4,128 texts · Page 68 of 86
When the son of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai died, the sages came to the house of mourning in waves. Each tried to comfort the old master. Each failed. He sat in his grief like a ston...
A ship full of travelers was crossing the sea when the wind died. The vessel drifted into still, silent waters and stopped. Each day the becalmed ship sat motionless on a surface l...
The servants of King David were sitting together eating eggs. One of them finished his egg while the others were still eating theirs, and he felt embarrassed to be sitting empty-ha...
A gentile once lent a sum of money to a Jew. They had no written contract, but they swore their agreement beneath a great tree in the countryside, calling on the Holy One and on th...
A pious man had a magnificent tree in his garden. For years it had been the pride of his land — tall, shady, heavy with fruit. Travelers and neighbors loved to rest beneath it. But...
Two men were crossing the desert together, each carrying his own provisions. One of them — the cunning one — proposed that they first eat all the provisions of his companion and sa...
For three years the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel stood locked in argument. Each claimed the law, the halacha, belonged to them. Both schools were sharp; both were pious...
The Talmud preserves a strange journey. Benaiah son of Jehoiada has captured Ashmedai, the king of the demons, and leads him bound toward Solomon's court. Along the road, the demon...
Before Rabbi Akiva died, he sat his son Rabbi Yehoshua down and gave him seven instructions. They read less like commandments than like the quiet advice of a man who had seen too m...
Sanhedrin 65b sets the sages debating: what exactly is an enchanter — the figure the Torah forbids? Rabbi Shimon gives the ugliest definition: one who passes the secretions of seve...
Sanhedrin 91a preserves a courtroom drama from the age of Alexander of Macedon. The people of Egypt appeared before the conqueror to lodge a complaint against Israel. Their argumen...
Jewish folk belief about small coins ran deep in the towns of Poland. Among both Jewish and Gentile neighbors a superstition held that a penny found at the right moment — stumbled ...
The sages loved short sayings that carried a whole theology in a line. Here are a handful gathered from rabbinic tradition. Cold water morning and evening is better than all the co...
The Rabbi had traveled with Elijah for days and seen strange justice everywhere. A poor couple had hosted them with warmth, and that night the family cow died. A wealthy man had tu...
The sages illustrated repentance with a parable, and this one has sailed down the centuries. A great ship was crossing the ocean on a long voyage. Before reaching port, a storm dro...
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924), preserved from the Ma'aseh Book, tells a courtroom tale set in the court of Alexander. The people of Afriki — the descendants of Canaan who h...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 64, preserves one of the cleverest moments in rabbinic history. Rabbi Akiva was imprisoned — a fate he would eventually die in — and his student Rabbi ...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 104, tells a quiet parable with a sharp edge. A man decided to cheat on his tithe. The Torah commands the Israelite to give a tenth of the field's yiel...
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi — the editor of the Mishnah — conducted long conversations with the Roman emperor Antoninus. Their friendship is one of the warmest cross-cultural exchanges in ...
Rabbi Hoshaya ben Levi discovered a numerical poem in an old Aggadah book. Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 285, preserves it in four lines. The Torah contains one hundred seventy-five...
Rabbi Meir was traveling and stopped for Shabbat at an inn. The innkeeper's name was Kidor. Meir did not like the name. It reminded him of a verse in (Deuteronomy 32:20), where God...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), Nos. 360–362, preserves three old parables about what friendship really means. This adaptation focuses on the first — a teaching about the difference betwe...
Scripture says of Samson that "the spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between Zoreah and Eshtaol" (Judges 13:25). The rabbis reading that verse pause...
The rabbis of the Talmud once ruled that a woman should not walk between two men, and a man should not pass between two women. The reasons were tangled up with concerns about purit...
Rome had issued three decrees against the Jews. They were forbidden to keep the Sabbath, forbidden to circumcise their sons, and forbidden to observe the laws of family purity. The...
A visitor arrived at the royal court of Solomon, hoping for an audience with the wisest of kings. He was not admitted. Three days passed, and each day he was told to wait. On the f...
The sages of the Talmud taught that the yetzer hara, the evil inclination within every human being, goes by seven different names in Scripture. Each prophet saw a different face of...
A group of philosophers once traveled to Rome and put a question to the elders of the Jewish community there. "If your God takes no pleasure in idolatry," they asked, "why does He ...
Ben Hei-Hei came to Hillel with a verse that troubled him. Malachi had said, "Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God a...
When Moses blessed the tribe of Asher at the end of his life, he said, "Let him dip his foot in oil" (Deuteronomy 33:24). The rabbis of the Talmud took the blessing literally. Ashe...
A ship docked at an island on its way between two ports. The captain announced that he would weigh anchor at a set hour, and he warned the passengers that a bell would sound three ...
The emperor of Rome once put a mocking question to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananyah. "Why is your God compared to a lion? Any knight in my army can kill a lion. What kind of comparison ...
Beruriah, the scholar and teacher married to Rabbi Meir in second-century Tiberias, was famous for being able to hold her own against any opponent in Scripture. A woman belonging t...
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua were aboard a ship when a storm drove them far out into the open ocean. The wind pushed them into waters no Jew had reason to visit. Rabbi Eliezer,...
Two astrologers were sent on a delegation to Rabbi Gamliel in the town of Usha. Their mission was to study Jewish law from its source, to examine it in detail, and to report back t...
A Roman noblewoman, a matrona, came to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta with a question. She had been reading the book of Genesis, and she was curious about the birth of Rebecca's twins. "Wh...
Elijah the prophet and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi traveled together for a time, and Elijah agreed to be his companion on one condition: the rabbi must ask no questions. Rabbi Yehoshua...
Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, the great twelfth-century Spanish Jewish scholar, once wanted to know who his equal might be in the world. He was told: Maimonides. He set out at once to fi...
Caesar once said to Rabbi Tanchum, "Come, let us become one people." The rabbi answered calmly. "Very well. But we are circumcised, and we cannot simply become as you are. If, howe...
The sages collected sharp observations about who people tend to be and why. Most donkey drivers, they said, are rough with their customers, but most sailors are pious, because anyo...
The anthologies of Jewish rabbinical writings preserve a parable about five sets of passengers who embark on a long sea voyage. When the ship puts in at a beautiful island midway t...
The students of Rabbi Akiva were traveling along a road when a band of robbers fell in with them. The bandits were watching closely to see which way the students were heading so th...
Rabbi Akiva wanted to know which of his students had the temperament of a scholar and which did not. He devised a simple test at the dinner table. He first set before them a dish t...
The prophet Elijah once appeared to a pious but struggling man and handed him four gold dinars. The man was astonished. Four dinars was enough to start a modest trade. It was a pro...
The prophet Elijah came to a young man with a simple offer. He could have seven good years of prosperity, either at the beginning of his life or at the end. The choice was his. The...
In the time of King Suleiman, a vizier's wife had borne nine daughters in a row. As her tenth pregnancy advanced, the vizier grew frantic for a son. He warned his wife that if she ...
There is a strange debate preserved in tractate Berachot (folio 47, column 2) that asks a question most of us are afraid to ask out loud. Who, exactly, counts as an am ha'aretz — a...
Rava once told a story in the name of Rabbi Yochanan that was preserved in tractate Sanhedrin (folio 104, column 2) — and it is really a story about how a Jew is supposed to see. T...
