The wife of R. Hanina had the habit of lighting her baking oven on the eve of Sabbath with twigs and herbs so as to make smoke in order that the people might think she was baking bread and cakes every Friday, for they were ashamed of their poverty.

She had a wicked neighbor who said to herself, "I know that these people have nothing. How then can they bake anything?"

So one Friday, while the wife of R. Hanina was lighting the oven, she knocked on

her door and said, "Let me come in."

When the pious woman heard her knocking on the door, she ran away and hid herself in the barn. The neighbor went in, and lo! a miracle happened! The oven was full of bread and the trough full of dough.

So she called to the pious woman and said to her, "Come quickly and take the

bread out of the oven, for it will be burned."

The pious woman replied, "I am coming at once, I have just gone into the barn to get the shove1."

Some people say that she was accustomed to the occurrence of miracles. One day she said to her husband, R. Hanina, "How long are we going to suffer such poverty? Pray to Heaven that you may be given here a share of the future reward for the good deeds you have performed, so that we may not be so poor in this world."

R. Hanina prayed, and a hand reached out from heaven and gave him a golden leg of a golden table, and he became very rich. That night the good woman was told in a dream that in heaven all the pious men would be sitting and eating at golden tables that had four legs, whilst she and her husband would have a table with only three legs. She told the dream to her husband.

The good R. Hanina said, "What am I to do?"

She replied, "Pray again and ask that the leg be taken back."

So he prayed and the hand appeared and took the leg back again.

We have been told that the taking back was even a greater miracle than the giving, for the rule is that gifts are bestowed from heaven, but nothing is ever taken back to heaven.