Eleazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, inherited more than his father's brilliance in Torah. He was endowed with staggering physical strength — the kind of strength that seemed to belong to the age of Samson rather than the age of the Talmud.
One day, Eleazar was sitting at a roadside inn, eating a large meal, when a group of donkey drivers passed by. They saw the big man eating and began mocking him. They hurled insults at his size, at his appetite, at his appearance. They did not know who he was.
Eleazar said nothing. He stood up, walked over to their pack animals, and — with one hand — lifted the donkeys clean off the ground and placed them in the loft of the inn. Not the cargo. Not the saddlebags. The donkeys themselves. Full-grown beasts of burden, hoisted overhead like sacks of grain.
The drivers stood frozen, their mockery dead in their throats. They had been laughing at a man who could carry their livelihood in his fist.
They begged his forgiveness immediately. Eleazar, whose strength was matched by his mercy, pardoned them without hesitation. And to prove there were no hard feelings, he took the donkeys back down — two at a time — and set them gently on the ground.
The Pesikta (90b-91a) and Song of Songs Rabbah (5:14) preserve this story as more than a feat of strength. Eleazar could have crushed the donkey drivers. Instead, he demonstrated his power and then demonstrated something greater — restraint. The truly strong man is not the one who destroys his enemy, but the one who could destroy his enemy and chooses not to.