Study Nedarim folio 50A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
He lifted the mat [tzifeta] upon which he was sitting and said to the messenger: See what there is here. The place was miraculously filled with gold dinars. This demonstrated that R' Yehuda could have had plenty of money if he had so desired. He explained: However, it is not amenable to me to derive
§ In connection to the above incident concerning the poverty of scholars and their potential to become wealthy through remarkable circumstances, the Talmud relates an incident: R' Akiva became betrothed to the daughter of bar Kalba Savua. When bar Kalba Savua heard about their betrothal, he took a
In the winter they would sleep in a storehouse of straw, and R' Akiva would gather strands of straw from her hair. He said to her: If I had the means I would place on your head a Jerusalem of Gold, a type of crown. Elijah the prophet came and appeared to them as a regular person and started callin
She said to him: Go and be a student of Torah. He went and studied Torah for 12 years before R' Eliezer and R' Yehoshua. At the completion of the 12 years, he was coming home when he heard from behind his house that one wicked person was saying to his wife: Your father behaved well toward you. He w
Eventually he came back accompanied by 24,000 pairs of students. Everyone went out to greet him, as he was by then a renowned teacher, and she too arose to go out to greet him. That wicked person said to her: And to where are you going? As she was excessively poor, she was not dressed in a grand ma