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A pious man had given his life to discipline — studying Torah, eating little, owning less. His sister-in-law accused him of stealing her jewelry. The charge was false, but the cour...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 345, preserves a late medieval legend about Maimonides (1135–1204) surviving a plot against his life. Cruel decrees had gone out against the Jews. Maim...
A pious man was digging in his field one afternoon when his spade struck something hard. He uncovered a marble statue — finely carved, half buried in the soil of generations. As he...
Pinhas ben Yair was a second-century rabbi remembered for an unnerving combination of piety and practical wisdom. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, and stories abou...
There are three, the sages teach, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, singles out by name and calls virtuous. The first is the unmarried man who lives in a great city and does not si...
The sages collected sharp observations about who people tend to be and why. Most donkey drivers, they said, are rough with their customers, but most sailors are pious, because anyo...
There was once a farmer who paid his tithes with scrupulous care. Every year, on the appointed seasons, he set aside the priestly portion, the Levitical tenth, and the poor-tithe, ...
The workers of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak were clearing a small mound on the edge of a field when the earth gave way beneath their spades and a man sat up from the soil. He was fully...
The sages liked to place two sons side by side to show how kibbud av, honor of a father, can be faked and how it can be real. The first son fed his father lavishly. He set out rich...
There was a man called Yosef Mokir Shabbat, "Yosef the Honorer of the Sabbath." Every Friday he spent whatever he had on the best food available for the Shabbat table. Anything the...
Tractate Rosh Hashanah (folio 16, column 2) teaches that on the Day of Judgment three ledgers are opened and three groups of souls appear before the Holy One, blessed be He. The pe...
Tractate Gittin (folio 57, column 2) preserves one of the most devastating martyrdom stories in all of rabbinic literature — a Jewish mother and her seven sons dragged before a Rom...
Tractate Yoma (folio 9, column 1) asks a question no one would think to ask unless they were counting: how many kohanim gedolim, high priests, served during each of the two Temples...
This is one of the cruelest and most luminous stories in the Talmud, preserved both in tractate Avodah Zarah and in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection as exemplum No. 67. Rabbi Chanina...
(Leviticus 19:9-10) and (Deuteronomy 24:19) lay out a peculiar agricultural law. When you harvest your field and forget a sheaf behind you, you are forbidden to go back for it. It ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 160 is one sentence long, but it unfolds into a whole theology. "Rabbi Akiva in prison used half of the drinking water to wash his hands." The Talmudic versio...
Gaster's exemplum No. 288 preserves a paired story from the Hadrianic persecutions of the second century — the same killing-field that took Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Chanina ben Terady...
There is a story in Ketubot 77b about a rabbi who asked for a preview of his own Paradise. The Angel of Death had come for him, as the Angel comes for everyone, but this rabbi had ...
Four rabbis were on the road to Rome. Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva traveled together, and while they were still one hundred and twenty ...
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...
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...
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa was a miracle-worker from the Galilee in the first century, known for a faith so exact that his prayers came true almost by default. He lived in poverty. He ...
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...
The Emperor Hadrian, riding through the streets of Tiberias, spotted a very old man on his knees in the dirt, planting a fig tree. Hadrian dismounted. He could not resist the quest...
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...
Two brothers lived in the same town — one rich, one poor. After the festival of Sukkot, the poor brother walked through the neighborhood gathering up the etrogim that families had ...
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...
Bamidbar Rabbah preserves a tender moment in the imagined inner life of the Holy One. When God decided to bless Abraham, He paused. “What shall I tell him?” the Holy On...
The rabbis read the Torah with a quiet attention to who shows up at whose door. They noticed that wherever a righteous person travels, blessing travels with them, like a shadow tha...
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 a man who lived near an old tree. One morning, cutting branches for firewood, he raised his axe, and a voice came out of the wood. “Stop,” said the voice...
The third day finishes with a command that sounds almost agricultural. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:11), the Lord tells the earth to "increase the grassy herb whose seed...
The Torah ends the sixth day's first act with a simple line: God saw that it was good. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:25) repeats the clean/unclean doubling — beast of the ea...
The Torah's provision for humanity is stated briefly: "every herb yielding seed, every tree yielding fruit, to you it shall be for food." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:29) e...
Before there was rain, before there was agriculture, there was a waiting earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:5) explains the pause: "all the trees of the field were not as ...
In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:4), Abel's offering is described in three careful words: "the firstlings of the flock, and of their fat." The firstlings — the first-born of...
Cain's response to the curse, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:14), includes a nuance the Hebrew does not spell out. "Behold, Thou hast cast me forth today from the face of ...
What was the "mark of Cain"? The Torah only says God placed a sign on him so no one would kill him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:15) tells us what the sign was. "The Lord s...
Lamech's argument continues in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:24). He does a piece of theological arithmetic in front of his wives. "For Cain who sinned and was converted by ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 5:3) reopens old wounds. "Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat Sheth, who had the likeness of his image and of his similitude: for be...
The Torah says cryptically of Enoch: "he walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us where he went. "Hanok served in the trut...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 5:29) preserves the folk etymology of Noah's name. Lamech calls his son "Noach," which the Targum glosses as "Consolation," saying: "This shall c...
The Torah calls Noah "a righteous man, perfect in his generations." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:9) tightens the description: "Noah was a just man, complete in good works i...
The Torah gives Noah minimal construction specs. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:14) hands him a blueprint. "Make thee an ark of the wood of cedars; a hundred and fifty cells ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:13) narrows the entire human story down to a single doorway. On the day the Flood began, eight people walked through it — Noah, his three sons ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:14) does what Torah often does at its most sublime moments — it lists. Every wild animal after its kind. Every domestic beast after its kind. E...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:23) ends the Flood with six words the reader will never forget: Noah only was left, and they who were with him in the ark. The Targum has just ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:9) tells one of the most delicate scenes in all of Torah. Noah sends out a dove, a yonah, to see whether the earth is ready. The Targum says sh...
