ABSTRACT
The sages of the Talmud were intellectuals. Many were also gifted educators. Like good teachers everywhere, they used allegories, parables, and fables to make their lectures more entertaining and, at the same time, to teach their students important moral lessons. The Talmud, and especially the Midrash, is replete with allegories. In attempting to explain a difficult concept, the Midrash often begins with mashal lemah hadavar domeh—meaning, allegorically, to what can this be compared—and then follows with an allegorical tale or example. Frequently, these are humorous, which helps to make the point. Talmudic parables often include references to royalty. Like parables, fables are fictional morality tales that allude or apply to the real world in some manner. They generally contain some anthropomorphic aspect and state a relatively simple general truth about the world. Fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects as characters.
