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Twelve Questions Rode from Alexandria to Joshua

Alexandria liked hard questions the way merchants like accurate scales. Each one its scholars sent east rested on two verses pulling opposite ways.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Halakhah, Aggadah, and the Ordinary Day
  2. A King Asks How to Be Free of Grief
  3. Amen to a Stranger's Blessing
  4. One Diaspora, Three Pressures

Alexandria's Jewish community was vast, one of the great diasporas of the first century, a city of docks, books, and arguments that did not end at sundown. Its scholars liked hard questions the way merchants like accurate scales. Once they packed twelve of them for Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah and sent them east. Four bundles of three: law, narrative, common wisdom, ethics. Every question rested on a contradiction in Scripture, two verses pulling opposite ways like ropes on a single mast. The test was not only to answer. The test was to show how the knot untied without tearing the rope.

Twelve Questions Rode from Alexandria to Joshua Click for full size

Joshua took them in order. He answered all twelve. The room that sent the questions did not need a weaker Torah. It needed a Torah that could survive argument in a city that spoke Greek in the street and Hebrew in its bones.

Halakhah, Aggadah, and the Ordinary Day

Three questions pressed practical rulings that would change a kitchen, a court, or a doorway. Three pressed stories and the character of God when history refused to be simple. Three pressed the texture of ordinary life, the wisdom that is neither pure law nor pure legend. Three pressed the inner use of character, how a person spends courage and restraint. Apparent contradictions were not failures of the text. They were invitations written into the scroll on purpose.

A sage is someone who hears twelve clashes and feels his welcome extended to the next twelve. The Alexandrians had taken care. They did not send riddles for sport alone. They sent the kind of pressure a city of merchants and philosophers would feel when two verses refuse to shake hands and a household still has to decide what to do by evening.

A King Asks How to Be Free of Grief

In another Alexandrian stream, a Greek king sits with Jewish elders under the polish of court hospitality and asks how a man can stay free of grief. One answers: never injure anyone, do good to everybody, follow the pathway of righteousness, for its fruits bring freedom from grief. Pray that unexpected evils, death, disease, pain, do not land without warning. Piety, he says, is already a shelter when the heart is trained toward the good. Another elder has just told the king that after failure a man must never again do what caused the fall; he must form friendships and act justly, for the gift of God is to do good actions and not the contrary.

The king is delighted, as kings often are when advice sounds noble and costs nothing yet. Delight is easy in a banquet hall with wine and clever speech. The harder work is the same work Joshua does with contradictions: live so that the next failure does not copy the last, and so that friendship is more than a toast.

Amen to a Stranger's Blessing

Back in the land of midrash, Rabbi Yishmael walks a road and meets a non-Jew who blesses him in the Name. Yishmael says, "The response is already stated." Another non-Jew curses him with heat. He gives the same answer in the same calm. His students stare as if he has lost the difference between honey and ash. How can blessing and curse share a reply? He points to the verse: those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed (Numbers 24:9). The system is already running. Heaven does not need Yishmael to invent a new sentence for every mouth that opens on the road.

Elsewhere the sages permit "Amen" when a non-Jew blesses the Name, yet withhold Amen when the blessing of a Jew in God's name is judged empty of force. Rabbi Tanhuma opens a wider door: if a non-Jew blesses you personally, answer Amen, for "you shall be blessed more than all the peoples" (Deuteronomy 7:14). Blessing can arrive from unexpected nations. The ear that can resolve twelve scriptural clashes is the same ear that must decide whether to answer a stranger's good word.

One Diaspora, Three Pressures

Alexandria sends contradictions in a sealed bundle. A court sends moral questions across a table of food. The road sends blessing and curse from foreign mouths that do not know they are testing a rabbi. In each case a Jewish ear must decide whether the world is chaos or ordered speech. Joshua resolves verses without panic. The elders teach the king to stop repeating his own damage and to seek friends who pull him toward justice. Yishmael refuses to be rewritten by every stranger's mood, because the Torah already wrote the outcome of blessing and curse.

The diaspora does not dilute the argument. It multiplies the rooms where the argument must be won: study house, palace, roadside dust. Twelve questions ride from Alexandria to Joshua. A king asks how not to drown in grief. A rabbi answers Amen to the world heaven already governs. The sea between Egypt and the land does not silence any of it.

AlexandriaJoshuaAristeasAmenQuestions
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 261; Talmud, Niddah 69bThe Exempla of the Rabbis (1924)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · PD-US-pre-1929

The Jewish community of Alexandria was enormous, perhaps the largest outside Judea in the first century CE. And its scholars were known for asking difficult questions. Once, they sent twelve to Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah.

The questions came in four bundles of three, covering the full range of Jewish learning.

Three concerned halakhah, practical legal rulings where the answer would affect daily observance. Three concerned aggadah, narrative and theological questions, the kind that open onto the character of God and the meaning of history. Three concerned the commonplace, questions of ordinary wisdom, the texture of daily life. And three concerned ethics, matters of the inner life and the right use of character.

Every question, the Alexandrians had taken care to frame, rested on what appeared to be a contradiction in the Bible itself. Two verses that seemed to pull against each other. The test was not merely to answer. The test was to show how the contradictions resolved.

Rabbi Joshua took them in order. He answered all twelve satisfactorily.

Gaster's Exempla #261 and Niddah 69b–71a preserve the episode. The Rabbis loved these apparent contradictions precisely because they loved what resolution revealed. Torah is written in a way that invites argument. A sage is someone who can hear twelve apparent contradictions and not feel his faith shaken, only his welcome extended to the next twelve.

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Letter of Aristeas 1:233Letter of Aristeas

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Letter of Aristeas, Clarendon Press (1913) · CC-BY

If any man does fail, he must never again do those things which caused his failure, but he must form friendships and act justly. For it is the gift of God to be able to do good actions and not the contrary.'

Delighted with these words, the king asked another How he could be free from grief? And he replied, 'If he never injured any one, but did good to everybody and followed the pathway of righteousness, for its fruits bring freedom from grief.

But we must pray to God that unexpected evils such as death or disease or pain or anything of this kind may not come upon us and injure us. But since you are devoted to piety, no such misfortune will ever come upon you.'

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Bereshit Rabbah 66:6Bereshit Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

When a Non-Jew Blesses God May We Say Amen is the question behind this passage from Bereshit Rabbah.

Our sages teach that if a non-Jew blesses the Name – meaning God – we can actually respond with "Amen." But, and this is a big but, if they bless a Jew using the name of God, we don’t answer "Amen." Why? The Etz Yosef commentary explains this is to indicate that their blessing, in that context, isn't effective. It doesn't hold the same power or intention.

Rabbi Tanhuma takes it a step further. He says that if a non-Jew blesses you, personally, go ahead and answer "Amen." He bases this on the verse in Deuteronomy (7:14): “You shall be blessed more than all the peoples [mikol haamim].” The idea here is that blessing can come from unexpected places, even "from all the nations."

Here's where it gets really interesting. The text tells a story about Rabbi Yishmael. A non-Jew encounters him and blesses him. Rabbi Yishmael responds, "The response is already stated." Then, another non-Jew encounters him and curses him. And guess what? Rabbi Yishmael gives the same response: "The response is already stated."

His students are understandably confused. "What you said to this one, you said to that one?" they ask.

Rabbi Yishmael's answer is profound. He replies, “So it is written: ‘Those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed’ (Numbers 24:9)." He's pointing to the inherent power of the blessing itself, regardless of who’s offering it. It's as if to say, "The universe already has a system in place. The blessing will find its way, and so will the curse."

What does this all mean? It's not about dismissing the intentions or words of others. Instead, it’s about recognizing the power and potential inherent in blessings and curses themselves. It also suggests a degree of trust in a divine system that responds to these utterances. The blessing, or the curse, sets something in motion.

So, the next time someone blesses you, regardless of their background, remember Rabbi Yishmael. Recognize the potential for good that’s being offered, and trust that the universe, in its own way, will respond. Perhaps the real power lies not in who gives the blessing, but in the blessing itself.

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