A pious man was walking along the shore of Haifa, the harbor city on the Mediterranean coast of the Galilee. As he walked he was thinking about a rabbinic tradition — a well-known one — that at the end of days the gates of Jerusalem will be carved from single pearls, thirty cubits by thirty cubits (Bava Batra 75a).
He began to doubt. How could such things exist? Where would pearls that large come from? The story started to feel like metaphor, then like legend, then like wishful thinking.
The Heavenly Voice
As he was forming the final thought — "it cannot be true" — a Bat Kol, a heavenly voice, spoke into his ear. It threatened him with punishment for the doubt. He was not being rebuked for asking the question. He was being rebuked for closing it.
He repented immediately. He had been foolish, he said. He had let his finite imagination rule over a promise made by infinite power.
The Vision
The heavenly voice, satisfied, granted him a glimpse. He looked out at the sea — and saw, deep beneath the waves where no fisherman could reach, angels at work. They were cutting the pearls for the future gates of Jerusalem. Each stone the size of a building, each facet being shaped by hands not of this world.
The Gaster exempla, drawn from Bava Batra 75a and preserved in the Ma'aseh Book, is a quiet correction to a very modern impulse. When a tradition sounds impossible, the temptation is to reinterpret it as symbol. The Sages' answer to the pious man is firmer: before you downgrade a promise, make sure you have stood at the right seashore.
The gates are already being cut. The question is only whether we will live to see them swing open.