Rabbi Yochanan went to visit his colleague Rabbi Elazar, who was gravely ill. The room was dark — shutters closed, lamps unlit, the particular dimness that comes when a household has been too exhausted by illness to attend to details.
Rabbi Yochanan sat beside the bed. He was famous in the academy for his physical beauty — the Talmud describes him as so handsome that women who saw him would gaze from their balconies, praying their children might resemble him. He uncovered his arms.
The room filled with light. His skin was so luminous that his bare forearms illuminated the sickroom the way a torch would have.
The Tears of a Dying Man
Rabbi Elazar, lying on his bed, looked at Rabbi Yochanan's arms — and began to weep.
Rabbi Yochanan asked gently, "Why are you crying? Is it because you did not learn enough Torah? We have a principle — whether one does much or little, what matters is that the heart is directed toward Heaven. Is it because of poverty? Not everyone merits two tables, one in this world and one in the next — and not everyone needs both."
Rabbi Elazar shook his head. "I am crying for this beauty. For your arms. That they too will rot in the ground."
Rabbi Yochanan wept with him. "Yes," he said. "For that, it is right to weep."
The Exempla's Weight
This passage, preserved in Berakhot 5b and collected by Gaster in 1924, is one of the Talmud's quietest meditations on mortality. The two Sages did not cry for lost learning, lost wealth, or lost opportunity. They cried for the simple, unfixable fact that a beautiful arm will one day stop being beautiful and will return to dust.
Jewish theology has answers for many kinds of grief. For this one, it mostly has tears.