11,731 related texts · Page 230 of 245
The sages taught that wealth spent on Torah study is the only wealth that endures. The Midrash (Pesikta 28, Leviticus Rabbah 30) tells of a man who possessed great fortune and face...
Onkelos — known in some traditions as Aquila — was a Roman nobleman, a nephew of the Emperor himself, who converted to Judaism. His conversion scandalized the imperial court and be...
A dying father left his entire estate to one of his sons, but several men came forward each claiming to be the rightful heir. The question reached the courts: which one was the rea...
Rabbi Meir had a principle: never trust a person whose name contains the word for evil. The Talmud (Yoma 83b) tells the story of how this principle was tested — and proven devastat...
The Midrash (Pesikta Rabbati 19, Tanhuma Pinehas) tells a cautionary tale about gluttony — the sin of making the stomach into a god, of subordinating every other value to the next ...
The Midrash on the Ten Commandments tells the story of a faithful woman whose devotion was tested beyond what most people could endure — and who emerged triumphant. A certain man w...
Moses stood apart from every other prophet who ever lived. The rabbis taught that while other prophets saw God through clouded glass, Moses alone saw through a clear lens — an unob...
There was once a man so wicked that the entire town avoided him. He cheated in business, spoke cruelty to strangers, and mocked the sages when they tried to rebuke him. Everyone ag...
A young boy discovered that he could understand the language of birds. When sparrows chattered on the rooftops, he heard gossip. When ravens called from the treetops, he heard warn...
Maimonides — the great philosopher, physician, and legal authority — once interpreted a king's dream with such precision that the story entered the canon of Jewish wisdom tales alo...
Two friends loved the same woman. This is the setup for one of the most painful dilemmas in human experience — and the Jewish version of the story resolves it with an act of sacrif...
The meeting — whether real or legendary — between Rabbi Eleazar of Worms and Maimonides represents one of the great contrasts in Jewish intellectual history. Eleazar, the Ashkenazi...
A man once made a vow that he would never lose his temper, no matter what his wife did to provoke him. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compiled by Moses...
A king once raised a boy in total isolation, keeping him locked away from birth so that he would never see a woman. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (comp...
Two robbers had been terrorizing the roads between towns, ambushing travelers, stealing their goods, and leaving them bruised and empty-handed in the dust. The local authorities se...
The Midrash (Tanhuma, Teruma) teaches that the merchandise of a Torah scholar is unlike any other merchandise in the world. When a merchant sells a bolt of cloth, the cloth leaves ...
A heretic challenged the sages with a question about God's justice toward the disabled. "If your God is good, why does He create people who are maimed — the blind, the deaf, the la...
Two friends loved each other so deeply that one was willing to die for the other — and the other refused to let him. This tale of ultimate friendship, preserved in the Exempla of t...
A man hid his money in a hollow tree — and the story of what happened to that money became a parable about the cleverness of thieves and the greater cleverness of the righteous. Th...
Three chests were placed before a person who was told to choose one — and the story of that choice became a famous parable about the difference between appearance and reality. The ...
Solomon and chess — a pairing that connects the king's legendary wisdom with the world's most intellectual game. While chess in its modern form postdates Solomon by many centuries,...
A man was granted a wish — and what he wished for became the source of his downfall. The tale of the "Foolish Wish" is found in dozens of cultures, but the Jewish version carries a...
A man tore his mantle in half and gave half to a stranger — an act of generosity that became the seed of a much larger story. The "Half the Mantle" tale is found across many cultur...
Three questions were posed to a sage — and his answers became legendary. The "Three Questions" format appears throughout medieval literature, but the Jewish versions are distinguis...
Three maxims were given to a man — three simple rules for living — and his obedience to these maxims saved his life. The tale, found in Jewish and comparative folklore collections,...
A star fell from heaven — and its fall marked the beginning of a corruption that would lead to the great Flood. The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah of Rabbi Moses HaDarshan, Midrash Abkhir...
"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1). This verse became the foundation for one of the most frequently told stories in the Je...
Prince of the demons, and an important figure both in Talmudic and in post-Talmudic literature, where he appears as accuser, seducer, and destroyer. His name is etymologized as = "...
Plural word of unknown derivation used in the Hebrew Bible to denote the primitive Semitic house-gods whose cult had been handed down to historical times from the earlier period of...
A class of celestial beings appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the prophet Isaiah's visionary experience (Isaiah 6:2 onwards). Isaiah observed multiple seraphim...
The concept of soul in Jewish tradition derives from Genesis, where God endows humans with "spirit or breath" (ruah). Initially, this spirit was "inseparably connected, if not whol...
Isaiah says God is "calling from the east a bird of prey, a man of my counsel from a distant land" (Isaiah 46:11). The rabbis identified that bird of prey as Abraham. He came from ...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri taught that the priesthood did not begin with Aaron. It began with Noah's son. "The Holy One, blessed be He," the Rabbi said, "set aside Shem, separating hi...
The prophet Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, saw the heavens open and a chariot descend. Beneath it were four living creatures, and each creature had four faces. As for the likeness o...
Abraham stepped out of the cave where he had been hidden as an infant, and for the first time saw the world above ground. He looked up and saw the sun climbing, enormous and warm, ...
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 loo...
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), preserved from the Ma'aseh Book, tells a courtroom tale set in the court of Alexander. The people of Afriki — the descendants of Canaan who h...
A group of philosophers once traveled to Rome and put a question to the elders of the Jewish community there. "If your God takes no pleasure in idolatry," they asked, "why does He ...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were aboard a ship when a storm drove them far out into the open ocean. The wind pushed them into waters no Jew had reason to visit. Rabbi Eliezer,...
A Roman emperor once boasted to Rabbi Joshua ben Chananiah that he wished to throw a banquet large enough to entertain the God of Israel. The rabbi looked at him gravely and said, ...
A min — a sectarian — once argued with Rabbi Ami against the resurrection of the dead. "How can God bring back bodies that have returned to dust?" he demanded. "The dust scatters; ...
A Roman emperor once challenged Rabban Gamliel with a question that sounds modern. If there is a God in the world, why does He not reveal Himself directly? Why not speak face to fa...
The rabbis preserved a strange little tradition about how Og, the giant king of Bashan, survived the Flood. The Torah never explains it. Og appears later, towering over the Israeli...
The Flood did not arrive gently. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 7:11 dates it with astonishing precision: the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, the second month, the seventeent...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 7:13 narrows the entire human story down to a single doorway. On the day the Flood began, eight people walked through it — Noah, his three sons Sh...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 7:23 ends the Flood with six words the reader will never forget: Noah only was left, and they who were with him in the ark.The Targum has just fin...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 8:11 takes a verse every child knows and slips a piece of mystical geography into it. The dove returns at evening. She carries a fresh-plucked oli...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 9:4 delivers one of the oldest and most surprising laws in Torah. Flesh which is torn of the living beast, what time the life is in it, or that to...
