The Child and the Slave

Talmud, Bava Batra 10a


Turnusrufus asked Rabbi Akiva: "If your G-d loves the poor, why doesn't He feed them?"

Said Rabbi Akiva to him: "So that we should be saved from purgatory (in the merit of the charity we give)."

Said he to him: "On the contrary: for this you deserve to be punished.

"I'll give you an analogy. This is analogous to a king who got angry at his slave and locked him away in a dungeon, and commanded "If your G-d loves the poor, why doesn't He feed them?" that he not be given to eat or to drink; and a person came along and gave him to eat and to drink. When the king hears of this, is he not angry at that person? And you are called slaves, as it is written (Leviticus 25:55) 'The Children of Israel are My slaves.'"

Said Rabbi Akiva to him: "I'll give you an analogy.

"This is analogous to a king who got angry at his child and locked him away in a dungeon, and commanded that he not be given to eat or to drink; and a person came along and gave him to eat and to drink. When the king hears of this, does he not reward that person?

"And we are G-d's children, as it is written (Deuteronomy 14:1) 'You are children of the L-rd your G-d.'"

school jokes

A wise schoolteacher sends this note to all parents on the first day of school: "If you promise not to believe everything your child says happens at school, I'll promise not to believe everything he says happens at home.

A very dirty little fellow came in from playing in the yard and asked his mother, "Who am I? " Ready to play the game she said, "I don't know! Who are you?" "WOW!" cried the child. "Mrs. Johnson was right! She said I was so dirty, my own mother wouldn't recognize me!"

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother," she asked "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill

A school teacher injured his back and had to wear a plaster cast around the upper part of his body. It fit under his shirt and was not noticeable at all. On the first day of the term, still with the cast under his shirt, he found himself assigned to the toughest students in school. Walking confidently into the rowdy classroom, he opened the window as wide as possible and then busied himself with desk work. The classroom became a bit unruly and he admonished them. This happened several times. When he could do work at his desk, the strong breeze from the window made his tie flap annoyingly. He kept rearranging and rearranging the tie as the class raised it's level of unruliness. Finally, becoming disgusted with the wayward tie, he stood up and took a big stapler off his desk and stapled the tie to his chest in several places.
Discipline was not a problem from that day forth.

family bible

A little boy opened the big and old family Bible with fascination, looking at the old pages as he turned them. Then something fell out, and he picked it up and looked at it closely.
It was an old leaf from a tree that had been pressed in between the pages.

"Momma, look what I found," the boy called out.

"What have you got there, dear?" his mother asked.

With astonishment in the his voice, he answered, "It's Adam's Suit!"