Rabbi Joshua ben Chanania, one of the greatest sages of the first and second century CE, used to say: In my whole life, no one has ever bested me in argument, except a widow, a child, and a young girl. And he would tell the stories.

He was once invited to dine at the house of a poor widow. She served a modest meal. He ate it and finished every dish. She served a second course. He finished that too. She had nothing else to cook. So for the third course she brought out a dish she had salted extravagantly, almost inedibly, so that he would have to leave most of it over. Rabbi Joshua understood at once. He had eaten the widow's family into hunger. She had taught him to leave food on the plate without saying a word.

On another occasion he was walking through a field when someone called out that he was trampling down the crops. He answered, There is a footpath here. The stranger retorted, A footpath made by trespassers just like you. Rabbi Joshua had been taught that a path beaten into a field by repeated theft does not become legitimate simply because many have walked it. He left the field.

Later that same day he grew thirsty and met a young girl drawing water at a well. He asked for a drink. She gave it to him. You are like Rebecca at the well (Genesis 24:17), he said, complimenting her. But she shot back, And you do not act like Eliezer, the servant of Abraham. Eliezer had asked Rebecca for a drink, not for a flowery compliment.

He then asked how far it was to the next town. She said there were two roads. A long road which is short, and a short road which is long. Puzzled, he took the short road. It ran through vineyards whose hedges and ditches blocked him every few steps. Frustrated, he returned to her and said, You told me the short road was long and I should have believed you. She smiled.

As he was leaving, he noticed she was carrying a covered dish. What is in the dish, he asked. She answered, If my mother had wanted everyone to see it, she would not have covered it.

This cluster of scenes from tractate Eruvin 53b, preserved in The Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), is a quiet monument to the fact that Torah is learned in both directions. A sage can be schooled in one afternoon by a widow, a peasant, and a girl with a covered dish.