Two Decisive Tales Gasters Exempla Carried Forward From the Talmud

The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster's 1924 anthology, preserves condensed versions of two of the most consequential narratives in the Babylonian Talmud. The Kamsa and Bar Kamsa episode from Gittin 55b-56a, often read as the precipitating cause of the Second Temple's destruction. The Honi the Circle-Maker tradition from Taanit 23a, which gave Jewish folklore the rain-prayer and the carob-tree parable.

The two tales sit far apart in the Exempla but share a structural function. Both preserve a small human moment that turned out to have civilizational consequences.

The Misaddressed Invitation

Exempla 70 recounts the Kamsa and Bar Kamsa episode. A man hosted a feast. He intended to invite his friend Kamsa. His servant mistakenly invited Bar Kamsa, the host's enemy. Bar Kamsa arrived. The host, recognizing the wrong man, demanded he leave.

Bar Kamsa offered to pay for his own meal. The host refused. Bar Kamsa offered to pay for half the feast. The host refused. Bar Kamsa offered to pay for the entire feast. The host refused. Bar Kamsa was physically expelled. The rabbis present at the feast watched and said nothing.

Bar Kamsa, humiliated, traveled to the emperor in Rome and reported that the Jews had rebelled. As proof, he proposed that the emperor send an offering to the Jerusalem Temple. The Jews, Bar Kamsa predicted, would refuse to accept it. A lamb was sent. Bar Kamsa mutilated it on the journey in a way that would not violate Roman sacrificial law but would disqualify it under Jewish law. The Jews wanted to offer it for the sake of peace. Rabbi Zachariah ben Abqulos prevented the offering, citing the legal disqualification.

The chain of consequences ran through the Roman war and the destruction of the Second Temple. The Exempla preserves the tradition that the destruction's precipitating cause was a misaddressed dinner invitation that escalated through hospitality refusal, public humiliation, vengeful denunciation, technical halakhic punctilio, and imperial military response. Every link in the chain was a recoverable human error.

Honi the Circle-Maker

Exempla 422 records the famous tradition about Honi ha-Meagel. During a drought, the people of Jerusalem appealed to Honi to pray for rain on their behalf. Honi drew a circle on the ground, stood in the middle, and prayed. He told the Holy One he would not step out of the circle until rain had fallen. The rain fell immediately.

The exemplum then preserves the second famous Honi tradition. Honi had wondered at Psalm 126:1. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Honi could not understand how anyone could be like a dreamer for seventy years.

One day, walking in the field, Honi saw an old man planting a carob tree. The carob bears fruit only after seventy years. Honi asked whether the old man expected to eat the fruit. The old man answered. My forefathers planted carob trees for me. I plant carob trees for those who will come after me.

The exemplum preserves this exchange because it answered Honi's question. The seventy-year dream was real. Generations plant for descendants they will never meet. The Honi cycle continues with Honi falling asleep beside that very tree and waking seventy years later to find his own grandson eating from a carob the man had planted on the day Honi began his nap.

Why the Compression Was the Point

The Exempla's decision to preserve these two long Talmudic narratives in tight summary form, rather than reproducing them at full length, reflects the medieval Jewish appetite for portable tradition. A community needed both stories to be available at the right level of compression for the right occasion. The Exempla's reader could reach for the summary when the full Talmudic text was not nearby, and the summary preserved enough of the structure to make the lesson land without distortion.

What the Two Tales Together Teach

Read the two passages together and the editorial logic of Gaster's Exempla becomes legible. The collection preserves both the destruction-causing humiliation and the rain-bringing circle because both teach the same principle about how individual moments produce world-shaping consequences.

The host's refusal to seat Bar Kamsa produced a Temple destruction. Honi's circle produced rain. An old man's planting produced a forest his grandchildren would eat from. The Exempla preserves all three because medieval Jewish readers needed reminders that the present moment carries weight the present moment does not always feel.