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To a few verses from his writings. He starts with a seemingly straightforward observation: "A noble, ruler, judge shall be glorified, but nothing is greater than fearing the Lord."...
The ancient sage Ben Sira, writing over two thousand years ago, wrestled with these very same questions. He saw the world around him, and he wasn't always thrilled with what he saw...
That’s exactly what the wisdom of Ben Sira is getting at in this passage. Ben Sira, also known as Sirach or the Wisdom of Yeshua ben Sira, is a book of wisdom literature, a treasur...
That's the situation the brothers of Joseph found themselves in, as told in Legends of the Jews. They arrive at Joseph's house – remember, they don't know it's him yet, disguised a...
Jewish tradition says it does. Absolutely. God sees it all, and nothing goes unrewarded. Not even a respectable word. Think about Lot's daughters. A pretty uncomfortable story. Aft...
Solomon, in all his glory, was wandering through a valley. Now, this wasn't just any valley – it was the valley of the ants. Imagine the scene: Solomon, with his immense army, a sp...
Let’s talk about Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, a king of Judah. Now, according to the biblical narrative in the Book of Kings, and amplified in works like Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews...
The prophet Elijah, that fiery figure of Jewish tradition, sometimes took it upon himself to nudge people in the right direction. And sometimes, that nudge was more like a cosmic s...
It happens to the best of us, and even to some of the greatest Rabbis in Jewish lore. Take the story of Rabbi Joshua, for example. We all know the prophet Elijah. The one who ascen...
It grapples with a fundamental question: why would the Divine, in all its perfection, choose to involve itself with a world that, let's face it, often feels pretty imperfect? The a...
A king told his wise man: there exists another king who signs his letters with three claims—that he is mighty, truthful, and humble. "Mighty I can confirm," said the king. "The sea...
Shimon ben Azzai expanded his teaching about the doubled verbs in the Torah with an even more radical claim. The principle of "heed, you shall heed" does not only mean that heaven ...
The great sage Eliezer once found himself in a similar situation. We find this story in the Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinating text that delves into the lives and teachings of p...
We often think of strength, wisdom, or maybe even wealth. But what about humility? The Torah, in the Book of Numbers, specifically Bamidbar (Numbers 12:3), tells us something profo...
Hillel taught: "Be of the disciples of Aaron — loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and drawing them near to the Torah." But what did Aaron actually do? Rabbi Meir explai...
The one who offered his sacrifice on the first day was Nachshon ben Aminadab of the tribe of Judah (Numbers 7:12). Our Rabbi, the one who offered the sacrifice to the altar, taught...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
Rabbi Akiva sat in judgment over a case that would become one of the most famous legal rulings in all of rabbinic literature. A man had publicly humiliated a woman by tearing the c...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon and the prophet Elijah once met on the road, and the Talmud preserves a strange and vivid account of what happened next. Elijah was traveling in disguise — ...
Levi ben Sisi was a brilliant scholar, one of the finest students of his generation. When a community in the town of Simonia needed a teacher and judge, Rabbi Judah HaNasi sent Lev...
Scattered through the old anthologies is a trove of one-line sayings — proverbs the Rabbis handed down the way other peoples pass down songs. The 1901 collection Hebraic Literature...
At a gathering of sages, Rabban Gamliel — the head of the academy, the Nasi of the generation, the most politically powerful rabbinic figure of his age — picked up a pitcher and be...
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, a third-century sage famous in the Talmud for his conversations with the prophet Elijah and with the Angel of Death, once asked a question only a very confid...
It is popular to lump all Pharisees together. The rabbis themselves did not. In Avot de-Rabbi Natan (chapter 37), the sages drew up a list — not of their enemies, but of themselves...
Buneis, son of Buneis, came to pay a call on Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi — Rabbi, the Prince, the redactor of the Mishnah, the wealthiest and most celebrated sage of his age. As Buneis e...
The prophet Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, saw the heavens open and a chariot descend. Beneath it were four living creatures, and each creature had four faces. As for the likeness o...
Some rabbinic teaching comes as narrative. Some comes as argument. And some comes as short, edged sentences that land like stones. Here is a handful from the Proverbial Sayings and...
Simeon ben Kamhith was serving as High Priest. He had walked with a foreign king, and in the course of the conversation a drop of spittle from the king's mouth touched Simeon's gar...
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...
Rabbi Akiva had a saying he repeated so often his disciples knew it by heart: Kol de'avid Rachmana letav avid — "Whatever the Merciful One does is done for the best." Once he was t...
The son of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had fallen dangerously ill. His father, the greatest sage of his generation, prayed — and nothing happened. Yohanan then sent word to a strange,...
A terrible famine had descended on the land. Grain was scarce. Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi — the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah, the richest and most influential sage of his generatio...
There was a man in a certain town who was always seen in tattered clothes. He sat on the synagogue floor among the poorest of the congregation. He ate what was given him. He accept...
The Torah says (Numbers 16) that Korah led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and that the earth opened and swallowed him. What the Torah does not say — what the midrash fills in...
There is a brief, bruising story preserved in Gaster's Exempla (no. 294, 1924) about Rabbi Safra, a well-known legal scholar of the Babylonian tradition. One day he found himself a...
The Torah tells the encounter briefly: Potiphar's wife caught Joseph by his cloak, and he fled. The midrash, unwilling to leave so fierce a struggle so thinly described, puts Psalm...
No one in Israel, the sages taught, could humble himself more thoroughly than David when a commandment was at stake. Before God he spoke the words of Psalm 131, and the midrash tea...
King David, lying on his couch one evening, let his thoughts wander through the corners of creation he could not make sense of. "Of what use is the spider in this world?" he asked ...
When Maimonides — Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known to Jewish tradition as the Rambam — fled the persecutions in Andalusia and reached the court of Egypt in the late twelfth century, t...
Two men once prayed at length before Rabbi Eliezer. The first stretched his Amidah far beyond the usual length, swaying and adding private petitions until the congregation grew res...
In the generation after the Second Temple was destroyed, some men claimed to be descendants of the priestly lines and demanded the privileges of kohanim — including the right to ea...
Why, the rabbis ask, did Abraham only now, at the border of Egypt, realize that Sarah was beautiful? Had he never noticed before? One reading of (Genesis 12:11) goes like this. Abr...
Ulla and Rav Chasda were walking together when they came to the gate of the old house of Rav Chana bar Chenelai. Rav Chasda looked up at the crumbling walls, stopped, and let out a...
A man should study less on Friday, the kabbalists teach, and spend the saved hours preparing for the Sabbath. This is one of the stranger reversals in Jewish life. Normally Torah s...
During the war with Amalek, the Israelites were losing whenever Moses's hands grew heavy and fell. Aaron and Hur took a stone and placed it under him so he could sit and raise his ...
Hiram, king of Tyre, the Phoenician ruler who had once sent cedar and skilled craftsmen to his friend Solomon (1 Kings 5:1), grew so rich that he tried to build heaven for himself....
King Hezekiah of Judah lay dying. The prophet Isaiah came to his bedside with what should have been the last message: set your house in order, for you shall die (2 Kings 20:1). Hez...
The great sage Rabbi (Yehudah ha-Nasi, the editor of the Mishnah, who lived circa 135-217 CE) sent one of his disciples, Levi ben Sisi, to the town of Simonias in the Galilee to se...
