9 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Asher from across Jewish tradition.
9 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines asher, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
The fields lay fallow and the storehouses thinned, but in Asher's hills the oil still ran in streams, and a nation came to eat.
Twelve princes brought identical offerings on twelve straight days. Asher came eleventh, Naphtali last. The rabbis heard the words honey for me in his name.
Asher was a hundred and twenty-five and still strong when he called his sons in. He told them a man can hurt someone in order to heal him.
Jacob keeps his word to Laban through a second seven years, and Bereshit Rabbah reads his faithfulness as a seed of the World to Come.
At one hundred twenty-five Asher ordered his sons off the double path. Reuben confessed seven months of plague and seven years of penance for one night's sin.
Signs did not convince Serach daughter of Asher. Only the doubled word of divine visitation, passed down from Joseph, proved Moses was Egypt's redeemer.
While sages hunted the missing seventieth soul, Serach of Asher sang Joseph living to Jacob and was carried into Eden alive.
Moses blessed Asher to dip his foot in oil. Generations later a Roman bought one household crop for eighteen thousand zuzim and still left oil on the ground.
Two sages traded verses over which tribe owned the prophet, and neither would give ground. Then the door opened and Elijah walked into the argument.
