310 myths · Page 7 of 11
Abraham was ninety-nine and still sore from circumcision when three travelers came. He asked God to wait at the tent door until he had fed them.
Eliezer's prayer is answered before it leaves his heart, the road folds under the camels, and Isaac stands in a field at evening to pray the first mincha.
David looked down the line of kings coming out of him. When he reached the one who burned his own sons, he stopped calling himself a king.
A boy stole God's name and grew wings; Moses saw the future and begged God to stop; and heaven locked every gate so his final prayer could not pass through.
Moses held two fistfuls of soot in one palm and threw them at the sky. Boils covered Egypt. That night a plant no one prized marked the doors.
To pray the Amidah is to bow all eighteen vertebrae into eighteen blessings, as weak prayers are lifted by strong ones and rivers raise their force.
She threw her idols from the tower window. On the eighth morning a man like Joseph put honeycomb from Paradise on her tongue.
Pharaoh mocks the messenger God sent him. Shemot Rabbah says that insult forced God to enter Egypt personally rather than let His emissary be disgraced.
Eve prayed for Adam. Michael wept for Abraham. Hanamel conjured a heavenly army. Three petitions reached the throne, and only two came back answered.
Four kings fought for a forgotten hill town just to name it. A basket of figs carried to the priest says more than the figs. The land hears everything.
Eliezer still ran the house. Abraham looked at the dark and asked what was left to give. Years later a king came to the well for peace.
Adam was nine hundred and thirty years old and dying. He asked what came next. God sent Michael to say the dew that wakes the dead was already stored.
The drovers were told to call Esau lord. God heard the word leave Jacob's mouth and said he had made something holy common.
Moses asked the Angel of the Face to pray that he not die. The angel had been standing behind the curtain. He already knew the answer.
Inside the house they sang the first Hallel with sandals on. Outside, Pharaoh named himself humiliated and begged Moses to come to the window.
God offered Moses a nation of his own if Israel died. Moses argued the people free. At the Jordan he asked for himself and the door stayed shut.
When God cursed the serpent, angels descended and severed its limbs. Centuries later, a woman nearly fell from her camel at the sight of a man at prayer.
Lemekh kept one wife to bear children and gave the other a drink that made her barren. Neither of them had anything left to ask anyone for.
Hadrian ordered his soldiers to behead any Jew they found with hair on his head. Shaving the head was how a man stayed alive.
Bethulia ran out of water and gave God five days. Judith told the elders they had no right to set a deadline for the plans of the Lord.
A priest presses olive oil into the cups and trims the wicks. God needs none of it. The flame burns for the hands that light it, not for heaven.
Peninnah came in every morning to ask whether Hannah was washing her children's faces. Hannah went into the shrine at Shiloh with a threat.
Eli watched her lips move with no sound behind them and told her to sleep off the wine. She was not drunk. She was building a case out of her own body.
Rabbi Meir overhears a serpent dispatched from heaven to kill a stingy household, and races the creature to its door to break the decree.
Year after year Peninnah names garments for children Hannah will never have, and a rabbi sees the Accuser standing in the same cruel line.
God carried Adam, one day old and still wet from the river of Eden, past every gate to the highest heaven. The first man sang his hymn to the day, not to God.
Hezekiah carried his two small sons toward the study house. Above his head they argued whether his bald scalp suited frying fish or offerings to idols.
Worshippers had been dying at the door. Hanina put his bare heel over the hole and waited. The scorpion struck. The man did not fall.
For forty days the giant counted his taunt aloud, until the ground clamped his feet and heaven chained all 248 of his limbs so David could not miss.
Haman's decree of death hung over the Jews, so Mordecai led twelve thousand priests and a weeping city out into the open, the Torah bared to the sky.
