930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 12 of 20.
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 had...
Mar Ukba's generosity to the poor was extraordinary. But his method of giving was even more remarkable than the amounts. The Talmud (Ketubot 67b) records that he regularly left mon...
Mar Ukba was a wealthy Babylonian Jew known for his discreet tzedakah. He used to leave coins under a neighbor's doorsill each night, never waiting to be seen. One day he learned t...
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...
When a condemned woman died under Roman sentence, the students of Rabbi Ishmael made an unusual decision. They performed one of the earliest recorded forensic examinations in Jewis...
The death and last will of Rabbi Judah HaNasi, simply called "Rabbi", was one of the most solemn moments in the history of the Jewish people. The Talmud (Ketubot 104a, Jerusalem Ta...
When Rabbi Judah the Prince — the great redactor of the Mishnah — lay dying at Tzippori, the rabbis gathered around his bed. The people of Israel fasted and prayed. On ...
This pair of tales from the Exempla of the Rabbis, the collection of short rabbinic anecdotes edited by Moses Gaster in 1924, teaches by way of example rather than legal argument. ...
Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah were teaching in the same academy. And during the set times of communal prayer, they deliberately did not pray in the same way. One woul...
The prophet Isaiah met King Hezekiah outside Jerusalem. The meeting was not a diplomatic visit. Isaiah carried a message from God: Hezekiah's children would do evil. Hezekiah did n...
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...
The donkey of Rabbi Pinehas ben Yair was as righteous as its master. Or so the Talmud (Jerusalem Talmud Demai 1:3, Hullin 7a-b) suggests through a story that became one of the most...
Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair was a sage so scrupulous in his observance that the tradition says even his animals followed the law. Thieves once stole his donkey from his stable, thinking ...
Rabbi Joshua was walking along a road when he came to a crossroads and encountered a young girl. "Which road leads to the city?" he asked. The girl pointed to one of the paths. "Th...
Rabbi Joshua ben Chanania, one of the greatest sages of the first and second century CE, used to say: In my whole life, no one has ever bested me in argument, except a widow, a chi...
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 th...
Beruriah, the brilliant second-century sage who was the daughter of the martyr Rabbi Chananiah ben Teradyon and the wife of Rabbi Meir, is one of the few women whose Torah opinions...
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'...
The sages taught that even when tragedy strikes at a moment of celebration, the celebration must not be disrupted. The Midrash (Pesikta 169b, Tanhuma Shemini) records an extraordin...
A man had invited the whole community to his son's wedding. The tables were set. The musicians were tuning. The chuppah was standing. And then, on the morning of the ceremony, a sn...
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 Shimon ben Halafta was known as a man who tested everything through experience rather than theory alone. When a question arose about the nature of children, he did not consul...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was invited to a brit milah, the circumcision of an eight-day-old child. He arrived, sat with the family, recited the blessings. The child was ill, gravely...
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 stre...
Rabbi Akiba shocked his companions by laughing at moments when any sane person would weep. The Talmud (Makkot 24a-b) records two instances of this extraordinary laughter, and both ...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 240, preserves a story that the Talmud tells at length in Makkot 24b. Rabbi Akiva was traveling with colleagues when they came within sight of Rome. Th...
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...
A young man fell in love with a young woman of his town. His feelings were so intense that he became physically ill. He stopped eating. He grew feverish. His family feared he would...
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...
Before Moses was born, Pharaoh had a dream. He saw a giant set of scales. On one side lay the entire weight of Egypt: the pyramids, the armies, the treasuries, the granaries, the p...
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...
A rabbinic fable: an ass was appointed toll-gatherer on a narrow road, trusted by the king of the region to demand payment from every traveler. A lion and a fox came down the path ...
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 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...
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...
When King Solomon was stripped of his throne, cast out by Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and forced to wander his own kingdom as a beggar, he discovered that hospitality has two...
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. ...
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...
The old collections preserve a small anecdote about a woman named Justina, daughter of Asverus, who was said to have been married at six years old and to have borne a child at seve...
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...
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 ...
When Herod seized the throne of Judea in the first century BCE, he fell in love with a Hasmonean princess. Mariamne, whose royal blood would legitimize his rule. She despised him. ...
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...
King Manasseh of Judah reigned fifty-five years, longer than any other king of David's line, and the book of Kings accuses him of a staggering catalog of evils (2 Kings 21:1-18). H...
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...
Elazar ben Dordaya was, by his own admission, a man who had lived as low a life as a Jewish soul could live. He had chased every pleasure, broken every fence of decency, and finall...
