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The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accor...
The term "paradise" likely derives from Persian origins. Within the Hebrew Bible, it appears only three times: Canticles 4:13, (Ecclesiastes 2:5), and (Nehemiah 2:8). The first usa...
The concept of soul in Jewish tradition derives from Genesis, where God endows humans with "spirit or breath" (ruah). Initially, this spirit was "inseparably connected, if not whol...
Magic is described as "the pretended art of producing preternatural effects," constituting one of two principal divisions of occultism alongside divination. Effects produced may be...
When Jacob died in Egypt and his sons carried his body back to the land of Canaan for burial, an unusual procession formed. The sons of Esau, the sons of Ishmael, and the sons of K...
Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Judea in the early second century, once pulled Rabbi Akiva into a debate on the Shabbat. Rufus opened with the move he thought would win. "I hol...
A short, chilling ma'aseh from the rabbinic tradition, preserved as exemplum no. 73 in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection The Exempla of the Rabbis, makes its point in a handful of sen...
Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon, son of the great Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, was appointed by the Roman government as an official — a kind of investigator authorized to catch thieves. He wa...
On his deathbed, Rabbi Yose began to weep. His students, surprised, asked why. He had been a great scholar, a faithful teacher, a man whose life by any reasonable accounting had be...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, the first-century miracle worker whom the Mishnah (Berakhot 5:5) calls a man whose prayers could heal from a distance, was once deep in tefillah — the silent...
A ma'aseh preserved among the Gaster manuscripts tells the story of a rich man and his wife who were, by every measure, bad people. Their house had four walls, and in one of those ...
Rabbi Akiva had a habit, whenever he taught, of binding the body to the soul. "If we who study Torah suffer," he would say, "how much more would we suffer if we neglected it?" He h...
The Romans had thrown Rabbi Akiva into prison, and his disciple Yehoshua Hagarsi was permitted to bring him water — a small ration, carefully measured, just enough to keep an old m...
Joseph's brothers had carried their father's coffin up from Egypt to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah. At the mouth of the cave, Esau was waiting. "This grave is mine," Esau said....
In the years after the fall of the holy city, a mother named Hannah and her seven sons were thrown into prison. One by one, in order of their ages, the tyrant brought the boys befo...
Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai lay dying. He had been one of the greatest of all the sages — the man who, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, had been smuggled out of the city in a coff...
When the wicked kingdom destroyed the Temple and carried the people into slavery, the son and daughter of Rabbi Ishmael — both famous for their beauty — were seized and sold to dif...
Among the Ten Martyrs whose deaths Jewish tradition recalls on Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av were Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the Patriarch of the Jewish people under Roman occupation, ...
Rabbah bar Nahmani, the great head of the academy at Pumbeditha in the early fourth century, was accused by the government of a crime invented out of jealousy — that he was keeping...
In a year of terrible drought, when the rains had not fallen and the fields were cracking, the people of Israel came to Honi the Circle-Maker and begged him to pray for them. Honi ...
When Abraham came to the cave of Machpelah to bury Sarah, he did not find the cave empty. According to the Yalkut Chadash, the first couple was already there, and they were not ple...
A strange statistic is buried in tractate Yoma. During the 410 years of the First Temple, only eighteen high priests served in succession. During the 420 years of the Second Temple...
As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi drew near the end of his earthly career, the angel of death was sent to fetch him. Because of the Rabbi's merit, the angel was instructed to show him eve...
Near the end of his life, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus lay on his sickbed and pressed his disciples with a strange complaint. Had you come to study with me during these last years, h...
Two women lived as close friends in one of the towns of late antique Israel. One day one of them was kneading dough at her neighbor's house, and a gold dinar slipped out of her pur...
Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was dying. Around his bed stood his greatest student, Rabbi Akiva, and what Eliezer did with his final breath changed Jewish law forever. He began teachi...
At the very end of Genesis, Joseph — viceroy of Egypt, the savior of the known world during the famine — calls his brothers to his deathbed. Instead of dispensing political advice ...
A fox was prowling outside a vineyard — one of those walled vineyards common in Judean farming villages — and saw grapes so ripe his mouth watered. But the palings of the fence wer...
When the Romans stormed the Second Temple, they faced a problem their swords could not solve: none of them wanted to be the first to walk into the sanctuary. The inner chambers wer...
A poor person came to a woman's door and gave her a dinar — a silver coin — to hold for safekeeping. She took it and, with characteristic absentmindedness, set it down near the flo...
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was one of the great Sages of the third-century Land of Israel, and the Talmud reports that he had a personal acquaintance with the Angel of Death — a rarity ...
Rabbi Yochanan went to visit his colleague Rabbi Elazar, who was gravely ill. The room was dark — shutters closed, lamps unlit, the particular dimness that comes when a household h...
A man had invited the whole community to his son's wedding. The tables were set. The musicians were tuning. The chuppah was standing. And then, on the morning of the ceremony, a sn...
Elazar ben Dordaya was, by his own admission, a man who had lived as low a life as a Jewish soul could live. He had chased every pleasure, broken every fence of decency, and finall...
Rabbi Rabina, a fifth-century Babylonian Sage, once learned from Rabbi Tabut (also called Tabyome) that there was a place on earth where truth was not an ethical preference but a l...
A Sadducee came to Rabbi Abahu with a sharp question. "You rabbis teach," he said, "that the souls of the righteous are treasured up beneath the Throne of Glory. If that is so, how...
Yose ben Yoezer of Tzeredah was being led to his execution during the persecutions of the Hellenistic kings. He was one of the earliest sages, a tzaddik whose teachings stand near ...
The son of Rabbi Reuben the Libellarius was being married. The feast was in full swing. The music was loud, the wine was generous, and the family was radiant. An old stranger came ...
King Solomon had two trusted secretaries, Eliharaf and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha. One morning, as they entered the throne room to begin their duties, they noticed something that c...
When the son of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai died, the sages came to the house of mourning in waves. Each tried to comfort the old master. Each failed. He sat in his grief like a ston...
Rabbi Yochanan bar Nafcha was so beautiful that the Talmud said he was among the last of the handsome men of Jerusalem. His skin, his eyes, his bearing — men traveled to simply loo...
Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish — the one we call Resh Lakish — had once been a highway robber. He ran with two companions, robbing travelers on the roads outside Tiberias, and their names...
A man left a dinar — a single silver coin — with a woman for safekeeping. She didn't want to forget where she had put it. She dropped it into a jar of flour and went about her day....
The Talmud (Kiddushin 80b) tells a grim little tale to justify a rule about guarding appearances. Once a woman stood weeping over her husband's fresh grave. Not far off, a guard ke...
The Rabbis taught, in Chullin 94a, a cluster of warnings about the small deceptions that undo a household. None is dramatic. Each is deadly. The shoe. Do not sell a neighbor shoes ...
The Roman official had one cup too many set before him, and his face twisted unnaturally. A Rabbi knew the cure — rearrange the cups so the even number became odd, and the face wou...
Rabbi Eliezer lay between life and death. His disciples and friends gathered around the bed, weeping openly. The great teacher, the man who had trained a generation, was slipping a...
The sages loved short sayings that carried a whole theology in a line. Here are a handful gathered from rabbinic tradition. Cold water morning and evening is better than all the co...
