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Beruriah, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, was the daughter of the martyred sage Hanina ben Teradyon. When her father was burned at the stake by the Romans for teaching Torah, her...
There was once a man who lived near an old tree. One morning, cutting branches for firewood, he raised his axe, and a voice came out of the wood. “Stop,” said the voice...
The rabbis preserved a small, cutting anecdote about a wealthy pagan whose appetite had outgrown his reason. He sat down one evening at his fine marble dining table, which had been...
The Torah tells the story quickly — too quickly, the rabbis felt. Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, was taken and violated by Shechem, the prince of the local city. Her ...
King Solomon once wrote in Ecclesiastes, “One man out of a thousand I have found, but a woman among all those I have not found” (Ecclesiastes 7:28). It was a line his m...
A medieval Jewish legend tells of a king of Poland who fell under the influence of a sorcerer — a wizard — and issued a decree: the Jews of his kingdom must convert, be...
The Talmud in Gittin tells one of the strangest stories about King Solomon. The king, in his pride, once compelled Ashmedai, the chief of demons, to serve him. Through a chain of t...
Before he was king, Solomon was a young boy with a gift for untangling impossible lawsuits. The tradition collected in the Parables of Solomon preserves one such case. A wealthy an...
There were two men in a distant country who had been friends since boyhood. When war broke out between their two nations, they were forced apart. Years passed. One day, one of the ...
There was once a widow who wept over her husband’s grave day and night. The rabbis kept the story as a bitter parable about how quickly grief, left alone, forgets itself. Not...
Before the world had shape, it had nothing. No animals. No people. Not even a horizon. The Aramaic of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:2) calls it tohu va-vohu, rendered as "va...
When the Torah says simply "and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night," Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:5) pauses to explain why. Naming, in the Targum, i...
The Torah says God "made the firmament." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:7) gives us a sculptor's hand. The Lord, the Aramaic says, made the expanse upbearing it with three fi...
On the third day, God speaks and the oceans obey. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:9) specifies what the Torah leaves vague: it is the lower waters — the ones that remain benea...
The third day finishes with a command that sounds almost agricultural. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:11), the Lord tells the earth to "increase the grassy herb whose seed...
The Torah tells us the sun, moon, and stars are for "signs and seasons, days and years." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:14) lets this sentence breathe. The luminaries, in the...
This is one of the strangest moments in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's creation story — and one of its most famous. The Torah simply says God made "two great lights." The Targum on (Gene...
Before the world has a single footstep of land-dwelling life, the fifth day brings a first wave of motion. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:20) asks the lakes of the waters to ...
Here the Targumist drops a myth into the middle of the verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:21) says the Lord created the great tanninim — sea dragons — and among them Levia...
On the sixth day, the earth gets its turn. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:24) echoes the pattern already set in the sea: every living creature comes forth "the kind that is c...
The Torah ends the sixth day's first act with a simple line: God saw that it was good. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:25) repeats the clean/unclean doubling — beast of the ea...
The strangest word in the Torah's creation account is "us." "Let us make man in our image." The rabbis have spilled rivers of ink explaining who God was talking to. Targum Pseudo-J...
The Torah simply says God created Adam "male and female He created them." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:27) hands us an anatomy textbook. The Lord created Adam "with two hun...
Before any commandment and before any punishment, humanity's first word from God is a blessing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:28) tells us Adam and his wife were blessed and...
The Torah's provision for humanity is stated briefly: "every herb yielding seed, every tree yielding fruit, to you it shall be for food." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:29) e...
Humans get fruit and vegetables. Animals get green leaves. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:30) preserves the original vegetarian economy of Eden — "to every beast of the earth...
The Torah says simply that God finished His work by the seventh day. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:2) smuggles in one of Judaism's most famous traditions: "the ten formation...
The Torah says God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:3) lets the sentence expand: the Lord blessed the seventh day more than all the d...
Before there was rain, before there was agriculture, there was a waiting earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:5) explains the pause: "all the trees of the field were not as ...
The Torah's "a mist went up from the earth" becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:6), something far grander. "A cloud of glory descended from the throne of glory, and wa...
The Torah says God formed man from the dust of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:7) takes this one sentence and turns it into a cosmic geography. "The Lord God create...
The Torah says God planted a garden in Eden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:8) goes further. The garden "was planted by the Word of the Lord God before the creation of the wo...
The Torah names two trees in the garden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:9) tells us the dimensions of one of them. The Tree of Life, the Targumist says, stood "in the midst o...
The Torah says God placed the man in the garden "to work it and to guard it." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:15) tells us where Adam came from and what the work really was. G...
The entire moral architecture of the Torah fits into one verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:17) renders it sharply: "of the tree of whose fruit they who eat become wise to...
Naming is an act of authority. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:19), the Lord creates every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens and brings them to Adam "to see ...
The naming finished. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:20) closes the scene with a quiet loneliness: "Adam called the names of all cattle, and all fowl of the heavens, and all b...
The Torah says God took "one of his ribs" to make the woman. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:21) gets oddly specific. "He took one of his ribs, it was the thirteenth rib of th...
Adam wakes up and speaks. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:23) gives him a line with an unusual opening: "This time, and not again, is woman created from man." The Targumist is...
The Torah's famous line — "therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife" — gets a pointed rewording in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:24). A man "shal...
The serpent's opening move is not "you will not die." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:4) sharpens the attack. "In that hour the serpent spake accusation against his Creator, a...
The Torah says Eve saw the tree was good for food. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:6) tells us she also saw something else. "The woman beheld Samael, the angel of death, and w...
The Torah says their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:7) adds a detail that changes the image entirely. They realized "they were...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:8) uses a phrase it will return to again and again: "the Word of the Lord God" — the Memra, the divine speech as a presence in its own right. A...
The Torah's "Where are you?" is one of the shortest questions in Scripture. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:9) unfolds it. God calls to Adam and says, in the Targum's longer r...
Adam's answer, in the Torah, is evasive: "I was afraid because I was naked." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:10) lets him say more. "The voice of Thy Word heard I in the garde...
God turns to the woman, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:13) lets Eve expand on the Hebrew's terse "the serpent beguiled me." In the Targum she says, "The serpent beguiled ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:14) tells us the original serpent was not a crawling thing. God "brought the three unto judgment" — Adam, Eve, and the serpent — and pronounced...
