930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 6 of 20.
A man had publicly dishevelled the hair of a Jewish woman in the street, a humiliating act in the ancient world, where a married woman's covered hair was a point of dignity. Rabbi ...
Rabbi Akiba was standing by the shore when he witnessed something terrible. A man, someone Rabbi Akiba knew, fell into the sea. The waves swallowed him instantly. One moment he was...
Rabbi Akiba once saw a man drowning in the sea. The man was pulled under by the waves, and despite every effort, he could not be saved. Rabbi Akiba stood on the shore and mourned, ...
Rabbi Akiva (c. 50 to 135 CE), the shepherd-turned-sage who became one of the towering figures of the Mishnaic age, told a short parable about a man he saw swept out to sea. The st...
Benjamin the Righteous served as the guardian of the community charity fund. Every donation that came in, every disbursement that went out, passed through his honest hands. The peo...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 11a) records a teaching that transformed how the sages understood the mechanics of divine reward: charity does not merely help the recipient, it literally sa...
During a terrible famine, King Monobaz opened the royal treasury and distributed everything inside it to the poor. Every coin, every jewel, every stored reserve of wealth that his ...
King Monobaz of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism, opened his family's treasuries during a year of famine and distributed everything to the poor. His brothers and his father's family ...
Monobaz was a prince of the royal house of Adiabene, a small kingdom east of the Tigris whose royal family famously converted to Judaism in the first century CE. His mother Queen H...
Nahum of Gamzu, the sage whose name became a proverb, because to every misfortune he would say "Gam zu l'tovah," "This too is for the good", learned the cost of delayed charity thr...
Nahum Ish Gamzu was a man whose name became his philosophy. Whatever happened to him, no matter how terrible, he would say "Gam zu l'tovah", "This too is for the good." But the rea...
Rabbi Shimon ben Antipatros had a reputation that troubled the sages of Israel. Travelers who stayed at his house reported something alarming: their host beat his guests. Not robbe...
Rumor reached the sages that Rabbi Shimon ben Antipatros was in the habit of beating his dinner guests. Beating them. Not turning them away at the door, not refusing them a second ...
A farmer once looked at his fields and made a calculation that seemed clever at the time. The Torah commands that a tenth of every harvest must be given as a tithe. The farmer deci...
The rabbis taught a stark warning: reduce your tithes, and God will reduce your harvests. The Talmud and Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) preserve the story of a family t...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 104, tells a quiet parable with a sharp edge. A man decided to cheat on his tithe. The Torah commands the Israelite to give a tenth of the field's yiel...
There was a man who owned a prosperous vineyard and a cellar full of casks, fine oil and rich wine, the fruits of years of careful labor. He was wealthy by any measure. But he had ...
A prosperous farmer in the land of Israel had fields that yielded abundantly, orchting, and vineyard heavy with fruit. Year after year, God blessed his harvests. But the farmer gre...
A man in a certain Jewish town had produced a good harvest. His cellar filled with casks of oil pressed from his olives and wine fermented from his grapes. The harvest was private....
There was a man who paid his tithes faithfully every single year without exception. Rain or drought, abundance or scarcity, he set aside exactly one-tenth of everything he harveste...
There was once a farmer who paid his tithes with scrupulous care. Every year, on the appointed seasons, he set aside the priestly portion, the Levitical tenth, and the poor-tithe, ...
A farmer was harvesting his field when he realized he had forgotten a sheaf of grain. It was sitting in the far corner of the field, left behind in the rush of the day's work. His ...
(Leviticus 19:9-10) and (Deuteronomy 24:19) lay out a peculiar agricultural law. When you harvest your field and forget a sheaf behind you, you are forbidden to go back for it. It ...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the wealthiest men among the sages, but he was famously reluctant to part with his money. He studied Torah with passion, observed every commandment with pre...
The Talmud in tractate Kallah (5:1) tells the story of a man who inherited a large sum of money and faced a decision that would define the rest of his life. He could invest the mon...
Rabbi Tarfon was a wealthy sage who believed in personal tzedakah but preferred to hold his money close. Rabbi Akiva came to him one day and asked for a considerable sum, promising...
R. Tarfon was beaten by his superintendent, who finding him in the vineyard took him for a trespasser, he not telling who he was through his meekness. 79 ~ no. a man overheard a di...
Meekness of Tar f on. cf. Nedarim, f. 62. J. Shebiit, IV, 2. Kallah, f. 5 b. Lonzano, Maarikh, No. 6. Maase Buch No. 72. - 206, no. Dead Women in Cemetery Foretell Future. Berakhot...
Rabbi Tarfon was walking through his own vineyard one day when his farm supervisor, who did not recognize him, assumed he was a trespasser and gave him a beating. Tarfon said nothi...
A man with two heads appeared before King Solomon with an unusual legal claim. He was part of a family dividing an inheritance, and he demanded a double portion, one share for each...
Solomon & Two-Headed Man. Tosafot, Menahot, f. 37. Midr. Hahefes, Cod. Br. M. 2351, f. 200a and 231a. Ben Atar, No. 11. Bezalel, Shifta Meku- beset ad loc. - 207, Farhi, 0. P. I, f...
King Solomon wished to build a temple with unhewn stone, as he was not allowed to use iron, that being forbidden by law. So he tried to obtain Shamir which he was told was in the p...
King Solomon wanted to build the Temple from unhewn stone. The Torah forbade iron tools on the altar, and Solomon, meticulous as always, extended the prohibition to the whole sanct...
The throne of Solomon was entirely made of gold, having 33 steps upon which were various animals. 12 golden lions, and 2 golden bears stood on each step and over the throne was a k...
Solomon's Throne. Kolbo, § 1 19. Yoma, f. 44b. J. Yoma, f. 41a. Targum II to Esther. Bahya (ed. Krakau) f. 36b, 64d, 106b, 142c, 213b. Jerahmeel,ch. LXXXI V, p. 251 & CIX. Cassel, ...
The throne of King Solomon, the legend-weavers said, was a marvel of engineering and meaning. It was made entirely of gold, with thirty-three steps ascending to the seat. On every ...
Hananya, the nephew of Rabbi Joshua, was a respected scholar living in Babylon. And one day he made a decision that nearly split the Jewish world in two. He decided to set the cale...
Hananiah, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, was living in Babylonia in the second century CE when he began doing something the Sages in the Land of Israel could not toler...
A pious man owned a vineyard, and the hedge around it had fallen into disrepair. Gaps had opened in the fence, leaving the vines exposed to animals and thieves. The vineyard needed...
In Rome, on the eve of the Sabbath, a poor tailor went to the market to buy something fitting to honor the holy day. Only one fish remained for sale, and its price had risen to a f...
This is the account of a man in Laodicea who grew immensely rich, and the rabbis tie his fortune directly to a single habit. Whenever he found something fine in the market, the cho...
There was a man who lived in the Greek city of Laodicea, and he had a rule he followed every week of his life. Whenever he found some particularly fine food in the market, the best...
The Story of Antoninas andR. [Jehudaha-Nassi] who preferred the cold meals of the Sabbath. The Rabbi explained to Antoninus that the superiority of Sabbath meals over those of the ...
Blessing of Sabbath. Gen. R. 10 §4. Midr. Hagadol, Exod. Jithro. Krauss, Antoninus, p. 37. 121a. Money in Stick. Nedarim, f. 25 a. Shebuot, f. 29 a. Pesikta R. ed. Fried- mann, f. ...
The Roman emperor Antoninus was a friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah, known to tradition as Rabbi. The two men ate together often, and the emperor notice...
A man had entrusted a sum of money to a neighbor, Bar Temalian, for safekeeping. When he came back to collect it, Bar Temalian lied to his face and said, I never received any money...
Two women lived as close friends in one of the towns of late antique Israel. One day one of them was kneading dough at her neighbor's house, and a gold dinar slipped out of her pur...
A coin, a dinar, had been entrusted to a woman for safekeeping. Without realizing what she was doing, she baked that very coin into a loaf of bread, and the loaf was then given awa...
