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The Talmud in tractate Gittin preserves a wild stretch of stories in which Benaiah ben Yehoyada, one of King David's mighty men, captures Ashmedai, king of the demons, and leads hi...
A Tzeduki — a Sadducee, member of the party that rejected the Oral Torah — once came to Rabbi Abhu with a question meant to sting. "Your God is a priest," he said, "for it is writt...
One of the most formidable women in the Talmud was Beruriah, wife of Rabbi Meir. She appears mostly in fragments — but in one famous passage she corrects her husband's Hebrew, and ...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
The Talmud and early midrashic collections preserve rabbinic mishlei, proverbs, in loose clusters — one-line teachings meant to be memorized and turned over slowly. Here is a sampl...
A Kuthean — a Samaritan — once came to Rabbi Meir with an accusation against the patriarch Jacob. It is preserved as exemplum No. 32 in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection. "Your ancest...
A min — a sectarian — once argued with Rabbi Ami against the resurrection of the dead. "How can God bring back bodies that have returned to dust?" he demanded. "The dust scatters; ...
The great martyr Rabbi Akiva, who lived roughly from 50 to 135 CE and was flayed alive by the Romans for teaching Torah in public, was once asked a dangerous question. "How great i...
Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, one of the great first-century sages, lay ill in his bed. Four of his colleagues came to visit him — among them Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elaz...
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the second-century sage to whom tradition attributes the core of the Zohar, once sent his son to the study house so that the scholars might bless him. What...
A short, bitter parable preserved as Gaster's exemplum No. 210 teaches the kind of lesson a Jew is meant to carry with him into the street. A man was clearing his field of stones. ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 273 preserves two short Talmudic stories about how seriously the sages took small signs. In the first, Rav — the third-century Babylonian sage who founded the...
Gaster's exemplum No. 303 preserves a Jewish folktale about a father's last clever gift to his son. A wealthy Jewish merchant lay dying in a distant city far from home. He drew up ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 381 preserves a cascading folktale from the Midrash Aseret HaDibrot, the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, all arranged around the commandment to honor one's f...
Gaster's exemplum No. 399, drawn from the Ben Attar collection of medieval Jewish exempla, preserves a courtroom puzzle about a cunning father's last will. A wealthy Jewish merchan...
Gaster's exemplum No. 414, drawn from Rabbenu Nissim Gaon's 11th-century Chibbur Yafeh Me-HaYeshuah, tells the story of a rich man who decided to conduct an experiment on despair. ...
Gaster's exemplum No. 438, drawn from the Gaster Hebrew manuscripts, tells the story of a stubborn merchant who decided to prove that a person can lose his property any time he wan...
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was a sage of the late second century, a younger contemporary of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — known simply as "Rabbi," the compiler of the Mishnah around 200 CE....
A gentile once came to Shammai asking to be made a proselyte, but only on condition that he be taught the Written Torah and not the Oral. Shammai sent him away with sharp rebuke. T...
Two great tannaim weighed the ethics of the courtroom. Rabbi Ishmael taught: when an Israelite and a stranger come before you in judgment, acquit the Israelite by the laws of Israe...
Abraham stands at the headwaters of the Jewish story, and the Talmud gathers around him a flood of legends — score upon score of traditions that stretch far beyond what the Book of...
Four tannaim ascended into the Pardes, the orchard of mystical contemplation, and Rabbi Akiva warned his companions before they entered. "When you come to the pavement of pure marb...
A garland of proverbs preserved in rabbinic tradition, each short enough to carry in a pocket and long enough to last a lifetime. Unhappy is the one who mistakes the branch for the...
A heretic — a min in the Talmud's vocabulary — once confronted a simple Jew named Gaboha ben Pesisa and mocked him. "Woe to you, you living who say that the dead rise again. You wi...
Mar Ukba was a wealthy Babylonian Jew known for his discreet tzedakah. He used to leave coins under a neighbor's doorsill each night, never waiting to be seen. One day he learned t...
A rabbinic fable: an ass was appointed toll-gatherer on a narrow road, trusted by the king of the region to demand payment from every traveler. A lion and a fox came down the path ...
Rabbi Abraham of Ashkelon was known in his city for the regularity of his prayers. He never missed the appointed hours; his Shacharit, Minchah, and Maariv were as steady as the sun...
The Talmud tells of four sages who entered Pardes — the orchard — and only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Rashi read the story literally: they ascended to heaven in ecstatic vision. Bu...
Ten measures of every quality came down into the world, said the sages in Kiddushin 49b, and nine of each were claimed by one nation while the rest of humanity had to share the las...
The sages said of Rabbi Tarfon that though he was a very wealthy man, he was not generous according to his means. There is a gentle reproach in that line. A man who could give thou...
Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin taught in the name of Rabbi Levi that when the Holy One, Blessed be He, prepared to fashion the first woman, He held a quiet council with Himself about an...
When Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah into exile, his officers wanted the captives dead. These men are men of death, they said. They refuse to obey the king's order. Execute them. One ...
A Roman emperor once challenged Rabban Gamliel with a question that sounds modern. If there is a God in the world, why does He not reveal Himself directly? Why not speak face to fa...
Two prominent rabbis, Rav Huna and Rav Chisda, once refused to return the greeting of a colleague named Gniba. Perhaps they considered him insufficiently respectful, or perhaps the...
A woman had been married for ten years and could not conceive. Her husband, following the ruling that a childless marriage of ten years permits divorce, declared his intention to s...
A rich man had one son. When the son turned eighteen, he begged his father for permission to travel to a famous academy. The father let him go, and three times over three years the...
A scholar traveled on a boat with a group of merchants. They pressed him for information — What merchandise have you brought? Where is your cargo stored? He answered vaguely: my go...
A young man rode from Tiberias to Betar and met a young woman who fell in love with him on sight. They married within days. A year later she asked him to bring her to visit her par...
A rich man once swore an oath before his sons that when he died he would leave each of them one hundred dinars. He had ten sons, so the promise totaled one thousand dinars. Then hi...
A man walked a hot road carrying a jug of milk. He heard a thin, desperate noise near the verge. A snake, dying of thirst. The man knelt, tilted the jug, and gave the snake enough ...
The prophet Isaiah once warned Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts was about to take away the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water, the mi...
The Talmud keeps a ledger of shorter sayings — proverbs worn smooth by repetition, each one a whole argument compressed into a sentence. "Do not do to others what you would not hav...
The Emperor Hadrian, riding through the streets of Tiberias, spotted a very old man on his knees in the dirt, planting a fig tree. Hadrian dismounted. He could not resist the quest...
The Roman Emperor had a habit of baiting Rabbi Akiva with the sharpest question he could devise. "Why is it said," he asked once, "that God gives wisdom to the wise, and not to the...
Rabbi Shela once punished a man who had sinned with a non-Jewish woman. The offender, smarting under the beating, reported the Rabbi to the king. Jewish courts were not supposed to...
The Samaritans of late antiquity insisted they were descendants of Joseph through the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. It was a matter of pride. Rabbi Meir disagreed. Meir ...
When a condemned woman died under Roman sentence, the students of Rabbi Ishmael made an unusual decision. They performed one of the earliest recorded forensic examinations in Jewis...
The Jewish community of Alexandria was enormous — perhaps the largest outside Judea in the first century CE — and its scholars were known for asking difficult questions. Once, they...
