1,983 texts · Page 28 of 42
When Israel came out of Egypt and stood at the shore of the Reed Sea, Samael — the angel who serves as heavenly prosecutor — rose up to accuse them. "Lord of the Universe," Samael ...
Elijah was traveling in disguise with a rabbi, as he often did in the legends. Toward evening they arrived at a large and imposing mansion, the home of a haughty, wealthy man. The ...
A man in need entrusted his entire savings to a neighbor who was famous for piety. The neighbor wore his observance on his sleeve; his neighbors spoke of him with admiration. The m...
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...
Toward the end of his reign, David was asked by the Holy One to choose a punishment for the chain of disasters his decisions had caused — the slaughter of the priestly city of Nob,...
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....
Two men were crossing the desert together, each carrying his own provisions. One of them — the cunning one — proposed that they first eat all the provisions of his companion and sa...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus thought he had caught Rabbi Akiva in a contradiction. "If your God loves the poor," he pressed, "why doesn't He feed them Himself?" Akiva did not he...
On the Feast of Sukkot, the Torah commands Israel to offer seventy bullocks across the seven days (Numbers 29:12–36). Rabbi Eliezer asked the obvious question in Sukkah 55b: sevent...
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 Rabbi had traveled with Elijah for days and seen strange justice everywhere. A poor couple had hosted them with warmth, and that night the family cow died. A wealthy man had tu...
A Roman matron came to Rabbi Eleazar with a sharp theological question. "For the single sin of the golden calf," she asked, "why were the Israelites punished with three different k...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 104, tells a quiet parable with a sharp edge. A man decided to cheat on his tithe. The Torah commands the Israelite to give a tenth of the field's yiel...
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...
Rabbi Janai and Rabbi Johanan sat watching two men leave the study house. They knew something about these men that the men did not know about themselves. Two astrologers had predic...
When Rome decreed death for Jews who taught Torah, Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai and his son fled into a cave. They stayed there thirteen years. A carob tree sprang up at the mouth of the...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 255, remembers a forgotten act of judicial courage. King Yannai — the Hasmonean monarch — had a servant who had committed murder. Jewish law is uncompr...
A rich man lay dying, and he called his son to the bedside. He made him swear one oath — "Never take an oath yourself. Not in court, not in dispute, not for any price." The son agr...
A pious man was digging in his field one afternoon when his spade struck something hard. He uncovered a marble statue — finely carved, half buried in the soil of generations. As he...
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...
Samuel the prophet once stood at the bank of a river and watched a strange sight. A frog was swimming across the water with a scorpion riding on its back. The scorpion could not sw...
A group of philosophers once traveled to Rome and put a question to the elders of the Jewish community there. "If your God takes no pleasure in idolatry," they asked, "why does He ...
Elijah the prophet and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi traveled together for a time, and Elijah agreed to be his companion on one condition: the rabbi must ask no questions. Rabbi Yehoshua...
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...
A man in a certain Jewish town had produced a good harvest. His cellar filled with casks of oil pressed from his olives and wine fermented from his grapes. The harvest was private....
The sages taught that four things cancel an evil decree sealed in Heaven, and they built each proof from Scripture itself. The first is tzedakah, the righteous gift. "Righteousness...
The Talmud counts carefully. King David composed one hundred and three psalms, and only after the hundred and third did he allow himself to utter the word Hallelujah. What made him...
Rav Pinchas pointed out that King David called five times upon the Holy One to arise in the book of Psalms. "Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God" (Psalms 3:7). "Arise, O Lord, in Your...
A traditional prayer of personal return, drawn from the anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings, places the worshiper on his knees before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "E...
Before he launched his final assault on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused to consult the omens. He was a king of his age, and the practice of his age was belomancy, divination by arrows...
There was once a farmer who paid his tithes with scrupulous care. Every year, on the appointed seasons, he set aside the priestly portion, the Levitical tenth, and the poor-tithe, ...
A poor man came before Rabba asking for support. The rabbi inquired about his usual diet, as was the practice when setting the rate of assistance. The man explained that he habitua...
The prophet Elijah once appeared to a pious but struggling man and handed him four gold dinars. The man was astonished. Four dinars was enough to start a modest trade. It was a pro...
There was a man called Yosef Mokir Shabbat, "Yosef the Honorer of the Sabbath." Every Friday he spent whatever he had on the best food available for the Shabbat table. Anything the...
Tractate Rosh Hashanah (folio 16, column 2) teaches that on the Day of Judgment three ledgers are opened and three groups of souls appear before the Holy One, blessed be He. The pe...
The Talmud in tractate Gittin preserves a wild stretch of stories in which Benaiah ben Yehoyada, one of King David's mighty men, captures Ashmedai, king of the demons, and leads hi...
Tractate Yoma (folio 9, column 1) asks a question no one would think to ask unless they were counting: how many kohanim gedolim, high priests, served during each of the two Temples...
Rabbi Abhu once said, "Were it not for this Scripture text, it would be impossible to repeat what is written." He meant the verse in Isaiah: "On that day the Lord shall shave with ...
The midrashic retelling of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE preserves an image that belongs to nightmares. The high priest stood in the burning courts of the Beit HaM...
The Sefer HaMa'asiyot — the Book of Exempla — compiled by Moses Gaster in 1924 from medieval Jewish manuscripts, preserves a short and sharp story about the daughter of a Roman emp...
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 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 ...
A short, bitter parable preserved as Gaster's exemplum No. 210 teaches the kind of lesson a Jew is meant to carry with him into the street. A man was clearing his field of stones. ...
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...
It was prophesied to Rabbi Akiva that his beloved daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Akiva was a student of signs and omens; he believed the prediction. But he also beli...
Gaster's exemplum No. 348 preserves a Jewish folk tale about the strangest accounting in the heavenly court. A wicked man died and was brought before the Holy One for judgment. The...
Gaster's exemplum No. 414, drawn from Rabbenu Nissim Gaon's 11th-century Chibbur Yafeh Me-HaYeshuah, tells the story of a rich man who decided to conduct an experiment on despair. ...
