496 myths · Page 9 of 17
The emperor's nephew called Titus and Balaam up from the dead. He asked which nation is honored in the world to come. Both enemies said the Jews.
After thirteen years of Torah study in hiding, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai emerged with eyes so fierce that everything he looked at caught fire.
Three losses in a single night left Rabbi Akiva in darkness outside a hostile town, and the next morning he understood why each one had saved him.
Manasseh had spent a lifetime closing every door back to God. Sealed inside a heated brass bull by his captors, he found the one door still open.
While Rabbah bar Nahmani sat under a tree fleeing arrest, heaven's sages were deadlocked on a point of ritual law. Only he could break the tie.
The law had burned with the city. Ezra was told he was about to be taken up out of the world, and he asked for forty days before he went.
Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon burns inside a Torah scroll and tells his students what he sees: the parchment burns, but the letters are flying up.
After soldiers slaughter Jews in a cave for refusing to fight on Shabbat, Mattathias decides that survival itself can defend the law.
The officers offered Eleazar a way out. Bring your own food, they said, and only pretend to eat what the king requires. He was ninety, and he said no.
While the Temple stood, the King came down every midnight to the inner room. After it burned, His Bride went out into the road with nothing left to wear.
Halfway through the second watch the verdict on the world comes out as annihilation. God stands up and moves to a different chair.
Moses spends forty days in a cloud where the sun does not reach and learns to tell time by what God teaches him, not by the sky.
A Jewish courtier tells Ptolemy that asking for the Torah while owning Jewish slaves is a contradiction no library can absorb. The king pays to free them.
A man who wanted the High Priest's garments became a Torah scholar under Hillel. A robber who became a sage was destroyed by one sentence from his teacher.
Rome banned Torah and Rabbi Akiva gathered students in public anyway. When Pappos warned him, Akiva answered with fish who knew that dry land was death.
Seventy-two elders carried the Torah from Jerusalem into the Greek king's hall. He asked why no king before him had ever been given this book.
Six hundred thousand people backed away from Sinai saying the voice would kill them if it spoke again. Moses was told to come closer.
Saul confessed in the same words David used. Then he asked to be honored before the elders, and tore Samuel's robe grabbing after him.
Nobody has ever woken in the morning and found his soul missing, or found his neighbor's soul in his hands. That deposit has never once been mixed up.
Doeg uses his tongue to destroy a city of priests, but David, trained as a shepherd, guards Torah and refuses to act in anger.
Shemot Rabbah places Moses, David, and Solomon before a God who lifts and lowers like a wheel, then demands that Torah and mercy govern the throne.
Moses blessed Israel at the edge of his life, and Devarim Rabbah says he was not standing alone. Torah stood beside him, and God stood beside Torah.
When Moses's final day arrived, Devarim Rabbah says the sun refused to set and the day itself filed a complaint before God about being forced to end.
Demetrius had money, ships, and 200,000 scrolls, and still the greatest library on earth was missing one book. It was in Hebrew, in Jerusalem.
For forty days the young king ate nothing, and wisdom came down to him. At Sinai it went the other way. The letters lifted off the broken stone.
Moses writes God's Name on poisonous oleander and throws it into bitter water. Weeks later, heaven drops bread stored there since the first week of creation.
Pharaoh's daughter opened the basket and found a crying child. Compassion opened in her too. The Tikkunei Zohar calls that baby the Master of Tears.
Moses sees fire in a thornbush that does not consume the branches. Shemot Rabbah hears God choosing to stand inside Israel's suffering before speaking.
Israel at the sea begs God to speak close enough for song. Shir HaShirim Rabbah reads the Song's first verse as the moment thunder became tenderness.
Esau ran at his brother with his mouth open like a man biting bread. Jacob's neck turned to marble. Esau's teeth broke on it, and the two of them wept.
