49 myths · Page 1 of 2
Each story names the sources it was written from.
The marble looked like standing water. Akiva told them not to shout. Heaven does not forgive a lie about what sits in front of the eyes.
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 named Hadarniel blocked the road, and Moses wept in the cloud like a lost child. Then he gripped the Throne of Glory with both shaking hands.
Abraham sent sheep to a stolen well and promised it to the seventh generation. In the desert it drank at every tent door until Miriam died.
A whirlwind took Elijah into the sky while Elisha watched. He did not die. He got four wings and a new name, and he still shows up in disguise.
The Romans tore Rabbi Akiva's flesh with iron combs while he smiled. He had been waiting his whole life to love God with everything he had.
God decides to tell Abraham what he is about to do to Sodom. Abraham recognizes an opening and presses it, bargaining God down from fifty righteous to ten.
Elisha ben Abuya entered heaven and saw an angel seated on a throne. In heaven, no one sits. His mind drew one conclusion, and it cost him everything.
On Sinai Moses took in every future question. Then God described a lamp of hammered gold, and the shape would not stay in his mind long enough to make it.
Balaam stood on Moab heights and wished aloud for the death of the righteous. He understood exactly what that meant. Then he died by the sword in Midian.
Alexander followed a fragrant stream to the end of the earth, reached the gate of Eden, and was turned away with a bone and a riddle.
A mud-eater in a nostril killed a fish the size of a coast. When the sea threw the body ashore, sixty cities went under the weight.
When thieves stole Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair's donkey, it refused to eat for three days rather than touch untithed grain.
The first rain was a light drizzle, barely enough to notice. The second came down hard enough to flood Jerusalem, and people ran uphill to escape the water.
He had crossed seven rivers to reach the most notorious woman alive, and it was something she said that finally broke him open.
A fiery cub walked out of the ruined Holy of Holies. They sealed its mouth with lead. For three days no hen in the land laid an egg.
Abaye laid down a zuz. Rava stood empty-handed. Bar Hedya read the same night-images two ways, and both of those readings came true.
His wife sat inside combing her hair. A neighbor knocked. He said she was not at home, and both of his sons were dead before the week ended.
Rava sent the man he had made walking toward Rabbi Zera's house. The man had a face, two hands, and no answer waiting in his throat.
The rabbis say Adam's body waited silent through all of creation, was stamped from a single mold, and first walked with a second face at his back.
On Friday night, two angels walk home with you from synagogue, one good, one accusing, and which one speaks first depends on what they find inside.
No iron could touch the Temple stones. Solomon needed a worm the size of a barley grain. The demon who knew its nest drank from one well.
Old and trapped beneath a giant's press in Philistia, David is saved when the earth softens, the road folds, and the Ineffable Name holds him in the air.
The first cohort came for chains. They sat at his table and never marched home. Rome sent a second company anyway.
A watchman comforts a weeping widow, a corpse vanishes from his gallows, and to save his life she digs up her own husband to hang in its place.
A woman brought her dream to one sage and bore a son, then a heretic brought his to another and was read aloud as a confession.
He came back shouting that the pearls were real. The sage looked at him once, and what hit the floor was a heap of dry bones.
The cupbearer had just been promised Pharaoh's cup again in three days. So the baker told his own dream, certain three baskets meant three rungs up.
When the Angel of Death came to drown a pair of every beast, the fox alone refused to die, weeping over a mate he never had.
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.
