Two men died on the same day in the same city. One was a great and righteous sage. The other was a tax collector, a known sinner. Both funeral processions met in the same narrow street, and while the town was honoring the sage's bier, enemies attacked and scattered the crowds. One loyal disciple stayed beside his master's body. When the townspeople returned to finish the burial, in the confusion they took the wrong bier and laid the publican in the sage's tomb with full honors. The sage, meanwhile, was buried disgracefully in the tax collector's plot.
The disciple was broken. For what sin did my teacher deserve this, he asked, and for what merit did a sinner get the funeral of a saint? His Rabbi came to him in a dream. Take comfort, he said. Come, I will show you my honored place in paradise, and also show you the man in Gehenna, the door of which even now creaks in his ears. I once listened to contemptuous talk against the Rabbis and did not rebuke it. For that I was buried without honor. The publican once prepared a banquet for the Roman governor, who did not come, and the food was given to the poor. For that act of unintended charity, he received the honor meant for me.
The disciple pressed further. And how long will the publican burn? The Rabbi answered, Until Simeon ben Shetach dies. Simeon knows that several witches practice their dark trade in Ashkelon, and he idly allows it. When he dies, he will take the publican's place in Gehenna until the witches are removed.
In the morning the disciple hurried to Simeon and reported the dream. Simeon acted at once. He assembled eighty strong young men, chose a rainy day, and marched on Ashkelon. This vivid passage from Sanhedrin 45b, preserved in Harris's 1901 Hebraic Literature, teaches that silence in the face of evil is itself an offense, and that a great man pays for every act he could have stopped and did not.