Rabbi Johanan was famous throughout the land of Israel for his extraordinary beauty. The Talmud in Berakhot (5b) describes him as radiating an almost supernatural light, and the sages said that anyone who wished to glimpse the beauty of the first human, Adam, as he was created in the Garden of Eden, needed only to look upon Rabbi Johanan's face.
One day, Rabbi Johanan went to visit his colleague Rabbi Elazar, who had fallen gravely ill. The room was dark, the shutters drawn against the afternoon heat. Rabbi Johanan rolled up his sleeves, and the Talmud tells us something astonishing: the bare skin of his arms glowed with such radiance that it illuminated the entire room, as if someone had lit a lamp.
Rabbi Elazar, seeing this unearthly beauty shining in the darkness of his sickroom, began to weep. Rabbi Johanan was startled. "Why do you cry?" he asked. "Is it because you did not study enough Torah? We have learned that whether a person offers much or little, it is acceptable, so long as the heart is directed toward Heaven."
"That is not why I weep," Rabbi Elazar replied. "I weep over this beauty that will one day rot in the earth." The sight of perfection reminded him of its impermanence. Even the most radiant flesh must return to dust.
Rabbi Johanan answered: "Over that, you are certainly right to weep." And they wept together, two great sages mourning the fleeting nature of all earthly beauty, finding in their shared tears a bond deeper than any consolation.