not speak direct to His creatures so that they might respect Him the more. ...
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...
This tale from the Exempla of the Rabbis, the medieval collection edited by Moses Gaster, stages a debate between the Roman emperor and Rabbi Akiva, the great sage of the second ce...
The sages of Israel taught that God does not scatter wisdom like rain falling on barren ground. He gives wisdom only to those who already possess it, to those who have labored to c...
The Roman Emperor had a habit of baiting Rabbi Akiva with the sharpest question he could devise. "Why is it said," he asked once, "that God gives wisdom to the wise, and not to the...
The emperor Adrianus, the Roman ruler the sages knew as a fierce adversary of Israel, once put a challenge to Rabbi Joshua. He asked why God's name is not mentioned in the last fiv...
The Emperor Hadrian once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah a sharp question. “Why is the Name of God mentioned only in the first five of the Ten Commandments, and not in the la...
Turnus Rufus and Akiba dispute about the preeminence of the Sabbath. Rufus holds high office, having been appointed by the Emperor. Akiba says that the Sabbath has also been appoin...
Sabbath Pre-Eminence. Sanhedrin (the supreme rabbinic court), f. 65 a, b. B. Batra, 6. Sota, V. cf. Sota, 31, s. v. Gadol. J. Berakhot, IX. Pesikta R, ch. 23, f. 119b. Tanh. Exod. ...
Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Judea in the early second century, once pulled Rabbi Akiva into a debate on the Shabbat. Rufus opened with the move he thought would win. "I hol...
A Roman noblewoman, called a Matrona in the sources, came to Rabbi Joshua (Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananyah, one of the leading sages of the generation after the destruction of the Sec...
The sages taught that God has a task that occupies Him constantly, matchmaking. The Talmud records that a Roman matron once challenged a rabbi: "Your God created the world in six d...
A Roman matrona, a noblewoman who liked to corner rabbis with hard questions, came to Rabbi Joshua and asked him something she thought he could not answer. "If God finished His wor...
A Roman noblewoman, a Matrona, as the sages called her, came to a rabbi with a question that seemed trivial but concealed a deep truth. "Why," she asked, "is the letter Lamed talle...
A questioner remembered in this tale as Kleopatra came before Rabbi Meir, one of the foremost sages of the generation after the destruction of the Temple, with a question meant to ...
Queen Cleopatra, not the famous Egyptian, but a later queen by the same name, posed a question to Rabbi Meir that had puzzled both scholars and common people: "When the dead rise a...
