10,602 related texts · Page 205 of 221
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
Rabbi Jehuda ben Hanina was traveling through Rome when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. In the slave market — that brutal engine of the Roman economy where human b...
When King Ptolemy of Egypt ordered the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek, the sages of Israel did not celebrate. They mourned. The day the Torah was rendered in a foreign tongue, ...
The Egyptians brought their case before Alexander of Macedon, and they were confident they would win. Their claim was simple: when the Israelites left Egypt during the Exodus, they...
Rabbi Akiva sat in a Roman prison, and his captors gave him a choice: abandon the Torah, or rot in chains. He chose the chains. The Roman authorities pressed him repeatedly. They o...
The students of Rabbi Akiba were traveling on a road between towns when they spotted a band of robbers approaching from the opposite direction. The bandits were armed and dangerous...
Rome had issued a decree: no new rabbis could be ordained. The empire understood that as long as the chain of rabbinic authority remained unbroken, the Jewish people could never tr...
A young man and woman who were betrothed to one another were seized by raiders and sold into slavery. By cruel coincidence — or perhaps by providence — they were sold to the same m...
The Romans led Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha to their execution together. Both were among the greatest sages of their generation, and both had been condemne...
A laborer worked for his master for three full years, faithfully performing every task assigned to him. When the work was finally done, he approached his master and asked for his w...
A young Torah scholar died in the prime of his life, and his widow was inconsolable. He had been pious, devoted, careful in his observance of every commandment. Why would God take ...
Two boys walked past a group of Elders who were sitting together in study. One boy had his head covered, as was the custom of modesty and reverence. The other boy walked by with hi...
Someone once asked Rabbi Akiva a question that seemed simple but carried enormous weight: "How great is the value of the Torah?" Rabbi Akiva did not hesitate. "Each word of the Tor...
Rabbi Akiba was standing by the shore when he witnessed something terrible. A man — someone Rabbi Akiba knew — fell into the sea. The waves swallowed him instantly. One moment he w...
There was a man who paid his tithes faithfully every single year without exception. Rain or drought, abundance or scarcity, he set aside exactly one-tenth of everything he harveste...
A farmer was harvesting his field when he realized he had forgotten a sheaf of grain. It was sitting in the far corner of the field, left behind in the rush of the day's work. His ...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the wealthiest men among the sages, but he was famously reluctant to part with his money. He studied Torah with passion, observed every commandment with pre...
Hananya, the nephew of Rabbi Joshua, was a respected scholar living in Babylon. And one day he made a decision that nearly split the Jewish world in two. He decided to set the cale...
A pious man owned a vineyard, and the hedge around it had fallen into disrepair. Gaps had opened in the fence, leaving the vines exposed to animals and thieves. The vineyard needed...
Dispute between R. Eliezer and R. Joshua about levi- tical purity. Appealed to in turn, the Harub tree [uprooted itself], the water turned back, the walls of the Midrash (rabbinic ...
The story of the conversion to Judaism of Abu Golis, a priest of Damascus living in Tiberias. Making a bad use of some money entrusted to him, he lost his sight. His former friends...
Skipping one small ritual cost a man his entire identity. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis, a 1924 compilation by Moses Gaster drawn from medieval Jewish ...
The son of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai fell desperately ill. The great sage, who would one day preserve Judaism itself by establishing the academy at Yavneh after the destruction of t...
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...
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 beca...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the great sages of the Mishnaic period, a man of wealth, learning, and considerable stature. But his most famous act had nothing to do with scholarship or l...
Rabbi Tarfon loved his mother with a devotion that became legendary among the sages. The Talmud preserves the story of how he honored her, and it is one of the most striking illust...
Two men stand before the heavenly court. Both honored their fathers. Both are judged. One goes to Paradise. The other to Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death)....
Rabbi Akiba heard that one of his students had fallen gravely ill. The young man was bedridden, burning with fever, and growing weaker by the day. No one expected him to survive. B...
Rabbi Yohanan ben Matya instructed his son to hire Jewish laborers and feed them properly. The son went out, hired the workers, and came back with a question that stopped his fathe...
The Roman Emperor sent word to the Jewish sages: "Send me a luminary — your wisest man." The sages debated and chose Rabbi Meir, whose very name meant "one who illuminates." He was...
A man cleared stones from his own field and threw them onto the public road. A pious man passing by saw this and rebuked him: "Fool, why do you throw stones from a field that is no...
A man earned sixty dinars. He divided them into three equal portions: twenty for food, twenty for his house, and twenty he saved for his children. It was a sensible arrangement — f...
A Roman official named Hadrakitilios wrote a letter to the Emperor Hadrian about the Jews. "Your Majesty evidently hates the Jews," Hadrakitilios wrote, "because they refuse to con...
Rabbi Gidal had a practice that scandalized some of his contemporaries. He would sit at the entrance to the women's bathhouse, directing traffic, showing women where to go. Day aft...
Rabbi Nehemia was a man of simple tastes. He ate plain food, lived modestly, and saw no reason to indulge in luxuries. One day, he invited a well-known gourmand — a man famous for ...
A man came before Rabba and declared: "I am poor, yet every day I eat fattened fowl and drink aged wine." Rabba was skeptical. How could a poor man afford such luxuries? The man ex...
Rav Huna once sent Rav Sheshet on a mission that neither man took lightly: to consult Anan on a question of law, with the threat of excommunication hanging over Rav Sheshet's head ...
Pinhas b.Jari's ass, when stolen by thieves, refused to eat for 3 days because the thieves’ provender had not been tithed. 236 f. 160b. Joshua b. Hananya owned to having been taugh...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was invited to a brit milah — the circumcision ceremony of a newborn child. He came, he prayed, and through the power of his prayer, the life of the infant...
The sages preserved a curious historical note about a girl named Justina, the daughter of Asverus, who was married at the age of six and gave birth to a child at the age of seven. ...
A wealthy merchant was traveling far from home when he fell gravely ill. He knew he was dying. His only son was back in his homeland, too far away to reach in time. But the merchan...
King Solomon was an excellent chess player. He played with Benaya his general and always won. Once a noise in the street drew Solomon to the window. Benaya took a piece from the bo...
A man once caught stealing was ordered by the king to be hanged. On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow i...
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...
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 Emperor once invited the Jewish sages to a grand banquet and posed what he thought was an impossible challenge. "I wish to prepare a feast for your God," he announced. "Tell me...
A Roman emperor — the Talmud does not always specify which one — once summoned the Jewish sages to answer a question that he believed would expose their faith as foolishness. "You ...
