1,416 texts · Page 18 of 30
VIII. God decreed that Solomon should be punished for transgressing three laws. Ashmedai, after the building of the temple, told Solomon that he would show him some wonderful thing...
King David once asked God what good there was in gnats, spiders and fools. One day, fleeing from Saul, he hid in a cave and a spider quickly covered the opening with its web. Saul,...
In time of drought, the people appealed to Honi to pray on their behalf. He drew a circle, stood in the midst of it and prayed saying he would not step out of the circle until rain...
A pious man, travelling, saw a cave in the mountains and on entering, found a pool of water and behind it another small dark cavern. He went thither and was on the point of returni...
A man once caught stealing was ordered by the king to be hanged. On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow i...
A pious woman used to bake four loaves of bread every day; three she gave to the poor and one she kept for her household. One day four beggars came and she gave all the four. She t...
A rich man, having confidence in his son gave him all his property in his lifetime. After a while the son commenced to neglect his father, ill-treating him and sending him away to ...
[Another variant.] A great scholar, who spent his time studying with his pupils, got a son in his old age. He kept him in the house, never allowing him to go out but gave him more ...
Rebuke not the wicked lest you make an enemy. Having thus spent all his money he went to another town. There a man asked a scribe to write a petition, offer- ding a small coin. The...
The Roman general Trayanos captured two Jewish brothers — Lulianus and Pappus — in the city of Laodicea and sentenced them to death. Before the execution, Trayanos offered them a t...
Nahum ish Gamzo — called that because no matter what happened, he always said "Gam zu le-tovah" ("This too is for the best") — was sent by the Jewish community to the Roman Emperor...
The physical strength of Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was legendary, but it was after his death that the most astonishing miracle occurred. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 84b) records that whe...
The most dramatic dispute in the history of Jewish law ended with a voice from heaven — and the sages overruled it. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 59b) records the famous argument between...
The daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa fell into a deep pit, and the entire neighborhood panicked. They rushed to tell the great miracle-worker that his child was in mortal danger, ...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa's poverty was so extreme that the Talmud (Berakhot 17b, Taanit 24b-25a) says a heavenly voice went out every day declaring: "The entire world is sustained on ...
Miraculous Herbs. Eisenstein, Oser, p. 348. Maase Buch No. 224. Helvicus, Historien I, ch. 39, p. 159. Levi, R. E. J. XXXIII, p. 67 ff. Ben Gorion I, 306, 380. Bolte & Polivka, II,...
Pinetyas b. Yair’s Wonderful Deeds. Shekalim, V. § 1. J. Demai, I, 3. cf. Deut. R. 3 § 3. Nissim, f. 27 b. Lonzano, Maarikh, ed. Jellinek, f. 112 b f. Eliah Cohen, Meil Se- * • dak...
A miraculous apple from Paradise — a single fruit carrying the fragrance and power of the Garden of Eden — is the subject of this tale, preserved in medieval Jewish and comparative...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in grinding poverty, but the treasures of Paradise were within his reach — literally. The Talmud (Taanit 24b-25a) records a series of miracles that occu...
When Nimrod hurled Abraham into the blazing furnace at Ur of the Chaldeans — the place whose very name, the Rabbis note, means fire — the angel Gabriel stood up in the heavenly cou...
The Rabbis of the Talmud (Yoma 21b) teach that there are six kinds of fire in the world, and not all of them behave the way fire should. The first is ordinary fire — it eats but do...
A man named Joseph, who kept the Shabbat with uncommon care, had a neighbor who was rich, fearful, and utterly convinced of astrology. The neighbor was told by a professional astro...
A Jewish child, still young enough to be sitting with a melamed, had just finished memorizing a portion of the book of Bereshit (Genesis) when the soldiers came. He was captured an...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, the first-century miracle worker whom the Mishnah (Berakhot 5:5) calls a man whose prayers could heal from a distance, was once deep in tefillah — the silent...
A ma'aseh preserved in the Gaster manuscripts describes a strange people in a distant country who had built their religion around fire. Every morning at dawn they lit one great sta...
Rav Huna once woke to find that four hundred of his casks of wine had soured into vinegar. This was not an inconvenience. This was ruin. Word spread. Rav Yehudah, the brother of Ra...
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,...
When Alexander of Macedon marched east, the Samaritans — called in the Talmud the Kutim — saw a political opening. They sent word to Alexander asking him to destroy the Temple in J...
Three men were traveling together through a lonely country. As Friday afternoon wore on, one of them stopped. "The sun is setting," he said. "I will not travel on Shabbat. I will s...
There was once a pious scholar who left behind a son, Rabbi Isaac, greater in learning and piety than himself, and a dayyan — a judge in the Jewish court. On the eve of Rosh Hashan...
A poor man, unable to work, resolved to stay in his house and wait for God to provide. One day, when he had nothing at all to eat, a fat cow wandered through his open door. The man...
A poor but pious man had three silver pieces — all he had in the world. He took them to the mill, bought flour for his household, and walked home carrying the sack. On the way, at ...
Abraham stepped out of the cave where he had been hidden as an infant, and for the first time saw the world above ground. He looked up and saw the sun climbing, enormous and warm, ...
Hanina ben Dosa, the humble hasid of the first century, was known for prayers that went through the roof. When Rabban Gamliel's young son lay gravely ill, burning with a fever that...
Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair was a sage so scrupulous in his observance that the tradition says even his animals followed the law. Thieves once stole his donkey from his stable, thinking ...
An Aramean king ruling in one of the cities of the Land of Israel once assembled the Jews of his domain and issued a decree. If they could prove to him the superiority of Moses and...
An apostate once led the king into a synagogue at precisely the hour when the Torah reader was chanting the verse from Deuteronomy: "How can one pursue a thousand, and two put ten ...
When Nimrod the wicked cast Abraham into the fiery furnace for smashing his father's idols, the angel Gabriel stepped forward in the heavenly court. Ribbono shel Olam, Master of th...
Three times a year, the Torah commanded, every Jewish man should make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals (Deuteronomy 16:16). Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot drew tens of th...
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...
A small boy was traveling in a boat along the coast when the prophet Elijah appeared to him. Elijah was famous for wandering the world in disguise, testing Jews, delivering message...
A poor fisherman cast his net and pulled up a great fish. As he lifted it from the water, the fish spoke. Cut me open, it said. Gather my blood in three bottles. Keep them safely. ...
There was once a man named Joseph who was famous in his city for one thing above all others: he honored the Shabbat. Every Friday his table groaned under fish and wine, whatever th...
When Noah released a bird to test whether the floodwaters had receded, the Torah tells us he sent out a raven (Genesis 8:7). The midrash on this verse imagines an argument breaking...
Twice in the Hellenistic era the Torah crossed the language barrier into Greek, and the Rabbis remembered the two events very differently. Both are recorded in exemplum 61 of Moses...
Rabbi Akiva (c. 50 to 135 CE), the shepherd-turned-sage who became one of the towering figures of the Mishnaic age, told a short parable about a man he saw swept out to sea. The st...
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the sage who rescued Torah study from the ashes of Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE by founding the academy at Yavneh, once taught that in the future, wh...
