930 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), shown in source order. Page 9 of 20.
Rabban Gamliel II, grandson of Hillel and head of the Sanhedrin at Yavneh in the generation after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, was a brilliant man with a hard str...
This account from the Exempla of the Rabbis tells the origin of one of the towering figures of early rabbinic Judaism, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanos. As a young man, while his father ...
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was the son of a wealthy landowner who wanted nothing more than for his boy to work the fields. But Eliezer wanted Torah. At the age of twenty-two, far older t...
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus came from a wealthy farming family. When the Romans attacked the region, his father and brothers fled with as many of their possessions as they could carry. El...
This consolation story from the Exempla of the Rabbis turns on the death of the son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, the towering leader of the generation that survived the destruction...
When the son of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai died, the sages came to the house of mourning in waves. Each tried to comfort the old master. Each failed. He sat in his grief like a ston...
Rabbi Yannai and Rabbi Yochanan, teachers of the land of Israel, once watched two Jewish men about whom two astrologers had issued a dire prediction. According to the readers of th...
The Talmud (Shabbat 156b) tells the story of a woman who consulted astrologers about her newborn son. They told her with certainty: "Your son will be a thief." She was devastated. ...
Rabbi Janai and Rabbi Johanan sat watching two men leave the study house. They knew something about these men that the men did not know about themselves. Two astrologers had predic...
A man arranged a secret meeting with a woman, intending to sin with her. The woman, rather than going along with his scheme, devised a quiet and pointed plan of her own. She arrang...
A man in a Jewish town conceived an intention to commit adultery. He approached a woman who was not his wife and arranged to meet her secretly at a set hour in a set place. The Exe...
This brief tale from the medieval collection of rabbinic exempla gathered by Moses Gaster reads like a parable about divine justice working through ordinary events. A Greek master ...
A young Jewish girl was sold into slavery to a Greek master. She was small and frightened, torn from her family, and carried to a foreign house where strange gods stood in every co...
This exemplum tells of a marvel discovered by the workers of Rabbi Nahman bar Isaac. While clearing away a small mound of earth, they uncovered a man who suddenly sprang up alive f...
The workers of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak were clearing a small mound on the edge of a field when the earth gave way beneath their spades and a man sat up from the soil. He was fully...
A Min, a term the rabbis use for a sectarian or heretic who denied the unity of God, came to challenge a sage with a question dressed as scripture. He pointed to the prophet Amos, ...
The Talmud in Hullin (f. 87a) preserves a curious exchange between a Min, a heretic. And a rabbi, concerning the nature of wind and divine power. The heretic approached the rabbi w...
Rav Huna was a wealthy man who owned vast vineyards and employed many laborers to tend them. But he had a flaw. When the harvest was finished and the grapes had been pressed and th...
Rav Huna, the third-century head of the Babylonian academy at Sura, owned a vineyard and hired laborers to work it. One harvest day he refused to share wine with the men who were w...
Rav Hisda used to hang an open purse at his doorpost so that anyone who needed money could take some without being seen. This detail, preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compil...
Rav Hisda was one of the leading sages of Babylonian Jewry in the third century, and in his prime he was also one of the wealthiest. One day, late in life, after his fortunes had c...
Rabbi Patra had a student who struggled to learn. Where other teachers might have given up after ten repetitions, or twenty, or even a hundred, Rabbi Patra taught his student the s...
Rabbi Perida had a student who was extraordinarily slow to learn. While other pupils grasped a teaching after hearing it once or twice, this student required something far more ext...
A student once came to Rabbi Preida and asked him to teach a particular passage of Mishnah. Rabbi Preida sat with him and went through it slowly. The student did not understand. Th...
Rabbi Meir was traveling through Samaria when he encountered a Samaritan who was proud of his lineage. "I am a descendant of Joseph," the man declared, claiming descent from the mo...
Rabbi Meir was known for many things, his brilliance, his sharp tongue, and his wife Beruria's even sharper one. But he was also known for his encounters with the Samaritans, the a...
The Samaritans of late antiquity insisted they were descendants of Joseph through the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. It was a matter of pride. Rabbi Meir disagreed. Meir ...
There was an inn on a certain road where travelers learned, too late, that the hospitality was a trap. The innkeeper welcomed his guests warmly, fed them well, and showed them to c...
Rabbi Meir once stayed at an inn whose keeper was a wicked man. The Talmud and Midrash (Midrash HaGadol, Genesis) record what happened when the innkeeper's true nature was revealed...
There was once an innkeeper who ran his business as a trap. Each night, deep in the small hours, he would wake his guests with false alarms — shouts of fire, of thieves, of s...
Rabbi Ishmael ben Yose was making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, one of the three annual journeys that every Jewish man was commanded to undertake. Along the way, he passed through S...
Rabbi Ishmael ben Jose was making his way to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage when a Samaritan stopped him on the road. The Samaritans, who lived on and around Mount Gerizim and claimed t...
Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose, the son of the great Galilean sage Rabbi Yose, was walking on pilgrimage toward Jerusalem when a Samaritan stopped him on the road near Mount Gerizim. The ...
A philosopher approached Rabban Gamliel with what he considered an unanswerable objection to the practice of charity. "How can you Jews give so freely to the poor?" the philosopher...
A Greek philosopher came to Rabban Gamliel with a complaint disguised as a question. "Why," he asked, "should I give to the poor with a smile? Giving drains my purse. A smile on to...
After the death of Moses, an emperor, some say it was a Roman ruler centuries later, heard rumors that the greatest prophet who ever lived was buried somewhere on Mount Nebo. He wa...
Two men came to pray before Rabbi Eliezer. One prayed at enormous length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that stretched on and on. The other prayed briefly,...
Two men came before Rabbi Eliezer to pray. One prayed at great length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that went on and on. The other prayed briefly, a few w...
Two men once prayed at length before Rabbi Eliezer. The first stretched his Amidah far beyond the usual length, swaying and adding private petitions until the congregation grew res...
Rabbi Judah HaNasi needed to send a teacher to the town of Simonia. The community there required a sage who could teach Torah, render legal decisions, and guide the people. He chos...
Levi ben Sisi was a brilliant scholar, one of the finest students of his generation. When a community in the town of Simonia needed a teacher and judge, Rabbi Judah HaNasi sent Lev...
The great sage Rabbi (Yehudah ha-Nasi, the editor of the Mishnah, who lived circa 135-217 CE) sent one of his disciples, Levi ben Sisi, to the town of Simonias in the Galilee to se...
The story of Dama ben Netina's respect for his parents did not end with the famous incident of the precious stone. The Talmud preserves additional details that deepened his reputat...
The respect that Dama ben Netina showed his father became the standard against which all filial devotion was measured. And Dama was not even Jewish. He was a gentile merchant in th...
The Talmud returns often to a gentile from Ashkelon named Dama ben Netina, whom the sages held up as the gold standard of the commandment to honor father and mother. They told his ...
The respect that Dama ben Netina showed his father was legendary among the sages of Israel. And Dama was not even Jewish. He was a gentile merchant in Ashkelon, and his story becam...
The Talmud (Kiddushin 31a-b) collects multiple stories about the extraordinary respect Dama ben Netina showed his father, but it also records stories of Jewish sages who went to re...
The Talmud in Kiddushin 31a tells the story of Dama ben Netina, a gentile merchant of Ashkelon who became, in the rabbinic imagination, the standard for filial honor. The exempla c...
