17 passagesc. 10th century CEHebrew / AramaicCC-BY; CC0
Individual passages from Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Zuta, indexed for close reading, source verification, and myth source-checking.
From the school of Elijah comes a teaching that begins with a man's daily bearing. Be careful in the fear of Heaven, soften your replies, turn away anger, and multiply peace with f...
A man met the teacher on the road and tried to split Sinai in half. Written Torah, yes. Mishnah, no. Scripture came from God, he said, but the oral teaching did not. Tanna DeBei El...
The Holy One, blessed be He, made everything in His world but two things. Falsehood and injustice He never created and never made, for His work is perfect and He does no wrong. So ...
The sages teach a hard humility: be lowly to everyone, and most of all to your own household. Learn it from the Holy One, blessed be He, who did not deal with Israel according to t...
How should we understand a Jew stripped of his possessions? Picture a king who has barred his own son from the royal banquet, though the king knows the boy is hungry and thirsty. T...
God's mercy fills the world, so why command charity for the poor at all? Because some people brought trouble on themselves, and the penalty can fall across four generations. Broodi...
The chapter turns from punishment to reward and shows the same arithmetic running in reverse. Just as evil can be visited for four generations, so when a person performs a commandm...
The chapter opens with a tender comparison. A man before he marries and has children is at peace in his house, but once children come and provoke him with their ways, grief enters ...
Four elder prophets spoke in the days of King Uzziah, and Hosea was the eldest of them. When the Holy One showed him Israel's sins, Heaven was waiting to see how the prophet would ...
Why do the righteous sometimes suffer while the wicked prosper? The chapter opens by warning that a person must not let that question curdle into a grievance against God, for the o...
When trouble comes upon Israel, it does not come as punishment alone but as love. Picture a king whose servant develops a sore on his foot. The king orders the physician to heal it...
Why did God create the evil inclination at all? He already has untold myriads of angels who sanctify His name without ceasing, crying holy by day and blessing His glory by night. T...
What happens to the transgressors of Israel? When a person sins, the chapter says, he is in effect wishing the world undone, pushing away the feet of the Divine Presence whose glor...
While traveling from place to place, the teacher met a man who knew neither Scripture nor Mishnah, a scoffer who came at him with mockery. The teacher asked gently: my son, what wi...
Elijah opens by calling heaven and earth as witnesses to a single ideal: the scholar who studies for Heaven's sake, lives off the work of his own hands, and never feeds from the pu...
Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Zuta turns to How The Resurrection Will Take Place. One particularly vivid description comes from Eliyahu Zuta. It paints a scene of divine artistry, a cosmic a...
Gehenna – sometimes translated as Hell, but more accurately understood as Gehinnom, the place of spiritual purification in Jewish tradition – isn't a place you want to end up. It's...
