55 myths · Page 2 of 2
He had crossed seven rivers to reach the most notorious woman alive, and it was something she said that finally broke him open.
For three days the sages held the yetzer hara captive in a lead pot, and found that without desire the world had stopped being able to reproduce.
Bar Hedya read the same dream two ways based on payment, and his favorable words built one man's life while his hostile words dismantled another's.
Berakhot 6a says demons press against every person by the thousands, leaving evidence in sore feet, worn clothes, and the crush of the study hall.
Two divine tears falling into the Great Sea at the memory of Israel in exile make a sound that travels from one end of the world to the other.
Chagigah maps what holds creation up: pillars, water, mountains, wind, storm, and finally the arm of God beneath a righteous person's feet.
In a town called Truth where no one dies young, a sage moves in, speaks one polite lie to his neighbor, and watches his sons begin to die.
Berakhot records God's own prayer that mercy defeat anger, then shows God studying Torah, wearing tefillin, and crowned with Israel's name.
Rava created a man using mystical knowledge and sent him to Rabbi Zera, who recognized what the silence meant and returned the man to dust.
A Talmudic count turns Hosea's silver and barley into a census: forty-five hidden righteous people sit in synagogues holding the world steady.
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.
A blind man and a lame man steal figs together, then each blames the other. God listens to both excuses and reunites them for judgment.
A widow weeps over a fresh grave beside a guarded gallows, and before the night is out she trades her own husband's body to save a stranger.
Bar Hedya reads two men the same dream toward opposite fates, until a wronged sage finds his hidden book and turns the dream-seller's own art on him.
She rebuked her husband for praying that sinners die, sliced a sage to three words, and silenced a heretic over a verse about the barren.
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.
A scoffer mocks a sage's promise of pearl gates thirty cubits high, until a storm drags him to where the angels are cutting them.
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.
A scorpion poisons worshippers until a barefoot pauper sets his heel on its hole, and the venom dies in him while a dying boy is pulled back.
A Roman general stages a furnace miracle to humiliate two bound brothers, and they refuse to ask for one, calling him no Nebuchadnezzar.
Shapur demands his own dream, a Caesar sets a riddle of a rotting foot, and a queen mocks the resurrection, and three sages answer back.
A caravan merchant guides Rabbah past giant sleepers and a mourning Sinai to the window where the turning sky pockets his basket of bread.
No human hand could reach the dead master in the wilderness, so heaven posted a canopy of motionless birds to guard his body until his students came.
A demon in his shade tree offers a pious man daily coins to spare its home, but he swings the axe and unearths a hoard that owes him nothing.
A calf-shaped angel with a torn lip speaks the rain up and down, two friends weigh as a nation, and Michael crosses all heaven in one beat.
