1,047 related texts · 1 related myths · Page 18 of 22
Elazar ben Dordaya was a man consumed by desire. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 17a) records that he was so enslaved to his passions that he traveled across seven rivers to visit a parti...
Moses stood apart from every other prophet who ever lived. The rabbis taught that while other prophets saw God through clouded glass, Moses alone saw through a clear lens, an unobs...
Two friends loved each other so deeply that one was willing to die for the other. And the other refused to let him. This tale of ultimate friendship, preserved in the Exempla of th...
A psalm of David, written after Doeg the Edomite betrayed him, that's where Aggadat Bereshit anchors the story of Jacob's ladder. Strange placement. But the rabbis had a method. Do...
The flood waters had covered everything. Noah had been sealed in the ark for months, the rain, the silence, the slow recession of the water, the waiting. Then the text says simply:...
Hell has seven names. This is what Aggadat Bereshit says when Malachi promises "the day is coming, burning like an oven" (Malachi 3:19). The rabbis did not flinch from the geograph...
Abimelech ruled over Israel for three years (Judges 9:22). Aggadat Bereshit uses this strange opening, about a king in the book of Judges, to arrive at the first murder. The path r...
When the righteous multiply in the world, good things multiply with them. This is Aggadat Bereshit's reading of "When the righteous are many, the people rejoice" (Proverbs 29:2). N...
"I will assemble Jacob, all of you; I will bring together the remnant of Israel" (Micah 2:12). The end of Aggadat Bereshit's prophetic arc arrives here: not the death of Jacob, not...
The Talmud (Shabbat 89a-b) notices something strange: the mountain where Israel received the Torah is called by five different names in the Hebrew Bible. Why? Because a single moun...
For twelve long years Rabbi Akiva had studied Torah far from home, leaving behind his wife Rachel, who had married him when he was an illiterate shepherd and had believed in him wh...
The wicked kingdom once sent two officers to the sages of Israel with a curious assignment: teach us your Torah. The manuscript was put into their hands, and three times over they ...
No one in Israel, the sages taught, could humble himself more thoroughly than David when a commandment was at stake. Before God he spoke the words of Psalm 131, and the midrash tea...
A man from the Galilee once traveled to Jerusalem for the three festival pilgrimages. On his way home, rather than carry all his coin across the dangerous roads, he entrusted two h...
When Abraham came to the cave of Machpelah to bury Sarah, he did not find the cave empty. According to the Yalkut Chadash, the first couple was already there, and they were not ple...
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;...
A gentile came to Rabbi Judah ben Ilai with a rude accusation. "Rabbi," he said, "your face is too well-fed. You must be living off usury, taking interest from the poor." Rabbi Jud...
Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, the one we call Resh Lakish, had once been a highway robber. He ran with two companions, robbing travelers on the roads outside Tiberias, and their names a...
Onkelos son of Kalonikos was the nephew of the Roman emperor, by some accounts Hadrian, by others Titus. And one of the great converts to Judaism in the Talmudic age. When Onkelos ...
The Roman official had one cup too many set before him, and his face twisted unnaturally. A Rabbi knew the cure, rearrange the cups so the even number became odd, and the face woul...
The sages illustrated repentance with a parable, and this one has sailed down the centuries. A great ship was crossing the ocean on a long voyage. Before reaching port, a storm dro...
On the day Solomon sought to bring the Aron, the Ark of the Covenant, into the newly finished Temple, the gates refused to open. Solomon stood before them and began to recite psalm...
Ben Hei-Hei came to Hillel with a verse that troubled him. Malachi had said, "Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God a...
A ship docked at an island on its way between two ports. The captain announced that he would weigh anchor at a set hour, and he warned the passengers that a bell would sound three ...
A man in a Jewish town conceived an intention to commit adultery. He approached a woman who was not his wife and arranged to meet her secretly at a set hour in a set place. The Exe...
Tractate Bava Batra preserves a strange debate about classroom size that turns, without warning, into a story of life and death. The rabbis were arguing about elementary education....
The Talmud tells of Elisha ben Abuyah, called afterward Acher, "Other", one of the four sages who entered the mystical Garden and the only one who emerged a heretic. Somewhere in t...
Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, one of the great first-century sages, lay ill in his bed. Four of his colleagues came to visit him, among them Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elaza...
Gaster's exemplum No. 348 preserves a Jewish folk tale about the strangest accounting in the heavenly court. A wicked man died and was brought before the Holy One for judgment. The...
Rabbi Meir, on his yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, used to lodge with Judah the butcher, whose wife took loving care of him. One year Judah's wife died. Judah remarried, and when R...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan, the legend of the Rabbis remembers that the land was inhabited by giants, not merely tall men but beings of such scale that a ...
The Talmud in Nedarim asks an uncomfortable question: why did the children of Abraham, the father of faith, endure two hundred and ten years of Egyptian bondage? What did Abraham, ...
The Talmud in Maccoth preserves a remarkable teaching: Moses pronounced four severe judgments over Israel, and four later prophets rose up and softened them. This is not rebellion....
The tale is told of a certain Abu Golis, a pagan priest in the city of Damascus who later lived in Tiberias. He served an idol and prospered in its shadow, taking what he pleased o...
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...
Adam's expulsion becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:24), a sweeping theological statement about everything God made before He made anything. God drove the man out fro...
The moment of turning is never where you expect it. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:16), the Aramaic paraphrase inserts a single gesture that changes the story's spiritual...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns (Genesis 24:31) into a confession. Laban greets the servant with the warmest possible words, "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord". And then lets slip a ...
This is the prophecy Rebekah receives in the study house of Shem, and it reframes every story that follows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:23) preserves the oracle with one ...
Two brothers. Two careers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:27) gives the contrast in parallel sentences. Esau grew up a "man of idleness to catch birds and beasts, a man goin...
Of all the Targum's expansions, this one may be the darkest. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:29) describes the day Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils. And tells us exact...
The blessing Isaac gives Esau, as the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan records it, is a warning and a prophecy woven together. "Upon thy sword shalt thou depend, entering at every place: yet...
When Isaac laid his hands on Jacob a second time, this time with full knowledge of whom he was blessing, he called down the name by which the patriarchs had always known the Holy O...
Before Jacob left Beersheba for Haran, Isaac did something that could not be undone. He transferred the blessing of Abraham, the promise of land, seed, and covenant, from father to...
Esau was watching. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 28:6) lingers on what he noticed: not only that Isaac blessed Jacob, but that Isaac sent Jacob to Padan Aram with a very s...
As Jakob prepared his message to Esau, he did something strange. He instructed his servants to announce that the great blessing stolen years before had, in effect, come to nothing....
"Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar unto Eloha, who revealed Himself to you in your flight from before Esau your brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gene...
When the brothers decided to kill Joseph, Reuben stepped in. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 37:22) makes his motive explicit: because he would deliver him from their hand, and ...
