Unit 6 · Famous Stories from the Talmud

The story starts with an oven. Long ago, ovens were made of clay. Some were made in rings, one stacked on another. Sand was packed between the rings. This oven was built that way. The question was simple. Could this oven become unclean?

The Mishnah is the oldest part of the Talmud. It is a book of rules written down about the year 200 CE. In the tractate Kelim, chapter 5, mishnah 10, it records this oven. Rabbi Eliezer said the oven could not become unclean. The other rabbis said it could.

"Unclean" here does not mean dirty. It is a word for a special state in Jewish law. Some things, like an oven, could be made unclean and then could not be used for holy food. The rabbis cared about it because people in their towns asked them these questions every day.

The rabbis in this story lived in the land of Israel. Historians date them to about the year 100 CE. The Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by Rome in the year 70. The rabbis gathered in a small town called Yavneh. There they taught and made rulings.

Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was one of the great teachers there. The Talmud says his memory was like a plastered well that never loses a drop. Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah was his friend and study partner. The two often disagreed. A group of teachers called the sages sat with them.

Rabbi Eliezer stood alone in the oven argument. Rabbi Joshua and all the sages were against him. In the Talmud, a rule usually follows the greater number. This idea is called the majority. Remember these names. The whole story turns on them.

The Talmud calls this the oven of Akhnai. Akhnai is close to a Hebrew word for a snake. Why give an oven a snake’s name? The Gemara asks that very question. The Gemara is the part of the Talmud that talks about the Mishnah.

One answer is that Akhnai was the name of a person who owned the oven. The Gemara gives a second answer. The rabbis surrounded the oven with words. Their arguments circled it like a snake coils around a thing. So it became the oven of Akhnai.

This tells you something about the Talmud. It loves questions, even small ones. Why this name? Why that word? Each answer opens a door. Readers today still enjoy the picture of a snake made of arguments wrapping around a clay oven.

Rabbi Eliezer had given every reason he could think of. The sages still said no. So the Talmud says he called on the world around him. "If the law is as I say, let this carob tree prove it." A carob is a tree with long brown pods that can be eaten.

The tree pulled itself out of the ground. It moved a long way. Some say a hundred cubits, some say four hundred. A cubit is an old measure, about the length of a person’s forearm. The sages answered calmly. "No proof can be brought from a carob tree."

Rabbi Eliezer tried again. "Let the stream of water prove it." The water turned and ran backward. The sages said, "No proof can be brought from a stream." The Talmud is teaching something here. A law about ovens is decided by reasons and votes, not by wonders.

Rabbi Eliezer tried a third time. "If the law is as I say, let the walls of the study house prove it." The walls began to lean inward. The students must have felt afraid. A study house is a room or building where people learn Torah together.

Rabbi Joshua stood up. He spoke to the walls. "When scholars argue about the law, what business is it of yours?" The Talmud says the walls did not fall, out of respect for Rabbi Joshua. But they did not stand straight, out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer.

The story adds a sweet detail. The walls are still leaning. They never chose a side. Readers see a little joke here. Even a wall could not settle this argument. It also shows respect. The walls honored both rabbis, and so does the story.

At last a voice came from heaven. The Talmud calls it a bat kol, which means "daughter of a voice." The voice said, "Why do you argue with Rabbi Eliezer? The law is as he says in every place." Now what could the sages say?

Rabbi Joshua rose to his feet. He quoted the Torah, from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 12. "It is not in heaven." In the Torah, these words say the teaching is close to people, not far away. Rabbi Joshua gave the words a new use.

A later rabbi, Rabbi Jeremiah, explains what he meant. The Torah was given at Mount Sinai long ago. Since then, rabbinic tradition holds, the rabbis do not listen to a voice from heaven for the law. The Torah itself says to follow the majority. So the sages kept their ruling.

The story has one more scene. Rabbi Nathan met the prophet Elijah. In Jewish tradition, Elijah did not die and sometimes visits the rabbis. Rabbi Nathan asked him, "What did God do at that moment?" Elijah answered, "He laughed and said, ’My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me.’"

Readers have thought about this line for many centuries. Rabbinic tradition reads the laugh as joy. The sages had used the Torah’s own rule. That rule comes from Exodus, chapter 23, verse 2, which the rabbis read as "follow the majority." So, in the story, God was glad.

Not every reader agrees on what the story means. Some Jewish readers say it gives the rabbis the right to decide the law. Some say it warns against pride. Academic readers ask when the story was written and by whom. Each reading looks at the same page. The page holds them all.

The story does not end with the laugh. The sages decided that Rabbi Eliezer had gone too far. They put him under a ban. That meant he had to stay apart from the other rabbis for a time. They also burned things he had declared clean. It was a hard day.

Someone had to tell him. The sages worried that the wrong messenger would hurt him too much. So Rabbi Akiva went. He was Rabbi Eliezer’s own student. He wore black clothes. He sat far away. He said softly, "Teacher, it seems your friends are keeping apart from you." Rabbi Eliezer tore his clothes and wept.

The Talmud says the world felt his pain. Crops failed. Bread spoiled in the ovens. Rabban Gamliel, the head of the court, was on a ship. A great wave rose. He said, "I did not act for my own honor. I acted so the people would not be split." The sea grew calm. The story is asking a question. Was the ban right?

The end of the story is quiet and sad. Rabbi Eliezer’s wife, Imma Shalom, was Rabban Gamliel’s sister. She feared her husband’s pain would harm her brother. Each day she stopped Rabbi Eliezer from praying the special prayer of the hurt. One day she was busy, and he prayed. That day her brother died.

Imma Shalom explained it with a teaching from her family. "All the gates are locked, except the gate of hurt feelings." The Hebrew word is ona'ah. It means wronging a person, including with words. Rabbinic tradition holds that a cry from hurt feelings is always heard.

This is why the story sits where it does. It comes right after a Mishnah about hurting people with words. Bava Metzia, chapter 4, mishnah 10, says not to remind a person of their past mistakes. The oven story is the Gemara’s example. Even great sages can wound with words. The Talmud wants its readers to see the cost.

Jewish readers have read this story in many ways. Orthodox readers often see it as the base for rabbinic authority. Once the Torah was given, the rabbis decide. Conservative and Reform readers often stress the human side. Law grows through people’s debate. Academic readers study how the story was shaped in Babylonia over centuries.

No reading erases another. The Talmud itself keeps Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion on the page. It never says he was foolish. It calls him a great teacher. It also shows that the winners paid a price. That is how the Talmud tends to argue. Every side gets a voice, and the minority is not forgotten.

Think about a class in Illinois today. Students disagree about a rule for the room. They give reasons. They vote. The ones who lose still matter. Nobody mocks them. That is the shape of this story. The rabbis argued hard. Then the Talmud asked them to be kind. The two go together.

Rabbi Akiva became one of the greatest rabbis in the Talmud. But he did not start that way. Tradition says he was a poor shepherd. He worked for a rich man named Kalba Savua. Akiva was about forty years old. He had never learned to read.

A story in Avot de-Rabbi Natan, chapter 6, tells how he began. Akiva stood by a well. He saw a stone with a hole worn in it. What made the hole? Dripping water, one drop at a time. He thought, "If soft water can cut hard stone, then words of Torah can enter my heart."

He went to a teacher with his young son. They learned the letters together. He kept going, day after day. This story is aggadah. Aggadah means the stories and sayings in rabbinic books, not the laws. Readers tell it to show that a person can start late and still learn.

Kalba Savua had a daughter. Her name, by tradition, was Rachel. She saw something in the shepherd Akiva. The Talmud says she saw that he was humble and good. She told him, "If I marry you, will you go to the study house?" He said yes.

They married in secret. Her father was angry. He made a vow that they would get nothing from him. So Rachel and Akiva were very poor. The Talmud says they slept on straw in winter. Akiva picked straw out of her hair in the morning.

Then Rachel sent him away to learn. This story is in tractate Ketubot, pages 62b and 63a. A shorter version is in Nedarim 50a. Ketubot means marriage contracts. The Gemara tells the story there while talking about how long a scholar may be away from home.

Akiva went away to study for twelve years. When he came back, he had many students with him. Near his house, he heard a neighbor speak to Rachel. "Your husband left you so long!" Rachel answered, "If he asked me, I would let him study twelve more years." Akiva heard this. He turned around and went back to study.

Twelve more years passed. That makes twenty-four in all. This time the Talmud says he came home with 24,000 students. The whole town came out to meet him. Rachel came too, in worn clothes. She pushed through the crowd to reach him. The students tried to push her back.

Rabbi Akiva stopped them. He said, "Leave her. What is mine and what is yours is hers." He meant that all his learning, and all his students’ learning, came from her. Her father also came. He took back his vow. The Talmud tells this in Ketubot 63a. The number twenty-four is a tradition; historians cannot check it.

The Talmud gives Rabbi Akiva 24,000 students. That is a huge number. It is a round number, the kind a story uses to mean "very many." Tractate Yevamot, page 62b, tells what happened to them. It is sad. They all died in one season, between the spring holidays.

The Gemara gives a reason. It says they did not treat each other with honor. They were learned, but they did not respect one another. Many Jewish readers see a warning here. Knowing a lot is not enough. How you treat the person next to you matters just as much.

Rabbi Akiva did not give up. The Talmud says he went south and taught five new students. One of them was Rabbi Meir, whom you will meet again. Another was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. From these five, rabbinic tradition holds, much of the Mishnah’s teaching came.

The Torah says, in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." Rabbi Akiva taught something about that verse. He said it is a great principle of the Torah. A principle is a big rule that many small rules come from.

This saying is found in the Sifra, an early rabbinic book that goes through Leviticus line by line. It is also in the Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4. There, another sage, Ben Azzai, gives a different answer. He points to Genesis 5:1, which says all people are made in God’s image. Ben Azzai says that verse is even greater.

Why? Readers explain it this way. "Love your neighbor" asks you to care for others as you care for yourself. Ben Azzai worried: what if a person does not care for himself? So he chose a verse about every person’s worth. The Talmud keeps both answers. Both are still taught today.

Rabbi Akiva lived under the rule of Rome. After a Jewish revolt, historians date it to about 132 to 135 CE, Rome made hard laws. Teaching Torah in public was forbidden. Rabbi Akiva kept teaching. The Talmud, in Berakhot 61b, tells that he was arrested for it.

The Talmud tells his death gently but clearly. He was put to death by the Romans. It was the hour for saying the Shema, the prayer that begins "Hear, O Israel." He said it. His students asked how he could pray at such a time. He said he had waited all his life to love God with all his soul.

Jewish tradition remembers him as one of ten sages killed by Rome. Some prayers on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, recall them. Historians say the details of the story were shaped over time. But they agree that Rabbi Akiva died in this period. Readers see courage and calm in the way the Talmud tells it.

Beruriah lived in the land of Israel around 150 CE. She was the daughter of a rabbi, Hananiah ben Teradyon. She married Rabbi Meir, a student of Rabbi Akiva. The Talmud names her and quotes her. That is rare. Most of the voices on the page are men.

Tractate Pesachim, page 62b, tells how quickly she learned. It says she studied three hundred teachings from three hundred teachers in one day. Readers know this is a round number. It is the Talmud’s way of saying she was very sharp.

In tractate Tosefta Kelim, an early rabbinic book, her opinion on a question of law is recorded. A sage says she spoke well. Jewish readers today, from many branches of Judaism, point to Beruriah. She shows that a woman’s learning had a place in the rabbis’ world, even if that place was small.

Some rough men were bothering Rabbi Meir. He prayed that they would die. Beruriah asked him why. He pointed to Psalm 104, verse 35. It says, "Let sinners cease from the earth." Beruriah looked at the Hebrew word. It is chata'im. It can mean sinners. It can also mean sins.

She said: read it as sins. Pray for sins to end, not for people to end. Then she pointed to the rest of the verse. "And let the wicked be no more." If the sins end, she said, the wicked will be no more. They will have become good. The verse fits her reading better.

Rabbi Meir prayed for the men to change. The Talmud, in Berakhot 10a, says they did. This is a lesson in reading closely. A single word can hold two meanings. Beruriah chose the kinder one, and she showed from the verse itself why it was right.

Beruriah could be sharp. Tractate Eruvin, page 53b, has two short stories about her. In one, a sage named Rabbi Yose the Galilean was traveling. He met her on the road. He asked, "By which road do we go to the town of Lod?"

Beruriah answered him with a tease. The sages had said not to talk too much with women. So why, she asked, did he use so many words? He could have said, "Which to Lod?" Readers smile at this. She used the rabbis’ own rule to correct a rabbi, and she used it with wit.

In the other story, she saw a student learning quietly. She scolded him. She quoted a verse from Second Samuel about a thing being "ordered in all things and sure." If learning is set in all your body, she said, by saying it aloud, it will stay. Reading aloud is still a chavruta habit today.

The rabbis of the Talmud were not paid to be rabbis. Most had jobs. One sage is called Rabbi Yochanan the Sandal-maker. His saying is in Pirkei Avot, chapter 4, mishnah 11. He said that a group that gathers for the sake of heaven will last. His name tells us what he did all day.

Hillel, a sage of about 30 BCE, was poor. Tractate Yoma, page 35b, says he worked each day for a small coin. He paid half of it to enter the study house. One winter day he had no coin. He climbed on the roof to listen through the window. Snow covered him. Tradition remembers him as a woodcutter.

Hillel’s partner in debate was Shammai. Tractate Shabbat, page 31a, shows Shammai holding a builder's cubit, a measuring stick. So readers say Shammai was a builder. These jobs were not shameful. The Talmud praises work, and it shows the rabbis doing it.

Rabbi Joshua, whom you met in the oven story, had a job too. Tractate Berakhot, page 28a, says the walls of his house were black. Another rabbi guessed why. "You must be a charcoal-maker." Charcoal burns for cooking and heat. Making it is dirty, smoky work.

Some sages were healers. Shmuel, a sage of Babylonia around 220 CE, was a physician. Tractate Bava Metzia, page 85b, tells that he treated the eyes of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the head of the rabbis. Shmuel also studied the stars. He said the paths of the sky were as clear to him as the streets of his town.

Tractate Taanit, page 21b, tells of Abba the bloodletter. Bloodletting was a common treatment then. Abba treated men and women with care for their dignity. He would not take money from the poor. The Talmud says he was greeted from heaven every day, more often than a great sage. Kindness in a job counted as much as learning.