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(16) (Ib. b) (Ex. 34, 6), And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed. R. Jochanan said: "Had this passage not been written, it would have been impossible to think of it, for ...
(17) R. Jochanan said: "Repentance, is a great thing, for it tears (cancels) the [evil] decree against man; as it is said (Isa. 6, 10) Obdurate will remain the heart of this people...
Come, listen. The proselyte Beluria asked Rabban Gamaliel: "It is written in your Torah (Deut. 17) The Lord who forgiveth no persons and taketh no bribe; and it is also written (Nu...
(18) R. Samuel b. lnya said in the name of Rab: "Whence do we know that a decree against a community is not confirmed." Is that true? Behold, it is written (Jer. 2, 22) The stain o...
What is meant by 'a wicked bond'? Shebna taught to twelve myriads, while Hezekiah taught to eleven myriads. When Sennacherib came and besieged Jerusalem, Shebna wrote on an arrowhe...
Turnus Rufus and Akiba dispute about the preeminence of the Sabbath. Rufus holds high office, having been appointed by the Emperor. Akiba says that the Sabbath has also been appoin...
A Matrona asked Rabbi Joshua what God has been doing since Creation. The reply was: “He pairs people.” The Ma- trona then ordered a number of male slaves to marry female slaves, th...
A Matrona asked R. Eleazar: "Why for the one sin of worshipping the golden calf were they punished with three kinds of death ?” He refused to answer a woman, but explained to his p...
The story of the false prophets Ahab ben Kolaya and Zidkia b. Maaseya. They went to the daughter of Nebuchad- nezar and by false prophecies tried to induce her to sin, The king kno...
An heathen said to R. Johanan b. Zakkai: “The ceremonies of the red heifer look like witchcraft/' He replied: “What are you doing against demoniac possession?’’— “Herbs and fumigat...
Rabbi Zadok, captive in Rome, refused to be tempted to sin by the slave girl sent by the Matrona, as he declared that he was a descendant of the noblest family of high priests and ...
A certain Nathan was saved from committing sin with a famous Hetaera in the Island of the Sea through observing the commandment of the fringes, because on seeing them he was remind...
Simeon b. Kamhith, a high priest, walked about with a heathen king and got his clothes defiled and was incapacitated from acting on the day of atonement. His place was taken by his...
Beruria, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, was one of the sharpest minds in all of rabbinic literature. And one day, she corrected her husband on a point of theology that has echoe...
Beruria and the wife of a Min disputed about the words "Rejoice O barren one”, and the woman asked why she should rejoice because she had not had any children and the answer was, l...
A Min and R. Ami disputed about the resurrection of the dead after they are changed into dust. R. Ami replied with., a parable. A king ordered his servants to build a palace where ...
R. Shela beat a man who commited sin with an heathen. He was denounced to the king, but he escaped punishment and obtained a high position through his interpretation of the words: ...
The beautiful son and daughter of R. Ishmael were sold as slaves, and were shut up by their masters in one room in order to obtain similarly beautiful children, not recognising one...
It was the custom to present newly married people with a hen and a cock and once the Roman soldiers passing by caught the birds and ate them; the Jews then attacked them. This was ...
A young man and woman who were betrothed to one another were seized by raiders and sold into slavery. By cruel coincidence — or perhaps by providence — they were sold to the same m...
Short note of the destruction of Bet-Tur through the axle of the waggon. They used to plant trees on the birth of a child and afterwards used them at its wedding. These were once c...
Mesha, the king of Moab, heard the story of the Binding of Isaac and drew exactly the wrong conclusion. He learned that Abraham, the father of the Israelites, had been willing to s...
A laborer worked for his master for three full years, faithfully performing every task assigned to him. When the work was finally done, he approached his master and asked for his w...
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...
R. Johanan b. Zakai was asked by R. Eleazar b. Arach permission to expound some of the mysteries of the creation (Ma’ase Merkaba). R. Johanan dismounted from his ass, as angels mig...
The story of the weasel and the well. Once a young girl, beautifully dressed, lost herself in the desert on her way home. Getting very thirsty and seeing a well with a rope and a b...
Rabbi Judah took upon himself the education of the daughter of Rabbi Tarfon, raising her in Torah and wisdom. It was an act of extraordinary devotion — accepting responsibility for...
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...
King Solomon wished to build a temple with unhewn stone, as he was not allowed to use iron, that being forbidden by law. So he tried to obtain Shamir which he was told was in the p...
The Story of Antoninas andR. [Jehudaha-Nassi] who preferred the cold meals of the Sabbath. The Rabbi explained to Antoninus that the superiority of Sabbath meals over those of the ...
R. Eliezer was taken ill. Four sages came to visit him and tried to comfort him, but none succeeded so well as R. Akiba, who said that suffering was invaluable for suffering begot ...
R. Johanan b. Zakkai wept on his death bed because he had to appear before a King where no bribe was possible. He lamented over the difficulty of the choice between the two ways, t...
R. Akiba met a dead man gathering sticks for his own burning. in Gehinom. Akiba inquired how he could be saved and acted accordingly; viz., he educated the man’s son until he could...
Eliezer b. Hyrkanos went to Jerusalem to study whilst his father and brothers fled with their goods from the attack of the Roman soldiers. He starved and was discovered by R. Johan...
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...
Rabbi Judah HaNasi needed to send a teacher to the town of Simonia. The community there required a sage who could teach Torah, render legal decisions, and guide the people. He chos...
After the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah was consumed by grief. "Woe to us," he cried to his teacher Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. "The place where the sins of...
Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin (the supreme rabbinic court), once served food to Rabbi Yehoshua with his own hands. He stood and poured wine for his guest as though he w...
A pious man was walking along the sea-shore near Haifa when doubt crept into his mind. He had heard the sages' teaching that the gates of the future Jerusalem would be made from si...
A heretic — the Talmud calls him a "Min" — came to Rabbi Ishmael with a series of strange dreams, seeking interpretation. The dreams were vivid, unsettling, full of bizarre imagery...
Mar Ukba was a man of extraordinary generosity, but his generosity had one absolute rule: the recipient must never know who gave. Every day, Mar Ukba would slip coins under the doo...
The death of Rabbi Akiba in a Roman prison was one of the most sacred and terrible events in all of Jewish history. The greatest sage of his generation, the man who had laughed on ...
III. 2. A rich man on his death bed, ordered his son never to take an oath. Swindlers came and robbed him of all his property, claiming debts from his father, he refusing to swear....
IV. 4. A man called Joseph Mokir Shabba (“honourer of the Sabbath") lived next to a rich Parsee. The latter was told that all his property would go to Joseph. He, therefore, sold a...
V. 1. A man on his deathbed commanded his son to cast bread upon the waters. He did it daily and one fish caught it regularly and grew very big and persecuted the other fishes. The...
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. (...
10. Rich man sent his son far away to trade. In his absence, the old man died and left all his property in the hands of a slave. When the son returned, the slave claimed to be the ...
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...
