30 myths
Fiery serpents tore through the camp, so Moses raised a bronze serpent on a pole and told the bitten to lift their eyes and live.
Isaac entered the world and barren women held children, broken bodies rose whole, and the old light of Eden flashed across the sun.
The maids would not call her Sarah. They called her Trouble. Seven wedding nights had ended with a body, and none of them were hers.
Tobit prayed for death in Nineveh. Sarah prayed for death in Media. Both prayers reached the throne of glory at once, and one angel answered them both.
Hezekiah had stripped gold from the Temple for Assyria. Now his own skin peeled, and still Isaiah would not walk to the bed.
A sister speaks against Moses and the cloud withdraws. The whole nation waits seven days in the wilderness until shame finishes its work and Miriam can return.
Two students reached Arav with one request. Hanina put his head between his knees. The prayer came back fluent, so the boy would live.
Moses writes God's Name on poisonous oleander and throws it into bitter water. Weeks later, heaven drops bread stored there since the first week of creation.
Miriam led the women with timbrels after the sea closed. Then she spoke against Moses and spent seven days shut outside the camp with a skin disease.
The same divine hand that tucked healing herbs into the dirt and set a star over every blade of grass reached down once and flipped five cities off their rock.
Hezekiah carried his two small sons toward the study house. Above his head they argued whether his bald scalp suited frying fish or offerings to idols.
Worshippers had been dying at the door. Hanina put his bare heel over the hole and waited. The scorpion struck. The man did not fall.
In exile beside a Babylonian canal, Ezekiel is shown a Temple no hand will build, and a river from its threshold that wakes the dead salt sea.
Hannah sat on the highway until she saw Tobiyah and a stranger. Raphael carried gall for blind eyes while Tobit taught his son to pay wages before nightfall.
Jacob counted the chiefs of Edom and could not see how his household would survive them. Heaven's answer was a blacksmith standing beside a load of flax.
They reached the mountain with crushed hands. Angels went through the camp first. The seventh day still had no partner, and it asked why.
In Nineveh on the Feast of Weeks Tobit will not eat until his son finds a hungry kinsman, and later the son runs home with healing.
The steam rose off the cup and he turned his face to the wall. He wanted God to heal him without a human hand in the way.
Rabbi Baruch named the dead man's socks. Color left the son's cheeks. The horses that had been readied for Ukraine were unsaddled.
Quarrel followed them from Egypt to every campsite. Only when the nation camped as one body did Heaven open the wedding of Torah.
Israel left Egypt blind, deaf, and lame. Before Sinai, God burnished the people like a king's old hall so a perfect Torah met a whole generation.
The doctor closed his bag over a silent mouth. The Baal Shem Tov asked for meat broth and waited until the soul signed.
Two lepers came to the healer's door, and neither knew her. She asked each man to name the sin behind his disease before she would touch him.
The king chewed the citron from a poor man's gate. Years later a son who could not walk stared at a mountain no merchant had ever mapped.
A serpent bit Rabbi Ishmael's nephew, a forbidden healer offered a spell, and the uncle refused while the young man still searched for a proof-text.
His lips never moved. A whole hour of mishnah sat behind his teeth. Fever emptied him, and only a cracked recitation brought the words back.
Earlier angel bands fell for mocking man. Labbiel yields, becomes Raphael the healer, and Ben Nez pins the south wind so the world can stand.
Moses, who once walked the brick yards urging Israel not to break, draws a circle and refuses to step out until God shortens Miriam's shame.
The dead rise still blind and lame so none can call them strangers, then are healed in the open while the Levite harp gains three new strings.
Three times the Baal Shem Tov sees the Angel of Death in a room where no one else can, and the one rescue nearly costs him both worlds.
