Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa's poverty was so extreme that the Talmud (Berakhot 17b, Taanit 24b-25a) says a heavenly voice went out every day declaring: "The entire world is sustained on account of my son Hanina — and Hanina himself subsists on a single measure of carobs from one Sabbath eve to the next."
His wife suffered from this poverty in silence — mostly. But one Friday afternoon, with nothing to cook for the Sabbath meal and no food in the house, she was overcome with shame. All her neighbors would be sitting down to Sabbath tables laden with food, and her table would be empty.
She lit the oven and placed something inside it — some say straw, some say dung — just so that smoke would rise from the chimney and the neighbors would think she was cooking. A nosy neighbor came to the door, suspicious. "I know you have nothing to cook," the woman said. "What is all that smoke?"
Rabbi Hanina's wife, mortified, went to check the oven. A miracle had occurred: the oven was full of bread. The smoke was real. The food was real. God had provided.
Her husband came home and found the Sabbath table set. "Do not become accustomed to miracles," he warned her gently. But on that particular Sabbath, in that particular house, the miracle was needed — not to feed the body, which could survive on carobs, but to protect the dignity of a woman who would rather die than let her neighbors know she had nothing.