11 myths
Wit, irony, and laughter in rabbinic literature, from the clever retorts of the sages to the holy fools of Chelm.
11 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines humor, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
Pharaoh marked the men fated to die and shipped them off to build Solomon's Temple. Solomon sent them home wearing the shrouds Pharaoh planned to bury them in.
The sages gave God a daily schedule, but after the Temple burned, the last hours no longer belonged to play with Leviathan.
Rabbi Akiva imagined one frog multiplying through Egypt, while Moses stood back because the Nile had once saved his life.
A signet ring, a cord, and a staff had no mouths and no power of their own. They became the most decisive testimony in the room.
Ahasuerus did not lose Vashti because he hated her. He lost her because the men were comparing women and he wanted the room to admire him.
A man wagered four hundred gold coins he could provoke the great sage Hillel into anger, asking absurd questions on a Friday afternoon.
A skeptic demanded the whole Torah on one foot. Hillel gave him a single sentence, then added three words that turned the summary into an obligation.
An Athenian sent a boy to buy food he could eat, fill up on, and still carry away. The boy came back with salt, and he was right.
Jacob's skin and Esau's arms were more than a disguise. Two words sorted two brothers into two eternities before either one knew it.
Sarah was ninety when a visitor promised her a son. She was not only old. She had been born with no chamber inside her for a child to lie in.
Left off the guest list, Bar Kappara wrote death on the door. Invited at last, he told three hundred fox fables until every dish went cold.
