930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 8 of 20.
A man had three daughters, and each carried a flaw. The first was a thief who could not keep her hand from what was not hers. The second was lazy and refused the work a household r...
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the second-century sage to whom tradition attributes the core of the Zohar, once sent his son to the study house so that the scholars might bless him. What...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was a sage of the late second century, a younger contemporary of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, known simply as "Rabbi," the compiler of the Mishnah around 200 CE. ...
A woman attended the lectures of Rabbi Meir and came home late. Her husband, furious, demanded to know where she had been. When she told him she had been listening to Torah, he gav...
Two of Rabbi Meir's sons died on Shabbat afternoon. They had been in the house while their father was at the synagogue leading the congregation. When Rabbi Meir came home, he asked...
(147.) R. Akiba began his life as a very poor man and ended it as a very rich one. He had a large crown made for his wife set with many precious stones, and when his children asked...
Rabbi Akiva began his life illiterate and ended it the greatest Torah teacher of his generation. The bridge between the two was a woman named Rachel. Rachel was the daughter of Kal...
The emperor Antoninus was a secret friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah. They visited each other, but Rome could not know of it. Antoninus had an undergrou...
The Roman Emperor Antoninus, traditionally identified with one of the Antonine emperors of the second or third century CE, came to Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, the redactor of the Mishna...
Rabbi Akiva had a saying he repeated so often his disciples knew it by heart: Kol de'avid Rachmana letav avid, "Whatever the Merciful One does is done for the best." Once he was tr...
A disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had left the academy for business and had come back years later a wealthy man. When he walked into the beit midrash in his fine clothes, the...
Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta was famously poor. One Friday afternoon, as the Sabbath was closing in, his wife came to him with the familiar announcement: there was no food in the hous...
Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef (c. 50 to 135 CE), the shepherd who began his Torah studies at the age of forty and rose to become one of the foundational figures of the Mishnaic age, was ma...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Elazar owned a tree whose branches had grown out over his neighbor's field. The neighbor had never complained, rabbinic scholars were generally given deference. ...
Toward the end of his reign, David was asked by the Holy One to choose a punishment for the chain of disasters his decisions had caused, the slaughter of the priestly city of Nob, ...
At creation, Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 156, tells, the lower waters of the tehom, the primordial abyss, tried to surge upward and swallow the heavens. To hold them back, God car...
Skipping one small ritual cost a man his entire identity. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis, a 1924 compilation by Moses Gaster drawn from medieval Jewish ...
The rabbis took the washing of hands before meals with deadly seriousness. And the Talmud (Yoma 83b, Hullin 106a) preserves stories showing why. A man once neglected to wash his ha...
A man walked into a public eating house and sat down to eat. Before sitting, he neglected to perform netilat yadayim, the ritual washing of the hands that observant Jews perform be...
This cautionary tale from the Exempla of the Rabbis illustrates how a seemingly trivial lapse in personal habit can open the door to disaster. The story concerns a man who was care...
If neglecting to wash hands before meals could lead to disaster, the Talmud teaches that neglecting to wash after meals was equally dangerous. And one story proved why. A man's fai...
A man was in the habit of rising from his meals without washing his hands properly. He left the table with crumbs and traces of the food on his fingers, indifferent to the small ri...
Rabbi Akiba was imprisoned by the Romans. Each day, Rabbi Joshua ha-Garsi brought him a measured ration of water, barely enough to survive. The guards checked every container and a...
Gaster's exemplum No. 160 is one sentence long, but it unfolds into a whole theology. "Rabbi Akiva in prison used half of the drinking water to wash his hands." The Talmudic versio...
R. Hanina ben Dosa was known for living out the very teachings he preached, and on one occasion heaven tested whether his deeds matched his words. He had expounded the saying, "Rec...
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa once preached a sermon on the rabbinic teaching "Receive every man as a friend", every stranger, every wayfarer, every unknown face at your door. He finished...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa was one of the most miracle-working sages in all of Jewish history. He lived in grinding poverty, the Talmud says that each week he survived on a single measu...
The daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa fell into a deep pit, and the entire neighborhood panicked. They rushed to tell the great miracle-worker that his child was in mortal danger, ...
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa was a miracle-worker from the Galilee in the first century, known for a faith so exact that his prayers came true almost by default. He lived in poverty. He ...
R. Hanina ben Dosa was famed among the sages as a man of such piety that the ordinary laws of nature seemed to bend before his trust in heaven. His household, however, was desperat...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa's poverty was so extreme that the Talmud (Berakhot 17b, Taanit 24b-25a) says a heavenly voice went out every day declaring: "The entire world is sustained on ...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such poverty that his family often had nothing for Shabbat. One Friday, his wife stood in the empty kitchen, ashamed. The neighbors would notice the ...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa once placed his foot directly over the hole of a deadly scorpion. And it was the scorpion that died. This brief but astonishing tale, preserved in the Exempla...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa was one of the most pious men in all of Israel, a miracle worker whose prayers could heal the sick and whose poverty was legendary. One day, the people of his...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such fearless piety that the scorpions feared him. The Talmud tells this miniature story like a punchline. A scorpion had taken up residence in a hol...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa was deep in prayer, standing perfectly still, his eyes closed, his lips moving in silent communion with God. He did not notice the venomous adder that had sli...
A venomous serpent terrorized a certain neighborhood, biting anyone who came near its den. People were dying. The townspeople came to Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa and begged him to do som...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, the first-century miracle worker whom the Mishnah (Berakhot 5:5) calls a man whose prayers could heal from a distance, was once deep in tefillah, the silent ...
The son of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai fell desperately ill. The great sage, who would one day preserve Judaism itself by establishing the academy at Yavneh after the destruction of t...
The healing power of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa's prayer was so renowned that the greatest sage of his generation, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, relied upon it when his own son fell ill. T...
The son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had fallen dangerously ill. His father, the greatest sage of his generation, prayed. And nothing happened. Yohanan then sent word to a strange, ...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, a sage of the early generations remembered above all for the power of his prayer, was asked to intercede when the son of Rabban Gamliel lay sick with a burni...
Hanina ben Dosa was the most famous miracle worker in all of rabbinic literature, and his signature miracle was healing the sick, not with medicine, not with herbs, not with any ph...
Hanina ben Dosa, the humble hasid of the first century, was known for prayers that went through the roof. When Rabban Gamliel's young son lay gravely ill, burning with a fever that...
R. Joshua once turned to the students before him and asked what they had learned from R. Elazar ben Azariah, the young sage who had been elevated to the head of the academy while s...
Rabbi Joshua came to the academy one afternoon and asked the students what Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah had taught that morning. The young man had been appointed head of the Sanhedrin...
The Exempla of the Rabbis, gathered by Moses Gaster in 1924, preserves at number 169 a compressed retelling of one of the most consequential disputes of the academy at Yavneh. Rabb...
Rabban Gamliel's pride cost him his position. And the way it happened revealed how even the greatest leader can be brought low by arrogance. The Talmud (Berakhot 27b-28a) records t...
