1,302 related texts · 51 related myths · Page 25 of 28
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa and his wife lived in crushing poverty. Every Friday before Shabbat (the Sabbath), his wife would fire up the oven and throw in some kindling, not to bake br...
The Hebrew Bible records Moses making the most audacious request in Scripture: "Show me Your glory" (Exodus 33:18). Targum Onkelos renders the response with his most careful theolo...
Midrash on the death of Aaron "I lost the three shepherds in one month" (Zecharia 11:8); and thus, in one month, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses died. Miriam died on the 1st of the month ...
On the last day of his life, Moses did something no prophet had ever done, he dressed his successor in public, with his own hands. He commanded that a golden throne be brought, alo...
Pirkei Avot, also known as "Ethics of the Fathers," is one of the most widely studied texts in all of Jewish literature. And one of the most unusual tractates in the Talmud. Unlike...
Book of Eldad the Danite A Question and Answer between the People of Kairouan and Rabbi Zemach Gaon [Epstein, Eldad the Danite, Story I] Before the chariot of Israel and its horsem...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Chacham HaRazim" (The Sage of Secrets): A Midrash regarding angels and gematria (Jewish numerology). According to Stein Schneider, this i...
Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Sheni Ketuvim In the beginning God created etc. - To declare the might of the acts of creation to creatures, and to make it known to them...
[It is written] (Ps. 66:1) A prayer of David, preserve my soul, for I am pious. R. Levi and R. Isaac both explain this passage. One said : "Thus said David before the Holy One, pra...
A non-Jew once asked Rabban Gamliel a question that seemed simple but concealed a philosophical trap. "Your God," he said, "is supposedly the master of the entire universe. He crea...
R. Gamliel was proud and harsh and forced R. Joshua to stand up in the college during his lecture. Those present, greatly irritated, forced R. Gamliel to resign. R. Elazar b. Azary...
Two men came to pray before Rabbi Eliezer. One prayed at enormous length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that stretched on and on. The other prayed briefly,...
The Exempla of the Rabbis preserves a sprawling collection of tales about Solomon and the power of the divine Name. In these stories, Solomon commands demons, builds the Temple wit...
Two men came before Rabbi Eliezer to pray. One prayed at great length, pouring out his heart in elaborate, detailed petitions that went on and on. The other prayed briefly, a few w...
The birth of Moses was no ordinary event. According to the ancient chronicles preserved in Jerahmeel and the writings of Josephus, the arrival of Israel's greatest prophet was prec...
Moses stood before Israel and said: "You have been shown to know that the Lord, He is God; there is none beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35). Not told, shown. The plagues, the sea, the ...
When Nimrod hurled Abraham into the blazing furnace at Ur of the Chaldeans, the place whose very name, the Rabbis note, means fire, the angel Gabriel stood up in the heavenly court...
The Talmud (Pesachim 119b) pictures the end of days as a banquet. A great cup of wine, two hundred and twenty-one logs, more than a third of a hogshead, will be brought to the tabl...
Two men once prayed at length before Rabbi Eliezer. The first stretched his Amidah far beyond the usual length, swaying and adding private petitions until the congregation grew res...
The venerable Hillel had eighty disciples. That number is not a boast but a ledger. The rabbis kept careful count. Thirty of those eighty, they said, were worthy that the Shekhinah...
A small boy was traveling in a boat along the coast when the prophet Elijah appeared to him. Elijah was famous for wandering the world in disguise, testing Jews, delivering message...
When Achan took the banned spoil from Jericho, the book of Joshua describes his crime with a strange fivefold repetition. They have transgressed my covenant which I commanded them;...
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was so great that, during his lifetime, no rainbow ever appeared in the sky over the Land of Israel. The rainbow, in rabbinic tradition, is not only a coven...
The story picks up after Ashmedai, king of the demons, has seized Solomon's magical ring and flung it into the sea. Power stripped, Solomon is no longer Solomon. The demon king hur...
The sages were debating whether a certain oven, built in sections and joined with sand, could become ritually unclean. Rabbi Eliezer ruled it pure. The majority ruled it impure. He...
Shechem son of Hamor once assembled a troupe of girls with tambourines to play outside the tent of Dinah, and when she "went out to see them" (Genesis 34:1), he carried her off. Fr...
A later midrashic legend reimagines Joab, the great general of King David, on one of his hardest campaigns. He had been hurled by the Israelites into a city called Kinsari, a forti...
Hillel the Elder, the Babylonian immigrant who rose to lead the Jewish people in the first century BCE, had eighty students by the end of his life. The Talmud in Sukkah 28a divides...
A merchant on the road was joined by an innkeeper who asked to travel with him. As they walked, they passed a blind man by the roadside. The merchant stopped, opened his purse, and...
The rabbis counted the ways a human being can leave this world. They arrived at nine hundred and three, derived from the verse, “Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death&...
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...
Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:13), the Aramaic adds the detail that places this animal outside or...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a detail to the first quarrel in Gerar that changes the whole story. The plain text says only that the shepherds of Gerar fought Isaac's shepherds o...
The image is unsettling. Jacob compares Dan to a serpent lurking beside the road, waiting for horses' heels. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains the metaphor and names the man. "A chos...
Pharaoh woke up sweating. In his sleep he had seen a balance. On one pan, all the land of Mizraim, the pyramids, the treasuries, the Nile itself, the whole weight of an empire. On ...
Pharaoh confronts the midwives. Why are you letting the boys live? And Shifra and Puvah, in the Targum's Aramaic, Jokheved and Miriam, give an answer so audacious it borders on the...
"And the child grew, and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter, and he was beloved by her as a son; and she called his name Mosheh, Because, said she, I drew him out of the water of th...
The fifth and deepest verb of redemption arrives in the next verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with covenantal precision: I will bring you nigh before Me to be a people, a...
The fifth plague is livestock pestilence, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 9:3) renders it with memorable Aramaic precision: the stroke of the Lord's hand shall be as it hath ...
Some of the most famous images of Passover, the belted tunic, the shoes on the feet, the staff in the hand, were never meant to continue. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:11) s...
The most famous number in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's account of the Exodus is seven. On (Exodus 12:37), as Israel moves from Pilusin (Pelusium) toward Succoth, one hundred thirty tho...
Before a single Israelite sword is drawn in the Land, God goes ahead. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:27) says: My terror will I send before thee, and will perturb all ...
(Exodus 28:1) names the first family of Jewish priests. Aharon, brother of Moses, is brought near with his four sons: Nadab, Abihu, Elazar, and Itamar. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan p...
When the people demanded a golden idol from Aaron, they had to find gold. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a startling detail not in the plain Hebrew: their wives denied themselves...
As Moses descended the mountain, Joshua heard the noise of the camp and could not interpret it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Moses's reply in words of unsettling clarity: "It i...
The Torah says the Lord spoke with Moses "face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, refuses to let the metaphor m...
Most retellings of the golden calf stop at the moment Moses hurled the tablets to the ground and shattered them at the base of Sinai. But a remarkable tradition preserved in Targum...
There is a quiet moment in the construction of the Tabernacle that the text almost hurries past. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:21) captures it: Moses brought the ark into th...
