930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 11 of 20.
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 sages of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) asked a question that looks simple at first, but opens onto infinity: where does all the water in the rivers go? Every r...
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,...
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, test...
A Roman governor once made the acquaintance of the prophet Elijah. The meeting changed him. Elijah persuaded him to take the huge wealth he had amassed in office and, instead of sq...
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 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 short, bitter parable preserved as Gaster's exemplum No. 210 teaches the kind of lesson a Jew is meant to carry with him into the street. A man was clearing his field of stones. ...
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, fr...
This cluster of short tales from the Exempla of the Rabbis preserves vivid scenes from the world of the Sages. In the first, Simeon ben Rabbi, son of the great Rabbi Judah the Prin...
Bar Kappara was known for his wit, his learning, and his ability to make even the most solemn occasions lively. The Talmud (Nedarim 50b-51a) records what happened when he was invit...
The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 27b) preserves a disturbing account of the dangers that healing spells could pose to the rabbis. Ben Dama, the nephew of Rabbi Ishmael, was bitten by a ser...
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 s...
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...
A Roman official named Hadrakitilios wrote a troubled letter to the Emperor Hadrian. "Clearly the God of the Jews hates me," he wrote. "I do not circumcise myself as the Saracens d...
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 wer...
Bar Hedya was a professional dream interpreter in the Talmudic era, and the Talmud (Berakhot 56a) reveals his scandalous method: he interpreted dreams based not on their content bu...
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...
Rabbi Ishmael was known as a master of dream-interpretation. Two students with identical dreams could come to him and walk away with opposite readings, because Ishmael understood t...
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 t...
A min, a heretic, an opponent of the Rabbis' tradition, came to Rabbi Yishmael with a stack of strange dreams he wanted interpreted. He had clearly hoped that the Rabbi would play ...
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? S...
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? S...
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: ...
A woman came to Rabbi Eliezer with a dream she could not understand. She described it in detail, the images, the sequence, the feeling of it. And asked the great sage what it meant...
A woman came to Rabbi Eliezer with a dream. She described what she had seen in the night. Rabbi Eliezer listened carefully and said: "You will bear a male child." In time, the woma...
This tale from the Exempla of the Rabbis, the anthology of short rabbinic stories edited by Moses Gaster, recounts the death of R. b. Nahman. He had been accused of keeping people ...
Rabbah bar Nahmani, the great head of the academy at Pumbeditha in the early fourth century, was accused by the government of a crime invented out of jealousy, that he was keeping ...
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...
The Talmud (Berakhot 20a) records a peculiar observation: Rabbi Gidal used to sit at the entrance of the women's bathhouse. When asked how he could do such a thing, was it not immo...
Rabbi Gidel was a sage of the third century CE, a disciple of Rav in Babylonia, known for his rigor in halakhah. He also had a peculiar habit. He used to sit at the door of the wom...
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 see...
Rabbi Johanan was the most beautiful man in the Jewish world, and the Talmud is not shy about saying so. His physical beauty was so extraordinary that the sages dedicated multiple ...
Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha, the great third-century amora of Tiberias, was famous among his contemporaries for two things. He was one of the most brilliant legal minds of his gene...
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 ...
Rabbi Johanan was famous throughout the land of Israel for his extraordinary beauty. The Talmud in Berakhot (5b) describes him as radiating an almost supernatural light, and the sa...
Rabbi Yochanan went to visit his colleague Rabbi Elazar, who was gravely ill. The room was dark, shutters closed, lamps unlit, the particular dimness that comes when a household ha...
These two short tales from Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis both turn on the deadly power of a sage's anger and grief. The first concerns R. Yohanan, remembered as one of the last tr...
Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish, the sage and the former bandit, formed one of the most famous study partnerships in the Talmud. Their relationship began in the most unlikely way: Ra...
Rabbi Yochanan bar Nafcha was so beautiful that the Talmud said he was among the last of the handsome men of Jerusalem. His skin, his eyes, his bearing, men traveled to simply look...
A merchant from one town traveled to a neighboring city to sell his goods. He set up his stall in the marketplace, offered fair prices, and began to attract customers. But the loca...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 225, tells a sad little case study in academic cruelty. Rabbi Dimi of Nehardea had arrived in Babylon with a cargo of figs to sell. It was custom that ...
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...
A poor man came before Rabba asking for support. The rabbi inquired about his usual diet, as was the practice when setting the rate of assistance. The man explained that he habitua...
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 h...
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...
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...
Mar Ukva, a fourth-century Babylonian sage and exilarch, was famous for his habit of secret charity. Every day he would pass by a certain poor man's house and drop a small purse of...
