9,687 related texts · Page 128 of 202
Rabbi Akiba shocked his companions by laughing at moments when any sane person would weep. The Talmud (Makkot 24a-b) records two instances of this extraordinary laughter, and both ...
King Solomon, the wisest of all kings, once taught a lesson about wealth and poverty using the simplest of demonstrations: two meals. The first meal was served in the house of a ri...
A group of pagan astrologers — men who read the stars and claimed to know the future — once came before a Jewish court. They had traveled from distant lands, driven by a question t...
Hillel the Elder was famous for his patience. The Talmud records that no one ever saw him angry, no one ever heard him raise his voice, and no situation — however absurd or provoca...
The Talmud (Shabbat 33b) records a conversation that nearly got three sages killed — and did send two of them into hiding for thirteen years. Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yose, and Rabbi Sh...
The Talmud in tractate Baba Batra (8a) records a teaching about almsgiving that medieval Jewish communities took very seriously — so seriously that it became the foundation for how...
Beruria, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, had a sister who was captured by the Romans and sent to a brothel in the city. Beruria turned to her husband and pleaded with him to resc...
Of all the questions that have haunted the Jewish people across the centuries, none has burned hotter than this one: when will the Messiah come? The Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin (3...
Three Clever Tricks. Midr. Lament. I. Lament. R. I § 4. Yalk. Sip. IV, p. 86. Maase Buch No. 187. Helvicus, Historien, I, ch. 21, p. 91. Grunbaum, Jiid. Dtsch. Chrest. p. 428. Tend...
A drunkard wandered into a cemetery — the one place in the ancient world where no sane person would voluntarily spend the night. The dead were there, and so were the spirits, and s...
Wicked-Brother-in-Law. Holeh Tamim u. Poel Sedek. • m Eisenstein, Oser, P. 343. Husin, Maasim Tobim, No. 2. Maase Buch No. 204. Levi, R. E. J. XXXIII, p. 234 ff. Ben Gorion I, p. 2...
The sages taught that God created no creature without a purpose — not the serpent, not the spider, not the scorpion. The story preserved under the title "Saved from Serpent" illust...
Rabbi Akiba was the greatest sage of his generation, but even he could not escape the anxieties of a father. The astrologers had warned him: his daughter was destined to die on her...
A desperately poor woman came before the prophet Elijah with nothing in the world except a single coin. She had no family to support her, no trade to sustain her, and no prospect o...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan to scout the territory before the Israelite invasion, ten of them came back terrified. "We saw giants there," they reported. "T...
Butcher Companion in Paradise. Ben Atar, No. 13, f. 31a. Midr. Decalogue, V, 2. Nissim, f. 20a. Zabara, Shaashuin ed. Davidson, p. 1. Eliah Cohen, Meil Se- daka § 441. Heilperin, S...
Money Recovered by Trick. Yoma, f. 83 b. Pesikta R. ch. 22. Ben Atar, No. 6, f. 25 a. Midr. Decalogue III, 3; VIII, 2. Nissim, f. 25 a. Yalk. Sip. II, p. 149. Maase Buch No. 215. H...
Miraculous Herbs. Eisenstein, Oser, p. 348. Maase Buch No. 224. Helvicus, Historien I, ch. 39, p. 159. Levi, R. E. J. XXXIII, p. 67 ff. Ben Gorion I, 306, 380. Bolte & Polivka, II,...
Burial of Scholar & Taxgather. Shimeonh. Shetah&W itches m of Ascalon. J. Hagigah, II, 2. Sifre, Deut. § 221, f. 114 b. Midr. Decalogue, IX, ib. Nissim, f. 3 b. Rashi to Sanhedrin ...
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...
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...
The folk traditions of Israel contain many tales of encounters between ordinary Jews and the demons that inhabit the hidden corners of the world. The story known as "The Demon and ...
Bread upon the Waters. Yebamot, f. 121b. cf. Baba Batra, f. 74 a to b. Tanh. Numb. Hukkat 1. • • Abot de R. Nathan, ch. 3. Gen. R. ch. 22. cf. Numb. R. 18 § 22. Eccles. R. II, i;V,...
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...
Two Sisters & Waters of Ordeal. Tanh. Numb. Naso, § 6, f. *81 b. Numb, R. ch. 9 § 9. Tanh. Eccles. § 10. Yalk. II, § 978. Simhat Hanefesh (the vital soul), f. 30. Yalk. Sip. IV, p....
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 married woman betrayed her husband with a robber — and the story that unfolds from this betrayal became a cautionary tale about the entanglement of sin and its consequences. The ...
A man hid his gold in a set of clay jars — the ancient equivalent of a safe deposit box — and the story of what happened to those jars became a parable about the fragility of earth...
Solomon & Daughter of King of Ammon. Gittin, f. 68b. cf. Yalk. Hadash. • m Hirz, Emek Hamel ekh, f. 15. Jellinek, B. H. II, p. 86. Eisenstein, Oser, p. 530. Maase Buch No. 104. Ten...
The sages told a parable about a man who had three friends. The first friend he loved above all others and showered with gifts. The second friend he respected but kept at a distanc...
In the distant lands of Persia, where fire altars burned day and night in honor of the elements, the Jewish communities faced a peculiar danger that was not from human persecutors ...
God’s Justice. Meg. Esther (Yiddish) *593- Griinbaum, Jiid. Deutsch. Chrest. p. 215—18. Behrnauer, ZDMG. XVI, p. 762. Brockhaus, ZDMG., XIV, p. 7o6f. Gellert, Das Schicksal. Gesta ...
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...
A Jewish man and a gentile once made a wager about whose religion was true. Satan, disguised as an ordinary man, appeared and ruled in favor of the gentile, who took all the money....
"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...
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 cherub represents a winged celestial being frequently referenced throughout Scripture. According to the prophet Ezekiel's vision, cherubim appear as a group of four living crea...
A psalm of David, written after Doeg the Edomite betrayed him — that's where Aggadat Bereshit anchors the story of Jacob's ladder. Strange placement. But the rabbis had a method. D...
The flood waters had covered everything. Noah had been sealed in the ark for months — the rain, the silence, the slow recession of the water, the waiting. Then the text says simply...
Three figures pray and God delights in it: Moses, David, and the Messiah. This is the claim Aggadat Bereshit makes from (Proverbs 15:8) — "the prayer of the upright is His delight....
God told Noah to enter the ark, and then, after the flood, He told him to leave it. "Go out from the ark" (Genesis 8:16). A simple command — except the rabbis hear in it a whole th...
Hell has seven names. This is what Aggadat Bereshit says when Malachi promises "the day is coming, burning like an oven" (Malachi 3:19). The rabbis did not flinch from the geograph...
Hannah was barren for years. Her husband loved her and her rival taunted her and the priest Eli misread her prayer as drunkenness. The whole story is about a woman whose deepest lo...
"These are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham; Abraham begot Isaac" (Genesis 25:19). The verse says it twice, and the rabbis asked why. Their answer: to show that the gift gi...
"Jacob fled to the land of Aram" (Hosea 12:13). The prophet is not describing geography — he is making a theological point about the interior life. Isaiah completes it: "My people,...
When the offering was completed (1 Chronicles 18:26), the midrash reads it through Song of Songs: the thread of crimson, the image of the veil that separated the holy from the prof...
Jewish tradition has something fascinating to say about that very idea. It's a notion that the very foundations, the shoresh – the roots – of absolutely everything were established...
