6 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Righteous from across Jewish tradition.
6 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines righteous, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
In the third heaven, Enoch found the Garden of Eden as it was before Adam's expulsion -- the Tree of Life at center, three hundred angels always singing.
Noah walks off the ark and a lion bites him. A scholar is outpaced by his own donkey driver. A tiny besieged city turns out to be the whole world.
Gabriel greets the righteous at Eden's gate, the salted Leviathan is served, and God Himself sits down to pour the wine and hand over His throne.
David watched thin smoke scatter on the wind and found the fate of the wicked in it, not burned, not broken, simply gone before God.
A water carrier lifts one more bucket as the world rests on his bent back. He is one of thirty-six hidden righteous, and he must never find out.
An angel pulled Enoch from seclusion to rule the earth. He taught 130 kings for 243 years. When God called him back, eight hundred thousand men watched him go.
