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Adrianus orders his army to worship him. He declares that within three years he will capture the Temple. Three philosophers dispute with him. One says how can a new king be recogni...
Hiram, king of Tyre made seven artificial heavens placed on pillars of iron, first of glass, sun, moon and stars. Second of iron, with a lake of water in it; third of tin with prec...
The Emperor asks R. Gamliel “If there is a God in the world why does He not show Himself and why does He not speak direct to His creatures so that they might respect Him the more. ...
A Roman noblewoman — a Matrona, as the sages called her — came to a rabbi with a question that seemed trivial but concealed a deep truth. "Why," she asked, "is the letter Lamed tal...
Kleopatra asks Rabbi Meir whether the dead rise in their clothes. The reply was “In their clothes. The wheat, when sown grows with the cover (husks) on, and how much more should th...
A non-Jewish man walked into Shammai's study with a straightforward question: "How many laws does Judaism have?" Shammai gave him the honest answer — two. There is the Written Tora...
A Kuthean disputed with R. Meir as to the righteousness of Jacob who only separated Levi tithed as one of the io tribes, instead of separating one more for the remaining two. For h...
Woman cannot keep a secret. A Hegemon twits a Jew with that saying, and is convinced of the truth by feigning illness and telling his wife under an oath, that he had become pregnan...
Rabbi Jehuda ben Hanina was traveling through Rome when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. In the slave market — that brutal engine of the Roman economy where human b...
When King Ptolemy of Egypt ordered the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek, the sages of Israel did not celebrate. They mourned. The day the Torah was rendered in a foreign tongue, ...
Rabbi Akiva sat in a Roman prison, and his captors gave him a choice: abandon the Torah, or rot in chains. He chose the chains. The Roman authorities pressed him repeatedly. They o...
The students of Rabbi Akiba were traveling on a road between towns when they spotted a band of robbers approaching from the opposite direction. The bandits were armed and dangerous...
A pious man did strange things, i. e., placed a young girl in his bed, &c., but was not suspected of any wrong by his disciples who found afterwards that they were justified in not...
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...
Rabbi Akiba, the greatest sage of his generation, did not begin his life as a scholar. Until the age of forty, he was an illiterate shepherd who could not read a single letter of H...
Rabbi Akiba was standing by the shore when he witnessed something terrible. A man — someone Rabbi Akiba knew — fell into the sea. The waves swallowed him instantly. One moment he w...
Benjamin the Righteous served as the guardian of the community charity fund. Every donation that came in, every disbursement that went out, passed through his honest hands. The peo...
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...
A farmer once looked at his fields and made a calculation that seemed clever at the time. The Torah commands that a tenth of every harvest must be given as a tithe. The farmer deci...
There was a man who owned a prosperous vineyard and a cellar full of casks — fine oil and rich wine, the fruits of years of careful labor. He was wealthy by any measure. But he had...
There was a man who paid his tithes faithfully every single year without exception. Rain or drought, abundance or scarcity, he set aside exactly one-tenth of everything he harveste...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the wealthiest men among the sages, but he was famously reluctant to part with his money. He studied Torah with passion, observed every commandment with pre...
A man with two heads appeared before King Solomon with an unusual legal claim. He was part of a family dividing an inheritance, and he demanded a double portion — one share for eac...
Skipping one small ritual cost a man his entire identity. According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis, a 1924 compilation by Moses Gaster drawn from medieval Jewish ...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa was deep in prayer, standing perfectly still, his eyes closed, his lips moving in silent communion with God. He did not notice the venomous adder that had sli...
Of all those who comforted R. Johanan b. Zakkai on the death of his son, Elazar b. Arach was pre-eminent; he said, “Thou hast but restored in a perfect condition that which was ent...
A man made an appointment with a woman and she purposely sent his own wife as a substitute. He did not recognize her and when he repented afterwards of his sin she told him that he...
A Greek bought a young Jewish girl as a slave. He brought her up in his house. When she grew up, the Master of Dreams ordered him to send her away,. Threatened with death in case o...
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...
There was an inn on a certain road where travelers learned, too late, that the hospitality was a trap. The innkeeper welcomed his guests warmly, fed them well, and showed them to c...
A philosopher approached Rabban Gamliel with what he considered an unanswerable objection to the practice of charity. "How can you Jews give so freely to the poor?" the philosopher...
Rabbi Tarfon was one of the great sages of the Mishnaic period, a man of wealth, learning, and considerable stature. But his most famous act had nothing to do with scholarship or l...
Rabbi Hananya made a statement that puzzled his students: "Some people feed their parents badly and yet inherit Paradise. Others feed their parents well and yet inherit Gehinnom (t...
Two men stand before the heavenly court. Both honored their fathers. Both are judged. One goes to Paradise. The other to Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death)....
Rabbi Akiba heard that one of his students had fallen gravely ill. The young man was bedridden, burning with fever, and growing weaker by the day. No one expected him to survive. B...
Rabbi Yohanan ben Matya instructed his son to hire Jewish laborers and feed them properly. The son went out, hired the workers, and came back with a question that stopped his fathe...
The Talmud (Bava Batra 75a) records a breathtaking vision of the future Jerusalem: its gates would be made of single pearls, each pearl so enormous that it could be carved into a g...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were sailing across the Mediterranean when a terrible storm seized their ship. Winds howled, waves crashed over the deck, and the vessel was driven...
Bar Hedya made his living interpreting dreams — and the Talmud (Berakhot 56a) reveals his shameful secret. His interpretations had nothing to do with the dreams themselves. They we...
Rav Huna once sent Rav Sheshet on a mission that neither man took lightly: to consult Anan on a question of law, with the threat of excommunication hanging over Rav Sheshet's head ...
Beruria — the brilliant, sharp-tongued wife of Rabbi Meir — encountered Rabbi Yose HaGelili on the road one day. He asked her a simple question, but he asked it in five words when ...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was invited to a brit milah — the circumcision ceremony of a newborn child. He came, he prayed, and through the power of his prayer, the life of the infant...
Rabbi Akiba laughed when everyone else wept — and his laughter changed the course of Jewish faith. The first time was in Rome. Rabbi Akiba and his colleagues walked through the str...
7 A hunter once caught a bird, which spoke with a human voice. It asked the hunter to let it free, saying it would teach him three wise things, (1) “Rue not a thing that is past. (...
A pious man owned a large tree in his garden. The tree was beautiful, its shade deep and cool — and a demon lived in it. This was not unusual in the ancient world. The sages accept...
V. A beautiful woman, persecuted by the governor, put her gold in jars and covered it on the top with honey. She left them with a friend and went away. After the death of the goxer...
A man who had three sons, and gave them on his death bed, three chests as their inheirtance. One was filled with earth, the second with bones and the thirds with rags. They could n...
King Solomon was an excellent chess player. He played with Benaya his general and always won. Once a noise in the street drew Solomon to the window. Benaya took a piece from the bo...
