930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 3 of 20.
A Jewish child, still young enough to be sitting with a melamed, had just finished memorizing a portion of the book of Bereshit (Genesis) when the soldiers came. He was captured an...
This brief tale, preserved among the Exempla of the Rabbis collected by Moses Gaster, turns on a single dramatic day in the life of the Jerusalem priesthood. Simeon ben Kamhith ser...
Kimhit was a woman whose modesty was so complete that, according to the Talmud (Yoma 47a), even the beams of her house never saw her hair uncovered. The sages said this was the rea...
Simeon ben Kamhith was serving as High Priest. He had walked with a foreign king, and in the course of the conversation a drop of spittle from the king's mouth touched Simeon's gar...
A matrona, a Roman noblewoman who appears in several rabbinic dialogues as a probing questioner, came to Rabbi Jose ben Halafta with a difficulty about a verse. Scripture says that...
God gives wisdom to the wise, not to the foolish. This principle, drawn from the Book of Daniel (Daniel 2:21), puzzled many, including the Roman Emperor himself. Why should the wis...
A Roman matrona once posed a sharp question to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta. "Your Bible says, 'He gives wisdom to the wise' (Daniel 2:21). But this makes no sense. A wise person already...
A Matrona, a Roman noblewoman who appears often in these dialogues as a sharp and curious questioner, put a challenge to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, a leading sage of the generation af...
When God gave the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, the sages taught that He did not speak them into a void. Each commandment was connected to the covenant God had already made with...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
A pagan philosopher once came to Rabban Gamliel with a question designed to embarrass him: "Your God claims to be the ruler of all creation, the master of the heavens and the earth...
A heathen once pressed Rabban Gamliel with a question he thought would trip up the Rabbi. Why, he asked, did the God of Israel reveal Himself to Moses out of a bush? There are ceda...
A Matrona, one of the inquisitive Roman noblewomen who spar with the sages throughout these tales, leveled a pointed accusation at Rabbi Yehuda ben Ilai, a prominent teacher of the...
The sages taught that physical cleanliness was not merely a matter of hygiene, it was a spiritual discipline that could literally make a person shine. Rabbi Judah HaNasi, known sim...
A Roman matrona, a high-ranking noblewoman, the kind who watched the Jewish sages with mingled suspicion and curiosity, once accosted Rabbi Yehudah ben Ilai on the street. She look...
A gentile who saw how healthy and well-fed Rabbi Jehuda ben Hai looked drew an ugly conclusion. Assuming that such prosperity could only come from dishonest gain, he accused the ra...
Rabbi Judah HaNasi and his household were known for their dignified appearance, but the principle of "shining through cleanliness" extended throughout the rabbinic world. The Talmu...
A gentile came to Rabbi Judah ben Ilai with a rude accusation. "Rabbi," he said, "your face is too well-fed. You must be living off usury, taking interest from the poor." Rabbi Jud...
A man stood deep in prayer when a Hegemon, a Roman provincial governor, passed by and offered him a greeting. The man did not return the salute, an act that in the eyes of Rome bor...
How should a person pray? The Talmud (Berakhot 30b) records a teaching that reshaped how Jews understood their daily standing before God. When you pray, the sages said, you are not...
Beruria, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, was one of the sharpest minds in all of rabbinic literature. And one day, she corrected her husband on a point of theology that has echoe...
Beruria, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, is one of the few women in the Talmud whose legal opinions are cited alongside those of the greatest sages. And one of her most famous in...
Rabbi Meir was one of the great teachers of the generation after the destruction of the Temple, and he had a problem. Wicked men in the neighborhood were harassing him. He prayed f...
Beruria, the learned wife of R. Meir and a sage in her own right, fell into a dispute with the wife of a min, a sectarian who rejected the teachings of the rabbis. Their argument t...
Beruriah, the scholar and teacher married to Rabbi Meir in second-century Tiberias, was famous for being able to hold her own against any opponent in Scripture. A woman belonging t...
A min, a heretic or sectarian who liked to test the rabbis with sharp questions, came before Rabbi Abahu, the great teacher of Caesarea who often stood at the front of such dispute...
A Min and R. Ami disputed about the resurrection of the dead after they are changed into dust. R. Ami replied with., a parable. A king ordered his servants to build a palace where ...
A min, a sectarian, once argued with Rabbi Ami against the resurrection of the dead. "How can God bring back bodies that have returned to dust?" he demanded. "The dust scatters; th...
A min (מין), the rabbinic term for a heretic or sectarian, once confronted Gaboha with a challenge that strikes at the heart of Jewish faith. "You claim that God will raise the dea...
A heretic, a min in the Talmud's vocabulary, once confronted a simple Jew named Gaboha ben Pesisa and mocked him. "Woe to you, you living who say that the dead rise again. You will...
Two Jews were carried away captive from Mount Carmel. The captor following them overheard one saying to the other “A she -camel has passed before us, she is blind of one eye and on...
This entry gathers a cluster of tales about three clever Jewish slaves who were sold into captivity after the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. Carried off into ...
This short exemplum preserves an exchange about honor and the dignity of Torah scholars. Rav Huna and Rav Hisda were leading Babylonian sages of the third generation of Amoraim, he...
Two prominent rabbis, Rav Huna and Rav Chisda, once refused to return the greeting of a colleague named Gniba. Perhaps they considered him insufficiently respectful, or perhaps the...
This story from the Exempla of the Rabbis concerns Rabbi Shela, a Babylonian sage, and his bold exercise of judicial authority. Rabbi Shela had a man flogged for committing a grave...
Rabbi Shela once punished a man who had sinned with a non-Jewish woman. The offender, smarting under the beating, reported the Rabbi to the king. Jewish courts were not supposed to...
A gentile philosopher, Proklos son of Filoslos, presses Rabban Gamliel with a series of sharp questions about idols, and the Rabbi answers each with a parable that exposes the fool...
Proklos the philosopher once posed a challenge to Rabban Gamliel: if God truly hates idol worship, why does He allow the sun and moon to continue shining? After all, millions of pe...
A philosopher named Proklos, son of Filoslos, once pressed Rabban Gamliel with a hard question. “If the idols of the nations are false, why does your God not simply destroy t...
The Emperor of Rome loved to provoke R. Gamliel, the patriarch and leader of the sages, with sharp questions meant to expose the God of Israel to ridicule. On this occasion he seiz...
A heretic once challenged the sages with what he thought was a devastating logical trap. "Your God is a thief," the man declared. "The Torah says that God caused a deep sleep to fa...
A Roman Emperor once tried to embarrass Rabban Gamliel with a joke that sounded, at first, like a theological objection. "Your God is a thief," the Emperor said. "He put Adam into ...
This tale takes up the old saying that a woman cannot keep a secret and dramatizes it through a contest of wits. A Hegemon, a Roman officer of high rank, taunted a Jew with the pro...
This is the rabbinic version of one of the most wrenching martyr stories in Jewish memory, here called Miriam and her seven sons, known in other tellings as Hannah and her seven so...
Miriam [Hannah) & Her Seven Sons Martyr*. II Bk. Maccabees, ch. VII. IV Bk. Maccabees ch. VIII, ff. Ketubot, f. 64. J. Ketubot, V, II. Gittin, f. 56 b. Pesik. R. Rabati,XLIII. Tana...
Rabbi Jehuda ben Hanina was traveling through Rome when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. In the slave market, that brutal engine of the Roman economy where human be...
Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha was captured as a child during the destruction of Jerusalem. He was sold into slavery, separated from his family, and taken far from the Land of Israel. Hi...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Hanina was traveling through Rome when he learned that a Jewish child had been taken captive, a boy of remarkable beauty and already, in his young life, of remark...
