3,887 related texts · Page 2 of 81
In Parashat Noach, Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk redefines what it means to be a righteous person. The Torah says Noah was "a righteous person, complete in his generations" (Genesis ...
Why does the world hold together? Jeremiah gives the unlikely answer: "If not for My covenant day and night, I would not have established the fixed order of heaven and earth" (Jere...
Maybe that’s because the rainbow we see today isn’t the rainbow of the Messiah. Not yet, anyway. : the rainbow we know is a promise, a beautiful one, certainly. It's a reminder of ...
The Torah says to set a "tzohar" in the ark — a mysterious word usually translated "window" or "light." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:16) tells us Noah had to fetch it. "Go ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:4) plants the ark on a very specific patch of earth. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, in the month the Targum calls Nisan, the gre...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:9) tells one of the most delicate scenes in all of Torah. Noah sends out a dove, a yonah, to see whether the earth is ready. The Targum says sh...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:15) is a verse that has carried comfort through every Jewish generation. I will remember My covenant which is between My Word and between you a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:24) adds a detail that quietly reshapes the whole story. The biblical Hebrew simply says Noah awoke and knew what his younger son had done to h...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:20) closes the genealogy of Cham with a summary line that quietly announces one of Torah's deepest ideas. These are the sons of Cham, accordin...
"Happy is the man who has not walked…" – and then it lists the paths we should avoid: the counsel of the wicked, the way of sinners, the company of the insolent. According to Beres...
A dove, sure, feels right. But a raven? What's that all about?Philo wasn't just interested in the surface-level story; he was all about digging deeper, finding the hidden meanings ...
There's more to it than just geography, you know. Sometimes, stories – powerful, ancient stories – are woven right into the very fabric of the land. We find one such story in the B...
Like one wrong step and… well, you know. In the Book of Jubilees, we find this intense father-to-son talk that feels exactly like that—a guide to staying on that path. It’s like a ...
Sounds… intense. That’s what Noah faced. But what happened after the floodwaters receded? You might think it was all sunshine and rainbows, but the story, as the Legends of the Jew...
Before we get to the ark and the flood, let's rewind a bit. According to Legends of the Jews, a collection of stories compiled by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, Noah’s arrival on the scene ...
The story goes way back, all the way back to Noah and the ark. after the flood, Noah needed to know if the waters had receded. So, naturally, he sent out a raven. Now, ravens are k...
The Torah tells us, "Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3). But what was that light? Jewish tradition answers with something truly special: the primordial light. And it wasn't just any li...
God looked down at the world before the flood and saw something He hadn't seen since the days of Adam — a civilization that had talked itself into impunity. The wicked had done the...
When a lion roars, every animal in the forest freezes. Even the ones who have never been hunted. Even the ones too far away to be prey. The sound itself is the message: there is so...
What we see here is just a reflection of something far grander: the rainbow of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence). The Shekhinah, often translated as "Divine Presence," is the asp...
The Book of Giants is one of the most remarkable texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls—and it tells a story the Bible only hints at. In (Genesis 6:4), a single verse mentions the ...
Every nation on earth traces back to one of three men. That's the claim Josephus makes in the Antiquities, and he spends two chapters proving it—mapping the seventy nations descend...
The verdict lands, and it lands on Noah's ear first. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:13) gives us the direct speech: "The end of all flesh cometh before Me, because the earth ...
Even at the last possible moment, the door of repentance stays open. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:4) has God tell Noah: "Behold, I give you space of seven days; if they wil...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:16) adds a single detail to the biblical verse that changes the entire picture. The creatures entered, male and female, of all flesh, just as t...
This is one of those verses where Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:20) opens a hidden corridor through the whole Torah. The Hebrew simply says Noah built an altar. The Aramaic ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:20) is one of the most dreamlike details in the whole Flood cycle. Noah began to be a man working in the earth. And he found a vine which the r...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:2) does something the plain biblical list never does — it gives the sons of Japheth their addresses. Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, a...
We usually picture him releasing the dove, seeing the rainbow, and then…poof! The story fades. But Jewish tradition, especially in texts outside the Bible, fills in those gaps. Let...
How many people were alive before the flood? According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, an exact census was taken...
Sometimes, the answer lies in the smallest of actions, the purest of intentions. Think about Noah. After the flood, things weren’t exactly smooth sailing. There’s that infamous epi...
The story of Abraham offers a powerful lesson on this very topic. It's not just about being righteous, but about doing righteous deeds, about actively choosing faith even when it's...
It's not as well-known as its older sibling, Seder Olam Rabbah, but it offers us a peek into rabbinic understandings of history. In this particular section, the text lays out the l...
Turns out, the rabbinic tradition has quite a bit to say about its motivations and character. The Torah tells us, "Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out t...
Sometimes, it's in the details, in the seemingly small phrases, that we find the biggest insights. Take the story of Noah, for instance. We all know the basics: flood, ark, animals...
It's not just a random choice. The story of Noah's Ark and the dove, as told in Genesis, is layered with meaning, and the Rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) f...
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 Torah gives Noah minimal construction specs. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:14) hands him a blueprint. "Make thee an ark of the wood of cedars; a hundred and fifty cells ...
Before the first drop of the Flood struck the earth, heaven waited. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:10) teaches that the Holy One delayed the deluge for seven full days after ...
The Flood did not arrive gently. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:11) dates it with astonishing precision: the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, the second month, the seventee...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:14) does what Torah often does at its most sublime moments — it lists. Every wild animal after its kind. Every domestic beast after its kind. E...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:1) turns the tide of the story with a phrase the Hebrew does not quite say. And the Lord in His Word remembered Noah, and then — listen careful...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:11) takes a verse every child knows and slips a piece of mystical geography into it. The dove returns at evening. She carries a fresh-plucked o...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:13) dates Noah's first real look at the new earth with the kind of precision the Aramaic loves. It was the six hundred and first year of Noah's...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:14) explains the rainbow with a detail the plain Hebrew does not supply. When I spread forth My glorious cloud over the earth, the bow shall be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:16) sharpens the promise one more time. The bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:11) adds a twist no one reading the plain Hebrew would expect. From that land went forth Nimrod, and reigned in Athur, because he would not be...
We usually think of him as just relieved, planting vineyards, maybe a little… tipsy. But imagine being Noah. You’ve just survived the unimaginable. The entire world, wiped clean. Y...
