1,983 texts · Page 26 of 42
(19) On New Year's Day all the inhabitants of the world pass before Him, Kibne Maron. What is the meaning of Kibne Maron? Here (in Babylonia) they translated it "like sheep." But R...
(20) MISHNAH (the earliest code of rabbinic law): For the proclamation of six New Moon days, messengers are sent out: for Nissan, on account of the Passover; for Ab, on account of ...
(22) We are taught in a Baraitha, R. Simeon b. Jochai said: "There are four matters that R. Akiba expounded, but which I interpret differently. The fast of the fourth, means the se...
(24) (Fol. 21b) It is written (Ps. 12, 7) The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver refined in the crucible of earth, purified seven times. Rab and Samuel both explain it. On...
It is taught (in a baraita (a teaching from outside the Mishnah)): Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Yosei, said: "All acts of charity and kindness that Jews perform in this world make gr...
Rabba b. b. Chana said further: "The same merchant said to me: 'Come and I will show you the place where the children of Korah were swallowed up.' And I saw two crevices in the gro...
What is meant by 'a wicked bond'? Shebna taught to twelve myriads, while Hezekiah taught to eleven myriads. When Sennacherib came and besieged Jerusalem, Shebna wrote on an arrowhe...
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says, “There are three matters that the earthly court did and the heavenly court agreed with them, and these are they: Reading the Scroll [of Esther on Puri...
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...
R. Eliezer, charged with heresy, was saved from punishment by saying, “The judge knows the truth" which the Hegemon interpreted as a tribute to his justice. Tlje reason why he got ...
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...
Eleazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, inherited more than his father's wisdom. He inherited superhuman strength. One day, Eleazar was sitting at a lavish meal — and when Ele...
Nahum Ish Gamzu was a man whose name became his philosophy. Whatever happened to him, no matter how terrible, he would say "Gam zu l'tovah" — "This too is for the good." But the re...
R. Eliezer was taken ill. Four sages came to visit him and tried to comfort him, but none succeeded so well as R. Akiba, who said that suffering was invaluable for suffering begot ...
R. Jose wept on his death bed because he had not taken sufficient part in the deliberations of the Court of Justice. Israel was like a ship and every member like a beam; if one wer...
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...
The sages preserved a curious historical note about a girl named Justina, the daughter of Asverus, who was married at the age of six and gave birth to a child at the age of seven. ...
V. A man fed his father daily with two doves. When asked where he got them, he replied, “Evil—eyed dog, *) From shorter recension B. ed. Jellinek. vide p. 7, § 19. - 147 “ eat and ...
When Moses descended from Mount Sinai carrying the two tablets of the covenant, he found the Israelites dancing around a golden calf. His fury was absolute. He shattered the tablet...
When a young person dies, the grief is compounded by the terrible question: why? The sages wrestled with this question and offered an answer that was as unsettling as it was compas...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was known for many things — his learning, his piety, his complicated relationship with the Roman authorities. But the Talmud (Pesahim 86b, Bava Metzia 83b-8...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 11a) records a teaching that transformed how the sages understood the mechanics of divine reward: charity does not merely help the recipient — it literally s...
Nahum of Gamzu — the sage whose name became a proverb, because to every misfortune he would say "Gam zu l'tovah," "This too is for the good" — learned the cost of delayed charity t...
A prosperous farmer in the land of Israel had fields that yielded abundantly, orchting, and vineyard heavy with fruit. Year after year, God blessed his harvests. But the farmer gre...
The respect that Dama ben Netina showed his father became the standard against which all filial devotion was measured — and Dama was not even Jewish. He was a gentile merchant in t...
A merchant from one town traveled to a neighboring city to sell his goods. He set up his stall in the marketplace, offered fair prices, and began to attract customers. But the loca...
A group of pagan astrologers — men who read the stars and claimed to know the future — once came before a Jewish court. They had traveled from distant lands, driven by a question t...
The Talmud in tractate Baba Batra (8a) records a teaching about almsgiving that medieval Jewish communities took very seriously — so seriously that it became the foundation for how...
The rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) debated endlessly over the mystery of how God created the world — and what existed before creation began. According to ...
In the days when the Israelites brought their first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem, a remarkable custom prevailed. The wealthy arrived with their offerings displayed in baskets ...
A man was accused of a crime he did not commit. He faced execution, disgrace, and the destruction of his family's name. His friend, knowing the truth — knowing the accused man was ...
Charity rewarded — the phrase appears throughout rabbinic literature because the sages considered it not a pious hope but a cosmic law. The Talmud (Taanit 24a, Jerusalem Talmud Hor...
God’s Justice. Meg. Esther (Yiddish) *593- Griinbaum, Jiid. Deutsch. Chrest. p. 215—18. Behrnauer, ZDMG. XVI, p. 762. Brockhaus, ZDMG., XIV, p. 7o6f. Gellert, Das Schicksal. Gesta ...
Shabbat Shekalim arrives on the Shabbat before the month of Adar ends, the first of the four special Sabbaths that prepare the Jewish people for Passover. The Torah reading is brie...
When Rabbi Yaakov bar Yuda stood up to teach in the name of Rabbi Yonatan of Beit Govrin, he opened with a verse that reads like a traveler's warning: "The way of the sluggard is l...
Some verses in Isaiah sound like they are narrating a future cataclysm, and the rabbis who sat in the study halls of the Galilee knew a secret about such verses. Sometimes the prop...
A Roman matrona once came to Rabbi Yosei bar Chalafta with a question that sounded innocent and was not. "In how many days did your God create the universe?" she asked. Rabbi Yosei...
A single verse in Proverbs sparked one of the most unsettling debates in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:5. "Tzedakah -- righteousness -- elevates a people; and chesed to the nations is a ...
Rabbi Yudan opened his teaching on Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:6 with a verse from Proverbs: "Choice silver is the tongue of the righteous; the heart of evildoers is worth little" (Pro...
Rosh Hashanah is not only about apples and honey. In the talmudic imagination, it is the day when three great books are opened in heaven, and every soul is sorted. Ein Yaakov, Rabb...
After Titus destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Rabbis tell us, a small insect flew up his nose and lodged in his brain. It ate at him for the rest of his life. The only thin...
The procedure for a capital trial under the Sanhedrin, as preserved in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 6) and carried forward in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, sounds less like an e...
Rav Yitzchak asked: what did David mean when he wrote, Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; further not his wicked device, lest they exalt themselves. Selah (Psalms 140:8)...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was once asked a question that sounds strange to modern ears. Why does Jewish law punish a thief — who works by stealth — more severely than a robber, who...
A pious couple in the Gaster manuscripts had been childless for many years. The husband, desperate, went to the cemetery and prayed at the tombs of the righteous through a long nig...
Two great sages, Rav Ami and Rav Assi, sat one day in the company of Rabbi Isaac Naphcha, and the three men fell into conversation. One of them turned and said, "Rabbi, tell us a b...
Open the book of Kings and read: And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem ...
The question hung in the beit midrash: what happened to the ten tribes exiled by Assyria, and will they ever come home? The sages opened (Deuteronomy 29:28) and read: And the Lord ...
