December days: Awesome Talmud stories
Dec. 1st, 2014 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo jack asked for jack's request and he's definitely heard that story, let me try something else.
So, looking back through my LJ, I learned this from R' Steve Greenberg six years ago, at which point I said I totally wanted to write it up, but never did. R' Greenberg is famous for being gay, but actually awesome for being a really good teacher. And he was teaching a thing about Talmudic attitudes to charity, which I've used for material for my own teaching on a number of occasions.
So, there was a person named Mr Ookba, interestingly one of the very few people in the Talmud who's just a mister, not a rabbi or a foreigner. Just some ordinary guy, you know? And Mr Ookba, a perfectly ordinary bloke, had one distinguishing feature: he was very generous at giving charity to the people in his town who were poorer than he was. But he didn't want to embarrass anyone, so what he would do would be to hide small amounts of money in piles of sticks, so that the people who needed it would just spontaneously find the money. So even though Mr Ookba was very self-effacing and hewed to the principle of anonymous giving, it became known in the town that if the word happened to reach him that so-and-so had fallen on hard times, or Ploni was struggling with debt, or Almoni couldn't raise a dowry for his daughter, a small contribution of money would just happen to show up in a pile of sticks near the unfortunate person's home.
Anyway, one day it happened that Mr Ookba was out running errands with his wife, when they were attacked by robbers. They ran away from the robbers, and Mrs Ookba called out, I know somewhere we can hide! So they ran into a furnace, which thankfully was unlit but was still hot. And Mr Oookba was in terrible pain from burning the soles of his feet. Mrs Ookba said, don't worry, dear, come and stand on my feet and you will be fine. So Mr Ookba did this, and he realized that his wife had been granted a miracle: the hot floor of the furnace did not hurt her feet.
Later on, after they'd got home safe and calmed down from the terror of the attempted robbery, Mr Ookba started to wonder why he wasn't granted a miracle, when he went to such lengths to give money to the needy in the most approved way. And he received some kind of revelation, I can't remember if Elijah the prophet conveniently showed up, or if it was a voice directly from heaven, or maybe even his wife sat down and explained it all to him (though I like the story less if it turned out that way). The reason Mrs Ookba was granted a miracle was because rather than giving money to charity, she would host dinner parties, and invite people who could do with a good meal. People who couldn't afford to feed themselves properly, people who were a bit weird and didn't often get thought of when social events were being planned. Indeed, Mrs Ookba's dinners were an important factor in Mr Ookba finding out who most needed his piles of hidden cash.
And that's all there is to the story; the Talmud rarely actually sets out the moral or message of stories like this. I like it because it's a kind of random story about ordinary folk getting to experience a minor miracle. And also because it at least raises questions about what counts as good charity. It's easy enough to relate the story to my own prejudices: building community and making personal connections is as important as financial "effectiveness". Sure, Mrs Ookba could have spent the cost of her meals on donations to an effective charity that helped the needy, or done as Mr Ookba did and followed the official guidelines (which, mind you, are based on the same Talmud that tells this story) about How To Give To Charity. And that would have been very admirable, and I assume the story is taking place in a framework in which the expectation is that she would have been rewarded appropriately for doing that. But to earn a miracle, she did something exceptional: she invited unwanted people into her home as guests.
OK, that's a story, not stories, but I am running out of time, so I'll just post this one.
[December Days masterpost. Still a couple of slots free!]
jack asked for Moar awesome Talmud stories. And in January I started my daily posting by talking about midrash, so it seems nice to carry on from there. It does feel very strange to be posting anything from the Talmud without looking it up, let alone giving a proper daf reference, but anyway. It turns out that I haven't actually posted the story of the highwayman who fell in love with the rabbi here, but since this topic was
jack's request and he's definitely heard that story, let me try something else.So, looking back through my LJ, I learned this from R' Steve Greenberg six years ago, at which point I said I totally wanted to write it up, but never did. R' Greenberg is famous for being gay, but actually awesome for being a really good teacher. And he was teaching a thing about Talmudic attitudes to charity, which I've used for material for my own teaching on a number of occasions.
So, there was a person named Mr Ookba, interestingly one of the very few people in the Talmud who's just a mister, not a rabbi or a foreigner. Just some ordinary guy, you know? And Mr Ookba, a perfectly ordinary bloke, had one distinguishing feature: he was very generous at giving charity to the people in his town who were poorer than he was. But he didn't want to embarrass anyone, so what he would do would be to hide small amounts of money in piles of sticks, so that the people who needed it would just spontaneously find the money. So even though Mr Ookba was very self-effacing and hewed to the principle of anonymous giving, it became known in the town that if the word happened to reach him that so-and-so had fallen on hard times, or Ploni was struggling with debt, or Almoni couldn't raise a dowry for his daughter, a small contribution of money would just happen to show up in a pile of sticks near the unfortunate person's home.
Anyway, one day it happened that Mr Ookba was out running errands with his wife, when they were attacked by robbers. They ran away from the robbers, and Mrs Ookba called out, I know somewhere we can hide! So they ran into a furnace, which thankfully was unlit but was still hot. And Mr Oookba was in terrible pain from burning the soles of his feet. Mrs Ookba said, don't worry, dear, come and stand on my feet and you will be fine. So Mr Ookba did this, and he realized that his wife had been granted a miracle: the hot floor of the furnace did not hurt her feet.
Later on, after they'd got home safe and calmed down from the terror of the attempted robbery, Mr Ookba started to wonder why he wasn't granted a miracle, when he went to such lengths to give money to the needy in the most approved way. And he received some kind of revelation, I can't remember if Elijah the prophet conveniently showed up, or if it was a voice directly from heaven, or maybe even his wife sat down and explained it all to him (though I like the story less if it turned out that way). The reason Mrs Ookba was granted a miracle was because rather than giving money to charity, she would host dinner parties, and invite people who could do with a good meal. People who couldn't afford to feed themselves properly, people who were a bit weird and didn't often get thought of when social events were being planned. Indeed, Mrs Ookba's dinners were an important factor in Mr Ookba finding out who most needed his piles of hidden cash.
And that's all there is to the story; the Talmud rarely actually sets out the moral or message of stories like this. I like it because it's a kind of random story about ordinary folk getting to experience a minor miracle. And also because it at least raises questions about what counts as good charity. It's easy enough to relate the story to my own prejudices: building community and making personal connections is as important as financial "effectiveness". Sure, Mrs Ookba could have spent the cost of her meals on donations to an effective charity that helped the needy, or done as Mr Ookba did and followed the official guidelines (which, mind you, are based on the same Talmud that tells this story) about How To Give To Charity. And that would have been very admirable, and I assume the story is taking place in a framework in which the expectation is that she would have been rewarded appropriately for doing that. But to earn a miracle, she did something exceptional: she invited unwanted people into her home as guests.
OK, that's a story, not stories, but I am running out of time, so I'll just post this one.
[December Days masterpost. Still a couple of slots free!]
