53 myths · Page 2 of 2
The snake never saw him. It never moved toward him. He came down the hill bald, and he stayed bald for the rest of his life.
Every seder has a cup for Elijah. Every circumcision has his chair. But a tradition older than both holds that Elijah is not present everywhere. He is hidden.
The news reached them on a Thursday. Rome had four of the great sages and wanted eight thousand students of Jerusalem as the price of their release.
Enoch vanished without a grave. Moses left no known tomb. Elijah rose in fire. Jewish sources say some lives end not in death but in translation.
The upper waters flew up to the Throne singing. The half left underneath said woe to us and started climbing after them, and the world nearly ended.
Rabbi Eliezer of Worms rides a cloud to Egypt before Passover and spends Seder night arguing Torah with Maimonides himself.
A visitor came to Rabbi Zera and could not speak. Not a word, not even the sound a mute man makes to show he heard. Zera told him to go back to dust.
Some men came back from the sixth palace and some were killed at its door. The students needed their teacher awake to tell them why.
Before the Temple was built, a stone already held the abyss under Zion, engraved with the Name, and King David nearly lifted it and flooded the world.
Count the joints in one hand. Fourteen, which is the number value of the Hebrew word for hand. Open that hand to a beggar and heaven opens too.
A mystic begs to see how something came from nothing. Tikkunei Zohar answers with a measuring line in primordial air and the tiny Yod that begins everything.
A woman separates challah and repairs what Adam broke. A thief returns the stolen object and the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, comes home from exile.
The mystic sways and falls backward at the seventh palace, and Anaphiel opens the gate onto a throne alive with lions, eagles, and five hundred eyes.
At the fourth palace two seals are demanded, right and left. At the sixth, the wrong companion does not survive what he is sent to witness.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was dying. He told a handful of students what he had never said out loud, and souls came up from Eden to listen.
A man hardens his face against one who has seen the chariot. Heaven answers with dark eyes, erased lineage, and trumpets thrice each day.
In a palace no one else may enter, a thousand halls deep in longing, the Messiah weeps and waits for the sign that his hour has come.
A descender to the chariot climbs through gates of fire to the Throne and learns the world was not hammered but poured out of beauty and light.
Pulled past every world, a seer stands before the divine face and reads mercy in its skull, unsleeping eyes, patient breath, and thirteen-streamed beard.
At the seventh palace his knees gave out. The guardians stood taller than towers, and behind the last door was a roar that turned out to be singing.
Coming down from the palaces, a mystic hears a voice in Aramaic mourn Jerusalem, then God confess He aches to rebuild His burned Temple.
Rabbi Ishmael carried a seal past seven gates and found the Throne of Glory already singing a hymn with no last verse and no exit.
Nehunya sent a prayer past every keeper to the beings who carry the Throne of Glory, and a horn answered from beyond the last firmament.
