9 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Transformation from across Jewish tradition.
9 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines transformation, 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.
Genesis gives Enoch eight words before he vanishes. The Targum Jonathan fills the silence: he was taken up and became Metatron, the angel who sits nearest God.
Enoch lived 365 years and the Torah says he was gone. The tradition filled centuries into that five-word silence and found a transformation without precedent.
Potiphar's daughter mocks the slave Joseph, then sees him from her tower and falls. Seven days in ash, an angel, and paradise honey remake her.
Enoch's angelic guides abandon him at the threshold of the tenth heaven. He falls to the ground in terror. Then God calls him to come closer.
A witch rides a man through the market as a donkey, another strangles a child in the womb, and the sages rule how such women must die.
When the fiery chariot carried Elijah into heaven, he became Sandalphon, tallest of angels, and has been working ever since.
A trap meant to burn Maimonides alive closes on his accuser, he turns into a lion to break cruel decrees, and Ibn Ezra comes hunting his equal.
An old man stands outside Sodom and refuses to leave. A refugee meets an army of angels. A couple in Haran feeds strangers and gains souls.
A poor-looking golden ring carried a secret no jeweler could price, and the words cut into it stitched a wolf's hunger to a holy man's hand.
