335 passages in Modern Compilations & Folklore
Individual passages from Hebraic Literature (1901), shown in source order. Page 2 of 7.
The Talmud tells a parable about a king who planted a magnificent garden and hired two guards, one lame, one blind, reasoning that neither could steal the fruit. One day the lame o...
When Solomon set out to build the Temple, he faced a strange obstacle hidden in plain sight in the Torah. Scripture says that "the house, when it was in building, was built of ston...
A philosopher once came to Rabbi Eliezer with what he thought was an airtight argument against Jewish prophecy. He cited (Malachi 1:4), where God says of Edom, "They shall build, b...
The Kabbalists of Safed developed an immersion practice that turned the ritual bath, the mikveh, into a map of divine names. A person preparing for the mikveh was not merely washin...
The Talmud preserves floating aphorisms, lines remembered without the stories they once belonged to, collected into strings that read like the Jewish equivalent of a commonplace bo...
The prophet Elijah was traveling through the world with a disciple, the kind of journey the Sages often assigned Elijah in their stories, testing whether his disciple could see the...
Look again at the opening of Genesis. "Zachar u-nekevah bara otam", "male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). Why does the verse call the single creature otam, "them," if o...
Happy is the Jew, the Kabbalists say, who can prepare for Shabbat a complete set of garments that he wears only then. A coat, a belt, a pair of shoes, a hat, all different from the...
When the waters of the flood began to rise and every living thing scrambled toward the ark, a strange creature came to Noah's gate, the Lie. The Lie asked to be admitted. Noah look...
Elijah was traveling in disguise with a rabbi, as he often did in the legends. Toward evening they arrived at a large and imposing mansion, the home of a haughty, wealthy man. The ...
The Talmud preserves a strange journey. Benaiah son of Jehoiada has captured Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and leads him bound toward Solomon's court. Along the road, the demon...
Jewish folk belief about small coins ran deep in the towns of Poland. Among both Jewish and Gentile neighbors a superstition held that a penny found at the right moment, stumbled u...
The story is told in Tanna d'vei Eliyahu. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was walking one day when he saw a man gathering wood in the forest. He called out a greeting. No answer. He call...
The mystics of Kabbalah did not just rule on large questions of Sabbath law, they drew a whole day of living around the smallest gestures. Here is a sample. Geese, fowl, cats, dogs...
Rabbi Eliezer lay between life and death. His disciples and friends gathered around the bed, weeping openly. The great teacher, the man who had trained a generation, was slipping a...
The sages loved short sayings that carried a whole theology in a line. Here are a handful gathered from rabbinic tradition. Cold water morning and evening is better than all the co...
The Rabbi had traveled with Elijah for days and seen strange justice everywhere. A poor couple had hosted them with warmth, and that night the family cow died. A wealthy man had tu...
The sages illustrated repentance with a parable, and this one has sailed down the centuries. A great ship was crossing the ocean on a long voyage. Before reaching port, a storm dro...
Rome had issued three decrees against the Jews. They were forbidden to keep the Sabbath, forbidden to circumcise their sons, and forbidden to observe the laws of family purity. The...
When Shabbat ends and three stars appear in the sky, Jewish custom has always lingered a little longer over the Sabbath queen's departure. One of the oldest customs is to sing hymn...
There are three, the sages teach, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, singles out by name and calls virtuous. The first is the unmarried man who lives in a great city and does not si...
King Solomon needed the Shamir, a creature no larger than a barley grain but strong enough to split any stone, because the Torah forbade iron tools on the Temple's stones. To find ...
A traditional prayer of personal return, drawn from the anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings, places the worshiper on his knees before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "E...
The anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings preserve a parable about five sets of passengers who begin a long sea voyage. When the ship puts in at a beautiful island midway throu...
The Talmud in tractate Gittin preserves a wild stretch of stories in which Benaiah ben Yehoyada, one of King David's mighty men, captures Ashmedai, king of the demons, and leads hi...
A Tzeduki, a Sadducee, member of the party that rejected the Oral Torah, once came to Rabbi Abhu with a question meant to sting. "Your God is a priest," he said, "for it is written...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
The rabbis classified Kiddush Levanah, the monthly blessing of the moon, as one of the small but weighty acts of avodah, service of Heaven. The Kitzur Sh'lah and the kabbalists pre...
The Talmud and early midrashic collections preserve rabbinic mishlei, proverbs, in loose clusters, one-line teachings meant to be memorized and turned over slowly. Here is a sampli...
Abraham stands at the headwaters of the Jewish story, and the Talmud gathers around him a flood of legends, score upon score of traditions that stretch far beyond what the Book of ...
A Roman legend told how the daughter of a certain emperor had so admired the beauty of Rabbi Ishmael's face that after his martyrdom his skin was removed, embalmed, and kept among ...
The prophet Isaiah promised a strange future (Isaiah 66:23): It shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worsh...
A Kabbalistic instruction for the blessing of the new moon, Kiddush Levanah, arranges the worshiper's body and words like a careful spell. The mystic is to meditate on the initial ...
Rabbi Judah was asked a difficult question about divine justice: how can body and soul be judged together when one is mortal and the other eternal? He answered with a parable. A ki...
A garland of proverbs preserved in rabbinic tradition, each short enough to carry in a pocket and long enough to last a lifetime. Unhappy is the one who mistakes the branch for the...
The midrash taught that the arba minim, the four species shaken on the festival of Sukkot, are not a random bouquet. Each one maps to a part of the human body, so that when a Jew l...
The sages taught a secret about Friday night that changes the way you walk home from synagogue. Every Jew is escorted by two angels, one good, one evil, who follow him from the Bei...
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day (Deuteronomy 4:4). The verse is beautiful until you read four lines later: For the Lord thy God is...
When Abraham left Ur Kasdim and the idol-shops of his father Terach, he did not simply walk away. He pitched a tent, and the tent became a doorway. The rabbis imagined the scene th...
The Talmud tells of four sages who entered Pardes, the orchard. And only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Rashi read the story literally: they ascended to heaven in ecstatic vision. But ...
There was a season when Solomon was not Solomon. The demon king Ashmedai had stolen his signet ring, the one engraved with the Ineffable Name. And taken his place on the throne of ...
Ten measures of every quality came down into the world, said the sages in Kiddushin 49b, and nine of each were claimed by one nation while the rest of humanity had to share the las...
Somewhere beyond the known world, the sages said, there runs a river that refuses to behave like a river. It is called the Sambatyon, and it does not flow with water. It rushes wit...
The sages defended Rav Saphra for his devotion to Oral Torah over Scripture, and in doing so they staked out one of Judaism's most startling claims. Tradition, they argued, is not ...
There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had ...
Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, known simply as Rabbi, the Holy One, the redactor of the Mishnah, sat one evening at his table with two of his youngest guests: Yehudah and Chiskiyah, the son...
Four rabbis were on the road to Rome. Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva traveled together, and while they were still one hundred and twenty ...
There is a moment in Chullin 90b where Rava calls out his fellow rabbi for exaggeration. The Mishnah had just described the heap of ashes that accumulated on the Temple altar, some...
