1,481 texts · Page 24 of 31
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 140, tells the tale in a handful of sentences — which is precisely its horror. The two sons of Rabbi Reuben ben Astribulos lived in Tiberias. One day w...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 225, tells a sad little case study in academic cruelty. Rabbi Dimi of Nehardea had arrived in Babylon with a cargo of figs to sell. It was custom that ...
A Jewish merchant had sold his wares in a distant land at great profit. As he prepared to travel home with the caravan, a stranger attached himself to the group. The stranger watch...
When Ravah bar Nachmani, one of the giants of the Babylonian academies in the fourth century, died alone in the wilderness, his students searched for him for days without success. ...
Elisha ben Abuyah had once been one of the greatest scholars of his generation, a colleague of Rabbi Akiba. Then he turned away from the tradition so completely that the rabbis sto...
Rabbi Nehemiah was a humble man and a simple eater. He kept a plain table. He served plain food. One day he invited a man to share his meal, and the man accepted. The guest was a g...
A wicked man lay on his deathbed. He had lived a long life of greed. He had never given charity. He had never sent food to a poor neighbor. His door had remained closed against eve...
A pious man on a journey found a cave in the mountains. He entered. Inside was a small pool of water, and behind it, a narrower dark inner chamber. He stepped into the inner chambe...
When Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai lay dying, his disciples came to gather at his bedside. They expected composure from the man they called the Light of Israel, the Pillar of the Right...
When Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, called the Great, lay dying, he gathered his students for a last round of teachings that has the quality of prophecy more than of instruction. He l...
Ben Sabar was a man famous for his tzedakah. When word came that a poor couple in a distant town needed money for their wedding, he packed a sack of coin and set out without hesita...
The midrash on Abraham's hospitality in Genesis 18 notices something small and opens it into a whole theology. The patriarch had just made a covenant with the peoples of the land. ...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
This is one of the cruelest and most luminous stories in the Talmud, preserved both in tractate Avodah Zarah and in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection as exemplum No. 67. Rabbi Chanina...
Gaster's exemplum No. 160 is one sentence long, but it unfolds into a whole theology. "Rabbi Akiva in prison used half of the drinking water to wash his hands." The Talmudic versio...
Gaster preserves, as exemplum No. 194, a tiny, terrible story — almost a folk horror — about a mother whose son was murdered by his own brothers. She gathered the blood of her son ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 273 preserves two short Talmudic stories about how seriously the sages took small signs. In the first, Rav — the third-century Babylonian sage who founded the...
Gaster's exemplum No. 288 preserves a paired story from the Hadrianic persecutions of the second century — the same killing-field that took Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Chanina ben Terady...
Gaster's exemplum No. 303 preserves a Jewish folktale about a father's last clever gift to his son. A wealthy Jewish merchant lay dying in a distant city far from home. He drew up ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 333 tells a longer, stranger story of Mar Ukva — the same Babylonian exilarch celebrated for his secret charity — before he became the man of secret charity. ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 381 preserves a cascading folktale from the Midrash Aseret HaDibrot, the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, all arranged around the commandment to honor one's f...
Gaster's exemplum No. 399, drawn from the Ben Attar collection of medieval Jewish exempla, preserves a courtroom puzzle about a cunning father's last will. A wealthy Jewish merchan...
In the days of the Mishnah the rabbis regulated even the meals of mourning. At a funeral feast they ordered ten cups of wine to be drunk in the house of the bereaved — three before...
After the Bar Kokhba revolt the Roman Empire passed a decree that struck at the heart of Jewish continuity: any sage who ordained a student to the rank of rabbi, and any student wh...
Jewish law draws a careful line around the rituals of mourning — the seven days of shiva, the tearing of garments, the torn clothes and covered mirrors — and reserves them for the ...
Mar Ukba was a wealthy Babylonian Jew known for his discreet tzedakah. He used to leave coins under a neighbor's doorsill each night, never waiting to be seen. One day he learned t...
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was one of the Ten Martyrs executed during the Hadrianic persecutions in the second century CE. Rome had decreed that teaching Torah in public was a capi...
There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had ...
When the Roman siege tightened around Jerusalem in 70 CE, wealth stopped meaning anything. Doeg ben Yosef was a rich man, and in the final weeks of the siege he stood in the street...
Two of Rabbi Meir's sons died on Shabbat afternoon. They had been in the house while their father was at the synagogue leading the congregation. When Rabbi Meir came home, he asked...
The Roman Emperor Hadrian outlawed the teaching of Torah after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE. Rabbi Akiva refused to stop. He gathered students in public and taugh...
The Midrash preserves a legend that the Tanakh only whispers at. When Isaac died, his two sons came to bury him. "His sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (Genesis 35:29), the written T...
The rabbis counted the ways a human being can leave this world. They arrived at nine hundred and three, derived from the verse, “Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death&...
When Rabbi Judah the Prince — the great redactor of the Mishnah — lay dying at Tzippori, the rabbis gathered around his bed. The people of Israel fasted and prayed. On ...
There was once a widow who wept over her husband’s grave day and night. The rabbis kept the story as a bitter parable about how quickly grief, left alone, forgets itself. Not...
The entire moral architecture of the Torah fits into one verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:17) renders it sharply: "of the tree of whose fruit they who eat become wise to...
The Torah says Eve saw the tree was good for food. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:6) tells us she also saw something else. "The woman beheld Samael, the angel of death, and w...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:14) tells us the original serpent was not a crawling thing. God "brought the three unto judgment" — Adam, Eve, and the serpent — and pronounced...
The Torah says simply, "to dust thou shalt return." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:19) refuses to let that be the end. After the dust, the Targumist says, there is one more a...
God's question to Cain after the murder is a pair of hammer blows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:10) phrases it as: "What hast thou done? The voice of the bloods of the murd...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:25) slows the Torah down. Adam did not immediately father another son after the murder. The Targumist tells us it took a hundred and thirty yea...
The Flood is named. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:17) renders it: "I, behold, I bring a flood of waters upon the earth to swallow up all flesh which hath in it the spirit of...
One of the most haunting expansions in the entire Targum is this one. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:20), the Aramaic explains how Sarah died: Satana came and told unto S...
A wife does not greet her husband at the door. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:2), the Aramaic names what Abraham finds when he comes down from the mountain: Abraham came ...
Watch how the men of Hebron address the grieving widower. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:6), the Hittite elders say to Abraham: Great before the Lord art thou among us, i...
The negotiation for Sarah's burial unfolds with legal care. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:8), Abraham approaches the gathered Hittite elders not with authority but with ...
The request is precise. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:9), Abraham names exactly what he wants: his double cave which is built in the side of his field, for the full pric...
The deed is recorded with the care of a surveyor. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 23:17), the Aramaic lists what Abraham now owns: the field, and the cave that is therein, an...
