Junayd, the Sufi philosopher, had a group of 20 disciples, many of whom desired to assume leadership after his death.
There was one disciple whom Junayd favored above all the others.
The others, moved to jealousy, asked why this was so.
"He is superior to you in manners and understanding," he told them. “Let me show you, so that you may also realize it.”
So Junayd gathered his disciples, including his favored one, and instructed,
“Bring a bird, a living bird.”
All left his presence, and returned with a living bird.
He then said, “Now, go to a place where no one can see you,
kill the bird, and return to me with it.”
They did so.
As instructed, 19 of them came back and presented their master with dead birds.
The 20th, his favored one, returned, and much to the surprise of the others, presented their master with a live bird.
Junayd inquired of him, “I gave you explicit directions. Why did you not do as I asked?”
And the disciple replied, “I couldn’t find a place where no one could see me.”

​Re-told from various source by R' Mark Novak

Told by Renée and Mark
based on a written version by Howard Schwartz
​from a tale by Reb Nachman of Bratzlav

A man had been wandering about in a forest for several days, not knowing which was the right way out. 

Suddenly he saw a man approaching him. His heart leaped with joy. 

"Now I shall certainly find out which is the right way,"
he thought to himself.

When they neared each other he asked the man,
"Brother, tell me which is the right way. I have been wandering about lost in this forest for several days."
Said the other to him, "Brother I do not know the way out either. I too have been wandering about here for many, many days. This I can tell you: do not take the way that I have been taking, for that will lead you astray. And now, let us look for a new way out together."

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My Rebbe, Zalman Schacter-Shalomi of blessed memory, always reminded us that "the only way to get it together - is together!"

A parable from Rabbi Hayyim of Zans, 19th C. 
Found in Shai Agnon's Days of Awe

     One day the wise king Solomon, decided to humble his most trusted ministers, Benaiah ben Yehoyada. He said to him, “Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot, which gives you six months to find it.”

   “If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty,” replied Benaiah, “I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?”

     “It has magic powers,” answered the king. “It can make a happy man sad and a sad man happy.” Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility.

     Spring passed and then summer and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring.

On the night before Sukkot,  he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day’s wares on a shabby carpet. There were rings and earrings and bracelets. “Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes a happy man sad and a sad man happy?”

     The merchant had heard of no such ring. But then, as if by magic, the merchant’s father appeared. With an old gnarled finger he beckoned to Benaiah. As he watched, the grandfather took a plain gold ring from the display case and engraved something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile.

     That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. “Well, my friend,” said Solomon, “have you found what I sent you after?” All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled.

     To everyone’s surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, “Here it is, your majesty!”

As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band:
Gimel, Zayin, Yud, ג׳ז׳י,  which began the words:
“Gam zeh ya’avor” - גם זה יעבור- “This too shall pass.”

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Re-crafted from various sources by Mark Novak. This tale also appears in Sufi literature. Apparently it is an ancient Jewish/Persian saying.

Rabbi Mendel Futerfas spent many years in a Siberian gulag. One of his fellow prisoners was a tightrope walker.



The rabbi asked the tightrope walker, "What is the secret to your art? What does one need to master? Balance? Stamina? Concentration?"

The tightrope walker's answer surprised him
"The secret is always keeping your destination in focus. You have to keep your eyes on the other end of the rope, and how you get there is a straight line, never wavering. But do you know what the hardest part is?"

"When you get to the middle?" the rabbi ventured.

"No," said the tightrope walker. "It's when you make the turn. Because for a fraction if a second, you lose sight of your destination. When you don't have sight of your destination, that is when you are most likely to fall."

There was once a king in India who was a big chess enthusiast and had the habit of challenging wise visitors to a game of chess. One day a traveling sage was challenged by the king. The sage having played this game all his life all the time with people all over the world gladly accepted the Kings challenge


​     To motivate his opponent the king offered any reward that the sage could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of rice in the following manner: the king was to put a single grain of rice on the first chess square and double it on every consequent one. The king accepted the sage’s request. 
     Having lost the game and being a man of his word the king ordered a bag of rice to be brought to the chessboard. Then he started placing rice grains according to the arrangement: 1 grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on.
     Following the exponential growth of the rice payment, the king quickly realized that he was unable to fulfill his promise because on the twentieth square the king would have had to put 1,000,000 grains of rice. On the fortieth square, the king would have had to put 1,000,000,000 grains of rice. And, finally, on the sixty-fourth square, the king would have had to put more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of rice which is equal to about 210 billion tons and is allegedly sufficient to cover the whole territory of India with a meter thick layer of rice. 
     It was at that point that the sage told the king that he doesn’t have to pay the debt immediately but can do so over time. And so the sage became the wealthiest person in the world.
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This story resonates with me during this time in regard to not only how Covid-19 exponentially grows, but also how kindess and generosity of spirit do as well. Read this article in The Washington Post.

I was unable to find a source for this story, although all signs point to HIndu scriptures.
If you have a source please let me know.
Payasam is an Indian dessert consisting of rice, boiled in milk or coconut milk, flavoured with cardamom, and often containing groundnuts.