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These are the ten questions that Rabbi Eliezer asked regarding the resurrection of the dead: The first one is - will God resurrect some of Israel or all of them? The answer is that...
Hiram, king of Tyre made seven artificial heavens placed on pillars of iron, first of glass, sun, moon and stars. Second of iron, with a lake of water in it; third of tin with prec...
A Roman noblewoman — a Matrona, as the sages called her — came to a rabbi with a question that seemed trivial but concealed a deep truth. "Why," she asked, "is the letter Lamed tal...
When the heathen conquered the Temple Josef Meshita was asked to go in first. He was told that whatever he brought out should be his. He carried out a golden candlestick, which was...
A non-Jewish man walked into Shammai's study with a straightforward question: "How many laws does Judaism have?" Shammai gave him the honest answer — two. There is the Written Tora...
Turnus Rufus and Akiba disputed about the merits of charity; as God decreed that a man be poor why should the rich contravene God's command? Akiba replied: “Men are not strangers t...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
Zophnat, daughter of the high priest, was torn from everything she had ever known. Sold into slavery, she stood on the auction block while the seller stripped away her garments one...
When King Ptolemy of Egypt ordered the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek, the sages of Israel did not celebrate. They mourned. The day the Torah was rendered in a foreign tongue, ...
The Egyptians brought their case before Alexander of Macedon, and they were confident they would win. Their claim was simple: when the Israelites left Egypt during the Exodus, they...
Rabbi Akiva sat in a Roman prison, and his captors gave him a choice: abandon the Torah, or rot in chains. He chose the chains. The Roman authorities pressed him repeatedly. They o...
Rome had issued a decree: no new rabbis could be ordained. The empire understood that as long as the chain of rabbinic authority remained unbroken, the Jewish people could never tr...
A young man and woman who were betrothed to one another were seized by raiders and sold into slavery. By cruel coincidence — or perhaps by providence — they were sold to the same m...
The Romans led Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha to their execution together. Both were among the greatest sages of their generation, and both had been condemne...
A laborer worked for his master for three full years, faithfully performing every task assigned to him. When the work was finally done, he approached his master and asked for his w...
A young Torah scholar died in the prime of his life, and his widow was inconsolable. He had been pious, devoted, careful in his observance of every commandment. Why would God take ...
Two boys walked past a group of Elders who were sitting together in study. One boy had his head covered, as was the custom of modesty and reverence. The other boy walked by with hi...
Someone once asked Rabbi Akiva a question that seemed simple but carried enormous weight: "How great is the value of the Torah?" Rabbi Akiva did not hesitate. "Each word of the Tor...
Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimeon was not a small man, and the Talmud does not hide this fact. Multiple stories describe his extraordinary physical size, his immense strength, and — as thi...
Rabbi Akiba, the greatest sage of his generation, did not begin his life as a scholar. Until the age of forty, he was an illiterate shepherd who could not read a single letter of H...
Rabbi Akiba was standing by the shore when he witnessed something terrible. A man — someone Rabbi Akiba knew — fell into the sea. The waves swallowed him instantly. One moment he w...
Benjamin the Righteous served as the guardian of the community charity fund. Every donation that came in, every disbursement that went out, passed through his honest hands. The peo...
During a terrible famine, King Monobaz opened the royal treasury and distributed everything inside it to the poor. Every coin, every jewel, every stored reserve of wealth that his ...
A farmer once looked at his fields and made a calculation that seemed clever at the time. The Torah commands that a tenth of every harvest must be given as a tithe. The farmer deci...
There was a man who owned a prosperous vineyard and a cellar full of casks — fine oil and rich wine, the fruits of years of careful labor. He was wealthy by any measure. But he had...
There was a man who paid his tithes faithfully every single year without exception. Rain or drought, abundance or scarcity, he set aside exactly one-tenth of everything he harveste...
A farmer was harvesting his field when he realized he had forgotten a sheaf of grain. It was sitting in the far corner of the field, left behind in the rush of the day's work. His ...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the wealthiest men among the sages, but he was famously reluctant to part with his money. He studied Torah with passion, observed every commandment with pre...
Hananya, the nephew of Rabbi Joshua, was a respected scholar living in Babylon. And one day he made a decision that nearly split the Jewish world in two. He decided to set the cale...
A pious man owned a vineyard, and the hedge around it had fallen into disrepair. Gaps had opened in the fence, leaving the vines exposed to animals and thieves. The vineyard needed...
Dispute between R. Eliezer and R. Joshua about levi- tical purity. Appealed to in turn, the Harub tree [uprooted itself], the water turned back, the walls of the Midrash (rabbinic ...
The story of the conversion to Judaism of Abu Golis, a priest of Damascus living in Tiberias. Making a bad use of some money entrusted to him, he lost his sight. His former friends...
Skipping one small ritual cost a man his entire identity. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis, a 1924 compilation by Moses Gaster drawn from medieval Jewish ...
The son of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai fell desperately ill. The great sage, who would one day preserve Judaism itself by establishing the academy at Yavneh after the destruction of t...
Rav Hisda used to hang an open purse at his doorpost so that anyone who needed money could take some without being seen. This detail, preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compil...
Rabbi Patra had a student who struggled to learn. Where other teachers might have given up after ten repetitions, or twenty, or even a hundred, Rabbi Patra taught his student the s...
There was an inn on a certain road where travelers learned, too late, that the hospitality was a trap. The innkeeper welcomed his guests warmly, fed them well, and showed them to c...
The respect that Dama ben Netina showed his father was legendary among the sages of Israel — and Dama was not even Jewish. He was a gentile merchant in Ashkelon, and his story beca...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the great sages of the Mishnaic period, a man of wealth, learning, and considerable stature. But his most famous act had nothing to do with scholarship or l...
Rabbi Tarfon loved his mother with a devotion that became legendary among the sages. The Talmud preserves the story of how he honored her, and it is one of the most striking illust...
Rabbi Hananya made a statement that puzzled his students: "Some people feed their parents badly and yet inherit Paradise. Others feed their parents well and yet inherit Gehinnom (t...
Two men stand before the heavenly court. Both honored their fathers. Both are judged. One goes to Paradise. The other to Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death)....
Rabbi Akiba heard that one of his students had fallen gravely ill. The young man was bedridden, burning with fever, and growing weaker by the day. No one expected him to survive. B...
Rabbi Yohanan ben Matya instructed his son to hire Jewish laborers and feed them properly. The son went out, hired the workers, and came back with a question that stopped his fathe...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 75a) records a breathtaking vision of the future Jerusalem: its gates would be made of single pearls, each pearl so enormous that it could be carved into a g...
The Roman Emperor sent word to the Jewish sages: "Send me a luminary — your wisest man." The sages debated and chose Rabbi Meir, whose very name meant "one who illuminates." He was...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were sailing across the Mediterranean when a terrible storm seized their ship. Winds howled, waves crashed over the deck, and the vessel was driven...
A man cleared stones from his own field and threw them onto the public road. A pious man passing by saw this and rebuked him: "Fool, why do you throw stones from a field that is no...
