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The sages said of Rabbi Tarfon that though he was a very wealthy man, he was not generous according to his means. There is a gentle reproach in that line. A man who could give thou...
A Roman emperor once challenged Rabban Gamliel with a question that sounds modern. If there is a God in the world, why does He not reveal Himself directly? Why not speak face to fa...
Two prominent rabbis, Rav Huna and Rav Chisda, once refused to return the greeting of a colleague named Gniba. Perhaps they considered him insufficiently respectful, or perhaps the...
Elazar, son of Shimon bar Yochai, had inherited from his mystical father not only the secrets of Torah but a body of extraordinary strength. The Talmud says his belly was so large ...
Rabbi Tarfon was walking through his own vineyard one day when his farm supervisor — who did not recognize him — assumed he was a trespasser and gave him a beating. Tarfon said not...
Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair was one of the strictest ascetics in the Talmud. He never touched another person's bread. He would not allow his donkey to eat untithed fodder — the animal i...
Two of Rabbi Meir's sons died on Shabbat afternoon. They had been in the house while their father was at the synagogue leading the congregation. When Rabbi Meir came home, he asked...
A student once came to Rabbi Preida and asked him to teach a particular passage of Mishnah. Rabbi Preida sat with him and went through it slowly. The student did not understand. Th...
In the town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, a dangerous group practiced sorcery. Among their victims was Chananya, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua. They cast a spell on him — the ...
The Roman Emperor Hadrian outlawed the teaching of Torah after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE. Rabbi Akiva refused to stop. He gathered students in public and taugh...
Hillel the Elder — the Babylonian immigrant who rose to lead the Jewish people in the first century BCE — had eighty students by the end of his life. The Talmud in Sukkah 28a divid...
Acheer once pressed Rabbi Meir with a hard verse: God also has set the one over against the other (Ecclesiastes 7:14). What did it mean? Rabbi Meir offered the simple answer. The H...
When Nero first entered the Holy Land, he did not arrive as a conqueror sure of his victory. He arrived as a diviner uncertain of his fate. He took up his bow and shot an arrow eas...
Kings are remembered in lists, and the sages kept careful accounts. For Hezekiah, they drew up two columns. On one side, the three things they praised him for. First, he dragged th...
The schools of Hillel and Shammai disagreed even about how to kindle a candle. On Chanukah, Shammai said: begin with eight lights on the first night and remove one each evening, so...
The Rabbis of Bava Metzia 29b worked out what a person owes to what he finds. If you discover a lost scroll in the road, you have duties of preservation, not enjoyment. You may unr...
The Sanhedrin of seventy-one was not a single institution. It was the top of a ladder, and Rabbi Yossi remembered the steps. In each city of Israel sat a provincial court of twenty...
The prophet Isaiah once warned Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts was about to take away the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water, the mi...
One morning Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai rode out of Jerusalem with his disciples. On the road, he saw a young woman bent over, picking individual barley grains out of the droppings ...
A man in Jerusalem held a grand banquet. He had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He sent his servant to invite Kamtza. The servant, confused by the similar name...
The Roman Emperor had a habit of baiting Rabbi Akiva with the sharpest question he could devise. "Why is it said," he asked once, "that God gives wisdom to the wise, and not to the...
Rabbi Shela once punished a man who had sinned with a non-Jewish woman. The offender, smarting under the beating, reported the Rabbi to the king. Jewish courts were not supposed to...
Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon was known for his great body and his greater appetite. Once he went to visit Rabbi Yosef ben Laqania. They sat together, and Rabbi Yosef set out a meal tha...
Rabbi Zeira bought a field one morning in the marketplace. A fair price. A closed deal. He walked home satisfied. Then he learned what he had not known when he made the purchase: R...
Rabbi Akiva began his life illiterate and ended it the greatest Torah teacher of his generation. The bridge between the two was a woman named Rachel. Rachel was the daughter of Kal...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such poverty that his family often had nothing for Shabbat. One Friday, his wife stood in the empty kitchen, ashamed. The neighbors would notice the ...
The Samaritans of late antiquity insisted they were descendants of Joseph through the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. It was a matter of pride. Rabbi Meir disagreed. Meir ...
One of Rabbi Akiva's students fell gravely ill, and no one in the household thought to care for him. He lay in a corner, forgotten, while the illness ran its course. Akiva heard ab...
When a condemned woman died under Roman sentence, the students of Rabbi Ishmael made an unusual decision. They performed one of the earliest recorded forensic examinations in Jewis...
The Jewish community of Alexandria was enormous — perhaps the largest outside Judea in the first century CE — and its scholars were known for asking difficult questions. Once, they...
In the study hall, who rises for whom is not a small matter. Standing signals reverence. The Rabbis watched very carefully whom they chose to honor in this way. Rabbi Zeira was onc...
A student was walking behind Rabbi Ishmael ben Yose. Another student was walking behind Rabbi Hamnana. Both students were following their teachers closely, learning by watching. Th...
A merchant on the road was joined by an innkeeper who asked to travel with him. As they walked, they passed a blind man by the roadside. The merchant stopped, opened his purse, and...
Rabbi Yudan was famous in his city for two things. He was very rich. And he was so charitable that he had been known to run down the street after the collectors of alms, begging to...
There is a tradition that King Hezekiah hid away a Sefer Refuot, a Book of Remedies, containing cures for nearly every disease. To modern ears this sounds cruel — why withhol...
Every year, in the dark weeks of winter, Jewish homes kindle flames for eight nights — the Chag HaChanukah, the Feast of Dedication. The festival commemorates the purifying o...
Rabbi Yochanan was teaching his students on the verse, “I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles” (Isaiah 54:12). He said, “The Holy One, bl...
Rabbi Ishmael ben Yossi had a tenant who tended his vineyard. Every Friday, the man brought a basket of grapes to the Rabbi’s door — the standard portion owed to the la...
The Mishnah in tractate Sotah teaches that four kinds of people tear down the world from within: foolish pietists, crafty villains, sanctimonious women, and self-afflicting Pharise...
Abba Benjamin used to say, “If our eyes were permitted to see the malignant sprites that beset us, we could not rest for a moment on account of them.” The air, the rabb...
The Emperor Hadrian once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah a sharp question. “Why is the Name of God mentioned only in the first five of the Ten Commandments, and not in the la...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus and Rabbi Akiva argued often. Once they argued about tzedakah. “Akiva,” said Turnus Rufus, “if your God decreed that a certain man...
A philosopher named Proklos, son of Filoslos, once pressed Rabban Gamliel with a hard question. “If the idols of the nations are false, why does your God not simply destroy t...
Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon was a mountain of a man. Broad-shouldered, thick-armed, he used to earn a few coins carrying travelers across the river on his back. His strength was legend...
The emperor Antoninus was a secret friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah. They visited each other, but Rome could not know of it. Antoninus had an undergrou...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such fearless piety that the scorpions feared him. The Talmud tells this miniature story like a punchline. A scorpion had taken up residence in a hol...
There was once an innkeeper who ran his business as a trap. Each night, deep in the small hours, he would wake his guests with false alarms — shouts of fire, of thieves, of s...
The Temple had been burned. Rabbi Joshua walked through the ashes of Jerusalem and said aloud, to no one in particular, “Woe to us. The place where Israel atoned for its sins...
