Every place is accompanied by its own set of etiologies, origin-stories, local
histories, urban myths, folklore, rumors, and gossip. A story about a journey is
also about transitioning between different narratives and modes of being. In
this essay I discuss one such story, about a lonely disciple from Ashkelon, a
rabbinic figure named Shimʿon b. Shatah,̣ and forty witches. It is a strange story,
found only in the Palestinian Talmud. Its textual tradition is complex, it contains
a host of obscure characters, and for rabbinic literature it is uncharacteristically
long.