When Rome decreed death for Jews who taught Torah, Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai and his son fled into a cave. They stayed there thirteen years. A carob tree sprang up at the mouth of the cave, and a spring of water burst from the stone floor. They ate carobs and drank spring water and studied Torah until their bodies nearly disappeared under the cloaks they had stripped off so as not to wear them out. Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 206, preserves the tale.
One day they saw a fowler in the field outside the cave. He was setting traps for birds. He caught nothing until, from Heaven, a voice pronounced: this bird is decreed. Only then did a bird fall into his snare. If Heaven had not issued the decree, the bird flew free.
Shimon turned to his son. "If not even a bird is taken without a decree from Above, a man is certainly not taken without one. Let us leave the cave." They walked out into the sunlight after thirteen years of hiding. Rome never caught them.
Rabbi Shimon went to Tiberias and began purifying the city. Dead bodies had been buried in the streets over the years, and no one knew where; priests could not walk freely. Shimon stood in the square and called — and the dead rose from under the stones, marked themselves, and lay back down so that their graves could be avoided.
A hostile Kuthean mocked him — re-buried a corpse that Shimon had cleared and taunted him in public. Shimon raised the man from the dead so the deception was exposed, and the Kuthean dropped dead in his place. Every part of this story is about the same truth: nothing moves on earth — not a bird, not a corpse, not a Roman decree — without Heaven's word behind it.
The cave was not an escape. It was a classroom.