930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 19 of 20.
King David once asked God what good there was in gnats, spiders and fools. One day, fleeing from Saul, he hid in a cave and a spider quickly covered the opening with its web. Saul,...
King David once questioned the purpose of three seemingly useless or harmful creatures: the gnat, the spider, and the fool. "Why did God create these things?" he asked. "The gnat b...
Two friends loved each other so deeply that one was willing to die for the other. And the other refused to let him. This tale of ultimate friendship, preserved in the Exempla of th...
There were two men in a distant country who had been friends since boyhood. When war broke out between their two nations, they were forced apart. Years passed. One day, one of the ...
In the distant lands of Persia, where fire altars burned day and night in honor of the elements, the Jewish communities faced a peculiar danger that was not from human persecutors ...
A ma'aseh preserved in the Gaster manuscripts describes a strange people in a distant country who had built their religion around fire. Every morning at dawn they lit one great sta...
In time of drought the sages sent to Abba Hilkiah to pray for rain. They found him digging in the field and he did not reply to their greeting. In the evening, returning home, the ...
Abba Hilkiah, the grandson of Honi the Circle-Drawer, inherited his grandfather's extraordinary ability to bring rain through prayer. But his methods were so peculiar that the sage...
A drought had settled on the land. The sages, running out of options, remembered the legend that Abba Hilkiah, the grandson of the famous rainmaker Honi ha-Me'aggel, had inherited ...
In time of drought, the people appealed to Honi to pray on their behalf. He drew a circle, stood in the midst of it and prayed saying he would not step out of the circle until rain...
In a time of devastating drought, the people of Israel came to Honi ha-Meagel, "Honi the Circle-Drawer". And begged him to pray for rain. Honi drew a circle in the dirt, stepped in...
In a year of terrible drought, when the rains had not fallen and the fields were cracking, the people of Israel came to Honi the Circle-Maker and begged him to pray for them. Honi ...
Abraham, the Carpenter in Jerusalem, hac. saved some money through hard work. His neighbour stole it and ran away, but dropped down dead on the road. A young man found him, dug his...
A man hid his money in a hollow tree. And the story of what happened to that money became a parable about the cleverness of thieves and the greater cleverness of the righteous. The...
Abraham the Carpenter lived in Jerusalem in the early medieval period. He worked wood, lived plainly, and over many years saved a small bag of gold. A neighbor coveted the gold, br...
This is one of the wisdom tales preserved among the examples of the rabbis. A wealthy man, on his death bed, left his three sons a strange inheritance: three chests, one filled wit...
Three chests were placed before a person who was told to choose one. And the story of that choice became a famous parable about the difference between appearance and reality. The t...
This tale from Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis turns on the truth that heaven measures a person by honesty rather than by learning or station. In a time of drought the Rabbi was inf...
A drought gripped the land, and the wells were drying. The Rabbi of the town sat in sackcloth and prayed. Prayer yielded nothing. Then a bat kol, a heavenly voice, came to him with...
King Solomon was an excellent chess player. He played with Benaya his general and always won. Once a noise in the street drew Solomon to the window. Benaya took a piece from the bo...
Solomon and chess, a pairing that connects the king's legendary wisdom with the world's most intellectual game. While chess in its modern form postdates Solomon by many centuries, ...
This tale from Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis, a collection of medieval Hebrew moral stories, presents King Solomon explaining one of his own proverbs from lived experience. He was...
This tale from the medieval collection of rabbinic exempla turns on a sharp lesson about authority and its proper place. A king once entered a schoolroom while the master sat at hi...
A king, the exempla does not name him, which is part of the point, walked into a Jewish school one afternoon. He was doing what kings do: inspecting his realm, accepting the obeisa...
A Jew who mixed with the Gentiles, had given up everything in order to carry favour with them. Once when he was invited to the prince, an enemy of his put some boys to jeer at him ...
There was a Jew who had given everything up. He spent his life trying to blend in with the gentile elite, adopting their dress, their manners, their tastes. His parents had been ob...
At the court of a king there lived a Jew who was very handsome. The wife of the minister fell in love with him, but he refused her advances. After a time she gave birth to a boy an...
A bird served as a witness in a case of justice. And its testimony was accepted because God uses all of creation, even the smallest creatures, to ensure that truth is revealed. The...
A Jewish merchant had sold his wares in a distant land at great profit. As he prepared to travel home with the caravan, a stranger attached himself to the group. The stranger watch...
A pious man, travelling, saw a cave in the mountains and on entering, found a pool of water and behind it another small dark cavern. He went thither and was on the point of returni...
God’s Justice. Meg. Esther (Yiddish) *593- Griinbaum, Jiid. Deutsch. Chrest. p. 215, 18. Behrnauer, ZDMG. XVI, p. 762. Brockhaus, ZDMG. XIV, p. 7o6f. Gellert, Das Schicksal. Gesta ...
A pious man on a journey found a cave in the mountains. He entered. Inside was a small pool of water, and behind it, a narrower dark inner chamber. He stepped into the inner chambe...
A man once caught stealing was ordered by the king to be hanged. On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow i...
A king once determined to build a town and selected a site. The astrologers approved of the place on condition that a child be walled in alive, brought voluntarily by its mother. A...
Three Questions. Anderson, Kaiser &Abt. Apollodor, III, 7, 1. Antigone. Basile, Pen tarn. No. 35. cf. Behrnauer, 40 Veziere, p. noff. Birlinger, Aus Schwa- ben II, 370, 371. Eisel,...
A woodcutter once complained bitterly of his hard life. He labored and carried heavy loads day after day, yet could scarcely earn enough to keep himself alive. One day, while out i...
A man was granted a wish. And what he wished for became the source of his downfall. The tale of the "Foolish Wish" is found in dozens of cultures, but the Jewish version carries a ...
A pious woman used to bake four loaves of bread every day; three she gave to the poor and one she kept for her household. One day four beggars came and she gave all the four. She t...
A rich man, having confidence in his son gave him all his property in his lifetime. After a while the son commenced to neglect his father, ill-treating him and sending him away to ...
A man tore his mantle in half and gave half to a stranger, an act of generosity that became the seed of a much larger story. The "Half the Mantle" tale is found across many culture...
A wealthy man had an only son and trusted him completely. In his later years he signed over the entire estate to the son's name, keeping nothing for himself except the promise of h...
A man once said that if he wanted to lose his property nobody could stop him. Another replied that no one could fight against God's providence. The man, however, said he would try....
Gaster's exemplum No. 438, drawn from the Gaster Hebrew manuscripts, tells the story of a stubborn merchant who decided to prove that a person can lose his property any time he wan...
A pious and rich man had an only son. He was a merchant but for a long time the son showed no wish to trade. Urged by his friends, he one day asked his father to give him 1000 dina...
[Another variant.] A great scholar, who spent his time studying with his pupils, got a son in his old age. He kept him in the house, never allowing him to go out but gave him more ...
Grateful Dead. Farhi, O. P. Ill, f. 11 to 1 7. Burton, Supplemental Nights, IV, p. 325. Wife making Tapestry. cf. Gas ter, Gypsy Tales. Scala Celi, s. v. Clema- sina. Simrock, Gute...
A great scholar who spent all his days teaching Torah had a son late in life. He cherished the boy and kept him inside the study house, afraid that the world would distract him. Hi...
A man walked a hot road carrying a jug of milk. He heard a thin, desperate noise near the verge. A snake, dying of thirst. The man knelt, tilted the jug, and gave the snake enough ...
