4,128 texts · Page 66 of 86
Abba Hilkiah — the grandson of Honi the Circle-Drawer — inherited his grandfather's extraordinary ability to bring rain through prayer. But his methods were so peculiar that the sa...
38- Wiinsche, J. Talmud, p. 148 f. Griinbaum, Jud.Deutsch Deu ts ch. Chres t. p. 400. Singer, Z. V. Vlksd. II, p. 298. Ancona, II Cavaliero Senso, p. 97—130; 151—187. _ Gaster, Chr...
A man hid his money in a hollow tree — and the story of what happened to that money became a parable about the cleverness of thieves and the greater cleverness of the righteous. Th...
Three chests were placed before a person who was told to choose one — and the story of that choice became a famous parable about the difference between appearance and reality. The ...
Solomon and chess — a pairing that connects the king's legendary wisdom with the world's most intellectual game. While chess in its modern form postdates Solomon by many centuries,...
A bird served as a witness in a case of justice — and its testimony was accepted because God uses all of creation, even the smallest creatures, to ensure that truth is revealed. Th...
God’s Justice. Meg. Esther (Yiddish) *593- Griinbaum, Jiid. Deutsch. Chrest. p. 215—18. Behrnauer, ZDMG. XVI, p. 762. Brockhaus, ZDMG., XIV, p. 7o6f. Gellert, Das Schicksal. Gesta ...
Three Questions. Anderson, Kaiser &Abt. Apollodor, III, 7, 1. Antigone. Basile, Pen tarn. No. 35. cf. Behrnauer, 40 Veziere, p. noff. Birlinger, Aus Schwa- ben II, 370—371. Eisel, ...
A man was granted a wish — and what he wished for became the source of his downfall. The tale of the "Foolish Wish" is found in dozens of cultures, but the Jewish version carries a...
A man tore his mantle in half and gave half to a stranger — an act of generosity that became the seed of a much larger story. The "Half the Mantle" tale is found across many cultur...
Widow Comforted. Berahya, No. 80. Maase Buch No. 108. Helvicus, Historien, II, ch. 33, p. 104. Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibl. XIII, p. 77 ff. Steinschneider, ZDMG, 27, P- 563* Griinba...
Three questions were posed to a sage — and his answers became legendary. The "Three Questions" format appears throughout medieval literature, but the Jewish versions are distinguis...
The verse in Deuteronomy asks a haunting question: "How could one pursue a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?" (Deuteronomy 32:30). The answer, the Torah says, is that G...
Three maxims were given to a man — three simple rules for living — and his obedience to these maxims saved his life. The tale, found in Jewish and comparative folklore collections,...
"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1). This verse became the foundation for one of the most frequently told stories in the Je...
Cut Off Hands. Ginsburg, Hagoren, 1923 p. 34ff. Ben Gorion I, p. 191, 375- Bolte & Polivka, I, p. 295—311. Cosquin, Contes, No. 35, II, p. 44—46. Daumling, Studie ii. d. Typus d. M...
The evil eye is a supposed power of bewitching or harming by spiteful looks, attributed to certain persons as a natural endowment. This belief was widespread among ancient civiliza...
"Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?" (Malachi 2:10). Judah approaches Joseph — who is not yet revealed as his brother — and identifies his family: "We, your twe...
A psalm of Asaph opens this section of Aggadat Bereshit: "God has made Himself known in Judah; His name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:2). And immediately the rabbis add the verse f...
The Book of Proverbs opens with a line that, on its surface, seems almost paradoxical. Why would a wise man need to hear more? Isn't wisdom already wisdom? Midrash Mishlei, the agg...
When the chieftains of Israel rolled up to the Tabernacle with six covered wagons, the Torah uses a strange word for those wagons — tzav. Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:8 turns the word u...
When Rabbi Yaakov bar Yuda stood up to teach in the name of Rabbi Yonatan of Beit Govrin, he opened with a verse that reads like a traveler's warning: "The way of the sluggard is l...
A Roman matrona once came to Rabbi Yosei bar Chalafta with a question that sounded innocent and was not. "In how many days did your God create the universe?" she asked. Rabbi Yosei...
The Rabbis teach that three things come into the world directly from the hand of the Holy One, never secondhand. Famine. Plenty. And a wise ruler. For famine, Scripture says, The L...
A man in the Talmud (Bava Batra 58a) once overheard his wife whispering to their daughter. Of their ten sons, she admitted, only one was truly his. She would not say which. The fat...
A man named Joseph, who kept the Shabbat with uncommon care, had a neighbor who was rich, fearful, and utterly convinced of astrology. The neighbor was told by a professional astro...
Scattered through the old anthologies is a trove of one-line sayings — proverbs the Rabbis handed down the way other peoples pass down songs. The 1901 collection Hebraic Literature...
A Jewish merchant died abroad, far from his family, in the house of a stranger. Years later, his grown son traveled to find the merchant's hidden property — but the man who had inh...
During the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the storehouses had been burned by Jewish zealots to force the city to fight. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, walking through the streets a...
A Roman Emperor once tried to embarrass Rabban Gamliel with a joke that sounded, at first, like a theological objection. "Your God is a thief," the Emperor said. "He put Adam into ...
The Roman Emperor Antoninus — traditionally identified with one of the Antonine emperors of the second or third century CE — came to Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, the redactor of the Mish...
A min — a heretic, an opponent of the Rabbis' tradition — came to Rabbi Yishmael with a stack of strange dreams he wanted interpreted. He had clearly hoped that the Rabbi would pla...
Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah were teaching in the same academy — and during the set times of communal prayer, they deliberately did not pray in the same way. One wou...
A man in the Gaster manuscripts left his wife after many years of marriage. His reason was the oldest reason in the world: she had borne him only daughters. No son. No heir. He ann...
Some rabbinic teaching comes as narrative. Some comes as argument. And some comes as short, edged sentences that land like stones. Here is a handful from the Proverbial Sayings and...
A man in a certain town buried a sum of money in his garden for safekeeping. He thought no one had seen. He was wrong. His neighbor, watching through a gap in the wall, waited a da...
A poor man, unable to work, resolved to stay in his house and wait for God to provide. One day, when he had nothing at all to eat, a fat cow wandered through his open door. The man...
There was a man in a certain town who was always seen in tattered clothes. He sat on the synagogue floor among the poorest of the congregation. He ate what was given him. He accept...
A poor but pious man had three silver pieces — all he had in the world. He took them to the mill, bought flour for his household, and walked home carrying the sack. On the way, at ...
There is a brief, bruising story preserved in Gaster's Exempla (no. 294, 1924) about Rabbi Safra, a well-known legal scholar of the Babylonian tradition. One day he found himself a...
The question of how oral tradition becomes binding is an old one, and the Talmud answers it with a scene in Solomon's court. Rav Yehudah, reporting in the name of Shmuel, taught th...
Alexander of Macedon stopped, so the sages tell it, to test the elders of the Negev with ten hard questions. Some of their answers have come down to us, and they show a people conf...
Rav Acha taught that before Adam was created, God turned to the ministering angels and consulted with them. "Shall we make man?" He asked. The angels answered honestly: "What good ...
The anthologists of the old Hebraic literature gathered Talmudic aphorisms the way a peddler gathers buttons — many small, each perfect. A handful: The rivalry of scholars advances...
King David, lying on his couch one evening, let his thoughts wander through the corners of creation he could not make sense of. "Of what use is the spider in this world?" he asked ...
When Maimonides — Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known to Jewish tradition as the Rambam — fled the persecutions in Andalusia and reached the court of Egypt in the late twelfth century, t...
A Roman matrona once posed a sharp question to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta. "Your Bible says, 'He gives wisdom to the wise' (Daniel 2:21). But this makes no sense. A wise person already...
The Roman emperor Antoninus was a friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince — the compiler of the Mishnah, known to tradition as Rabbi. The two men ate together often, and the emperor notic...
