930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 5 of 20.
Merodach-Baladan, the king of Babylon, once experienced something that shook his understanding of the natural order. The Talmud records that he noticed the sun behaving strangely, ...
King Hezekiah of Judah lay dying. The prophet Isaiah came to his bedside with what should have been the last message: set your house in order, for you shall die (2 Kings 20:1). Hez...
A laborer worked for his master for three full years, faithfully performing every task assigned to him. When the work was finally done, he approached his master and asked for his w...
The Talmud (Shabbat 127b) tells of a man who worked for an employer in the north of Israel for three years. When his contract ended, he went to collect his wages on the eve of Yom ...
A laborer once worked a long season for his master and came to receive his wages. The master met him at the door with bad news. I have no money to give you. Nor cattle, nor land, n...
This entry from Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis preserves two brief tales whose shared lesson is that one must not rush to suspect a righteous person of wrongdoing on the strength o...
The trustfulness of disciples toward their teachers was a sacred principle in the rabbinic world. The Talmud (Shabbat 127b) extends the lesson of judging others favorably from empl...
The students of Rabbi Joshua were traveling between cities when night overtook them. They found lodging at an inn run by a man whose appearance was deeply off-putting, ugly, unkemp...
Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah did something in Rome that no Jewish sage was supposed to do. He entered the house of a Roman matron, locked the door behind him, spent time alone with he...
A young Torah scholar died in the prime of his life, and his widow was inconsolable. He had been pious, devoted, careful in his observance of every commandment. Why would God take ...
When a young person dies, the grief is compounded by the terrible question: why? The sages wrestled with this question and offered an answer that was as unsettling as it was compas...
Two boys walked past a group of Elders who were sitting together in study. One boy had his head covered, as was the custom of modesty and reverence. The other boy walked by with hi...
This is a tale of a man who set out to break the patience of Hillel, the sage whose gentleness was already proverbial in his own lifetime. The man had wagered four hundred zuzim, a...
Hillel the Elder faced many tests of his patience, but few were as deliberate as the man who came to him with intentionally absurd questions. The Talmud (Shabbat 31a) records that ...
Nakdimon ben Gorion was one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem, and he had made a dangerous bargain. He borrowed twelve wells of water from a Roman nobleman, the Hegemon, promising...
In a year of terrible drought, Nakdimon ben Gorion, one of the three wealthiest men in Jerusalem, approached a Roman official and made a desperate bargain. He borrowed twelve wells...
Jerusalem was dying of thirst. Nakdimon ben Gorion, one of the wealthiest men in the city, made a desperate deal. He borrowed twelve great cisterns' worth of water from a Roman Heg...
The tribe of Asher received its inheritance in a strip of land along the northern coast of the Land of Israel, and the blessing that Moses gave them proved spectacularly true: "Let...
R. Johanan b. Zakai was asked by R. Eleazar b. Arach permission to expound some of the mysteries of the creation (Ma’ase Merkaba). R. Johanan dismounted from his ass, as angels mig...
The mysteries of creation, the Maaseh Bereshit, were considered so dangerous that the sages restricted who could study them. The Talmud (Hagigah 14b) famously records the story of ...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was riding his donkey along a road when his student Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach asked for permission to expound the secrets of the Ma'aseh Merkavah, the myste...
This entry from Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis preserves in summary form a famous Talmudic account of a clash within the academy. The figures are Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the Nas...
The story of the weasel and the well. Once a young girl, beautifully dressed, lost herself in the desert on her way home. Getting very thirsty and seeing a well with a rope and a b...
A young man rescued a maiden who had fallen into a well, and as they stood there alone he pledged to marry her. Since no human being had witnessed the vow, the two called on the on...
Someone once asked Rabbi Akiva a question that seemed simple but carried enormous weight: "How great is the value of the Torah?" Rabbi Akiva did not hesitate. "Each word of the Tor...
A student once approached Rabbi Akiba and asked him a deceptively simple question: "How great is the value of the Torah?" Rabbi Akiba did not hesitate. "Each single word of the Tor...
The great martyr Rabbi Akiva, who lived roughly from 50 to 135 CE and was flayed alive by the Romans for teaching Torah in public, was once asked a dangerous question. "How great i...
The judgment of poor, rich, and young after death when they neglect study. The poor man who pleads want of 75 - means is compared to Hillel who was wont to work all day for a very ...
What happens to a person after death? The Talmud (Yoma 35b) presents the judgment that awaits every soul. And reveals that no excuse will be accepted, because for every temptation ...
The sages taught that on the day of judgment, every soul will be asked why it did not devote itself to Torah. Three common excuses will be raised, poverty, wealth, and youth. And t...
Eleazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, inherited more than his father's wisdom. He inherited superhuman strength. One day, Eleazar was sitting at a lavish meal. And when Elea...
Eleazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, inherited more than his father's brilliance in Torah. He was endowed with staggering physical strength, the kind of strength that seemed...
Elazar, son of Shimon bar Yochai, had inherited from his mystical father not only the secrets of Torah but a body of extraordinary strength. The Talmud says his belly was so large ...
Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimeon was not a small man, and the Talmud does not hide this fact. Multiple stories describe his extraordinary physical size, his immense strength, and, as this...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was known for many things, his learning, his piety, his complicated relationship with the Roman authorities. But the Talmud (Pesahim 86b, Bava Metzia 83b-84...
The Exempla of the Rabbis, the collection of rabbinic tales gathered by Moses Gaster in 1924, preserves at number 93 a brief and very human anecdote about Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon....
R. Eleazar b. Shimeon was a very strongly built man and used to carry people across the river upon his shoulders. Once the Prophet Elijah came to him in the form of an old man and ...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon and the prophet Elijah once met on the road, and the Talmud preserves a strange and vivid account of what happened next. Elijah was traveling in disguise, a...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was a mountain of a man. Broad-shouldered, thick-armed, he used to earn a few coins carrying travelers across the river on his back. His strength was legend...
R. Eleazar b. Shimeon, who was appointed an official of the government, was accustomed to catch thieves in a very clever way when he found them drinking very heavily in the drinkin...
The physical strength of Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was legendary, but it was after his death that the most astonishing miracle occurred. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 84b) records that whe...
Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon, son of the great Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, was appointed by the Roman government as an official, a kind of investigator authorized to catch thieves. He was...
Rabbi Judah took upon himself the education of the daughter of Rabbi Tarfon, raising her in Torah and wisdom. It was an act of extraordinary devotion, accepting responsibility for ...
Three quiet stories, each one about keeping Torah alive in a household. Rabbi Yehudah, the Prince, the redactor of the Mishnah, personally undertook the education of the daughter o...
Rabbi Akiba, the greatest sage of his generation, did not begin his life as a scholar. Until the age of forty, he was an illiterate shepherd who could not read a single letter of H...
Rabbi Akiva is remembered as the greatest student of Torah in his generation. But he did not begin that way. The Exempla preserves a small story about the door through which he ent...
Rabbi Akiva sat in judgment over a case that would become one of the most famous legal rulings in all of rabbinic literature. A man had publicly humiliated a woman by tearing the c...
Rabbi Akiba was known throughout Israel not only for his vast learning but for the sharpness of his legal judgments. The Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law) in Baba Kama (f...
