xxi. 7), ’And it shall be when they say unto thee, Wherefore sighest thou? that thou shalt answer, For the tidings because it cometh, and the whole heart shall melt,’” etc.  To this Rav Chasda replied, “How can I help sighing over this house, where sixty bakers used to be employed during the day, and sixty during the night, to make bread for the poor and needy; and Rav Chena had his hand always at his purse, for he thought the slightest hesitation might cause a poor but respectable man to blush; and besides he kept four doors open, one to each quarter of the heavens, so that all might enter and be satisfied?  Over and above this, in time of famine he scattered wheat and barley abroad, so that they who were ashamed to gather by day might do so by night; but now this house has fallen into ruin, and ought I not to sigh?”

Ibid., fol. 58, col. 2.

Egypt is a sixtieth of Ethiopia, Ethiopia a sixtieth of the world, the world is a sixtieth part of the garden of Eden, the garden itself is but a sixtieth of Eden, and Eden a sixtieth of Gehenna.  Hence the world in proportion to Gehenna is but as the lid to a caldron.

P’sachim, fol. 94, col. 1.

They led forth Metatron and struck him sixty bastinadoes with a cudgel of fire.

Chaggigah, fol. 15, col. 1.

In the context of the foregoing quotation occurs an anecdote of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah which is too racy to let pass, and too characteristic to need note or comment.  One day Elisha ben Abuyah was privileged to pry into Paradise, where he saw the recording angel Metatron on a seat registering the merits of the holy of Israel.  Struck with astonishment at the sight, he exclaimed, “Is it not laid down that there is no sitting in heaven, no shortsightedness or fatigue?” Then Metatron, thus discovered, was ordered out and flogged with sixty lashes from a fiery scourge.  Smarting with pain, the angel asked and obtained leave to cancel the merits of the prying Rabbi.  One day—­it chanced to be on Yom Kippur and Sabbath—­as Elisha was riding along by the wall where the Holy of Holies once stood, he heard a Bath Kol proclaiming, “Return, ye backsliding children, but Acher abide thou in thy sin” (Acher was the Rabbi’s nickname).  A faithful disciple of his hearing this, and bent on reclaiming and reforming him, invited him to go and hear the lads of a school close by repeat their lessons.  The Rabbi went, and from that to another and another, until he had gone the round of a dozen seminaries, in the last of which he called up a lad to repeat a verse who had an impediment in his speech.  The verse happened to be Ps. l. 16, “But unto the wicked, God saith, Why dost thou declare my law?” Acher fancied the boy said, and to Elisha (his own name), instead of and to Rasha, that is, the wicked.  This roused the Rabbi into such fury of passion, that he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “If I only had a knife at hand I would cut this boy into a dozen pieces, and send a piece to each school I have visited!”

A woman of sixty runs after music like a girl of six.