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A psalm of Asaph opens this section of Aggadat Bereshit: "God has made Himself known in Judah; His name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:2). And immediately the rabbis add the verse f...
A Roman matrona once came to Rabbi Yosei bar Chalafta with a question that sounded innocent and was not. "In how many days did your God create the universe?" she asked. Rabbi Yosei...
A single verse in Proverbs sparked one of the most unsettling debates in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:5. "Tzedakah -- righteousness -- elevates a people; and chesed to the nations is a ...
When Jacob died in Egypt and his sons carried his body back to the land of Canaan for burial, an unusual procession formed. The sons of Esau, the sons of Ishmael, and the sons of K...
Rabbi Akiva had a habit, whenever he taught, of binding the body to the soul. "If we who study Torah suffer," he would say, "how much more would we suffer if we neglected it?" He h...
Rav Huna once woke to find that four hundred of his casks of wine had soured into vinegar. This was not an inconvenience. This was ruin. Word spread. Rav Yehudah, the brother of Ra...
There is a tradition, preserved in the Ma'aseh Book and cited in Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (no. 1, 1924), that ten kings will have ruled over the whole world before history fi...
A Roman matrona — a noblewoman who liked to corner rabbis with hard questions — came to Rabbi Joshua and asked him something she thought he could not answer. "If God finished His w...
Rabbi Yehudah ben Hanina was traveling through Rome when he learned that a Jewish child had been taken captive — a boy of remarkable beauty and already, in his young life, of remar...
Three quiet stories, each one about keeping Torah alive in a household. Rabbi Yehudah — the Prince, the redactor of the Mishnah — personally undertook the education of the daughter...
There was a man in a certain town who was always seen in tattered clothes. He sat on the synagogue floor among the poorest of the congregation. He ate what was given him. He accept...
The Torah says (Numbers 16) that Korah led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and that the earth opened and swallowed him. What the Torah does not say — what the midrash fills in...
The Alexandria synagogue, the Talmud remembers, was so large that a cantor had to wave a flag when the congregation was meant to answer Amen — no human voice could carry from pulpi...
No one in Israel, the sages taught, could humble himself more thoroughly than David when a commandment was at stake. Before God he spoke the words of Psalm 131, and the midrash tea...
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, ...
A man once lived in the capital who was recognized as remarkably clever — but he was also desperately poor. He used to walk the streets crying out, "Why has God dealt so harshly wi...
A rich man once sent his only son abroad to trade in distant markets. During the son's long absence the old father died, and he had left his will in the safekeeping of a trusted sl...
Ulla and Rav Chasda were walking together when they came to the gate of the old house of Rav Chana bar Chenelai. Rav Chasda looked up at the crumbling walls, stopped, and let out a...
King Hezekiah of Judah lay dying. The prophet Isaiah came to his bedside with what should have been the last message: set your house in order, for you shall die (2 Kings 20:1). Hez...
The Emperor Antoninus once pressed Rabbi Judah the Prince with a sharp question. At the day of judgment, he said, neither body nor soul could be justly punished. The body would ple...
A strange statistic is buried in tractate Yoma. During the 410 years of the First Temple, only eighteen high priests served in succession. During the 420 years of the Second Temple...
The emperor's daughter was found murdered in Rome, and the Romans blamed the Jews. An edict was prepared. The city's Jewish community stood under the shadow of a general massacre i...
King Manasseh of Judah reigned fifty-five years, longer than any other king of David's line, and the book of Kings accuses him of a staggering catalog of evils (2 Kings 21:1-18). H...
At a banquet in the academy of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the great redactor of the Mishnah around 200 CE, the wine flowed a little too freely. The sons of Rabbi Chiya, two brothers of s...
Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, once condemned a man to death for a petty reason — the man had called him "Vinegar, son of Wine," a sly way of saying he was the b...
The month of Elul, in Jewish tradition, is the month of return. The shofar is blown every morning in synagogues around the world, and propitiatory prayers — selichot — are recited ...
Simeon the Temanite — a Sage from Teman, a region in ancient Arabia where Jews had lived for centuries — was a regular fixture of the study hall. He could be counted on to attend t...
Rabbi Meir left the synagogue one afternoon earlier than usual. His colleagues noticed. Rabbi Meir was not a man who cut services short. When he finally explained himself, the stor...
When Solomon needed the king of the demons to help build the Temple without iron, he sent his captain Benaiah son of Jehoiada into the wilderness. Benaiah carried two weapons that ...
Elijah was traveling in disguise with a rabbi, as he often did in the legends. Toward evening they arrived at a large and imposing mansion, the home of a haughty, wealthy man. The ...
In the days when Alexander the Great marched through Asia, the Ishmaelites came before him with a lawsuit. They claimed Canaan. They were descended from Abraham, they argued; the I...
Rabbi Judah bar Ilai was known for many fine qualities, but one of them became a teaching in itself. Whenever a bridal procession passed through the streets, Rabbi Judah would stop...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus thought he had caught Rabbi Akiva in a contradiction. "If your God loves the poor," he pressed, "why doesn't He feed them Himself?"Akiva did not hes...
Jewish folk belief about small coins ran deep in the towns of Poland. Among both Jewish and Gentile neighbors a superstition held that a penny found at the right moment — stumbled ...
The Rabbi had traveled with Elijah for days and seen strange justice everywhere. A poor couple had hosted them with warmth, and that night the family cow died. A wealthy man had tu...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 225, tells a sad little case study in academic cruelty. Rabbi Dimi of Nehardea had arrived in Babylon with a cargo of figs to sell. It was custom that ...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 255, remembers a forgotten act of judicial courage. King Yannai — the Hasmonean monarch — had a servant who had committed murder. Jewish law is uncompr...
A rich man lay dying, and he called his son to the bedside. He made him swear one oath — "Never take an oath yourself. Not in court, not in dispute, not for any price." The son agr...
Rabbi Nehemiah was a humble man and a simple eater. He kept a plain table. He served plain food. One day he invited a man to share his meal, and the man accepted. The guest was a g...
After Abraham had sent his son Ishmael away to live with his mother Hagar, Ishmael settled in the wilderness and married a Moabite wife. Years passed. Abraham wanted to see how his...
When Esau came back from the hunt and saw that Jacob had taken the blessing, he plotted his revenge quietly. The sages, reading the reunion years later in Genesis 33, noticed that ...
The prophet Elijah once appeared to a pious but struggling man and handed him four gold dinars. The man was astonished. Four dinars was enough to start a modest trade. It was a pro...
There was a man called Yosef Mokir Shabbat, "Yosef the Honorer of the Sabbath." Every Friday he spent whatever he had on the best food available for the Shabbat table. Anything the...
The midrash on Abraham's hospitality in Genesis 18 notices something small and opens it into a whole theology. The patriarch had just made a covenant with the peoples of the land. ...
A Kuthean — a Samaritan — once came to Rabbi Meir with an accusation against the patriarch Jacob. It is preserved as exemplum No. 32 in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection. "Your ancest...
Gaster's exemplum No. 438, drawn from the Gaster Hebrew manuscripts, tells the story of a stubborn merchant who decided to prove that a person can lose his property any time he wan...
Rabbi Judah was asked a difficult question about divine justice: how can body and soul be judged together when one is mortal and the other eternal? He answered with a parable. A ki...
After the Bar Kokhba revolt the Roman Empire passed a decree that struck at the heart of Jewish continuity: any sage who ordained a student to the rank of rabbi, and any student wh...
