633 related texts · 4 related myths · Page 11 of 14
The Talmud (Bava Batra 75a) records a breathtaking vision of the future Jerusalem: its gates would be made of single pearls, each pearl so enormous that it could be carved into a g...
Joseph Mokir Shabbat (the Sabbath), "Joseph Who Honors the Sabbath", was a man whose devotion to the Sabbath was so complete that it became the engine of his fortune. The Talmud (S...
The opening verse of Numbers 7 says a single thing twice. Moses "anointed the Tabernacle and sanctified it," and then the verse adds, "and he anointed them and sanctified them." Wh...
When the chieftains of Israel rolled up to the Tabernacle with six covered wagons, the Torah uses a strange word for those wagons, tzav. Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:8 turns the word un...
Shabbat Shekalim arrives on the Shabbat before the month of Adar ends, the first of the four special Sabbaths that prepare the Jewish people for Passover. The Torah reading is brie...
There was a man who lived in the Greek city of Laodicea, and he had a rule he followed every week of his life. Whenever he found some particularly fine food in the market, the best...
The wicked kingdom once decreed that the Jews should no longer keep the Sabbath, nor circumcise their sons, nor observe the laws of ritual purity the Torah commands. Three commandm...
In Jerusalem there was a great courtyard called Beit Yaazek, and its only business was to receive witnesses. Every month, two Jews who had seen the thin sliver of the new moon hang...
The daughter of Rabbi Meir, one of the greatest sages of the second century CE, had a vision in a dream that her fate was sealed. Twenty-one years of suffering lay ahead. Seven yea...
A fox once persuaded a wolf to slip into a Jewish household to help prepare the Shabbat meal. No sooner did the wolf step through the door than the whole household rose up and beat...
There was once a pious Jew in one of the villages of late antique Israel who kept a cow to till his fields. Six days a week the cow worked, and on the seventh day she rested. Her m...
Rabbi Yochanan was suffering from scurvy, a miserable, bleeding affliction of the gums. And the standard remedies were not helping. In desperation he went to a woman skilled in fol...
The Sages had a quiet problem to solve. The Torah insists that on the seventh day God rested from all the work of creation. But the world is full of objects that seem to lie outsid...
Rabbi Tarfon lived at the edge of the first century, one of the great teachers of the Mishnah. He is remembered for sharp legal rulings and for a single small act of tenderness tha...
Rome had issued three decrees against the Jews. They were forbidden to keep the Sabbath, forbidden to circumcise their sons, and forbidden to observe the laws of family purity. The...
Elisha ben Abuyah had once been one of the greatest scholars of his generation, a colleague of Rabbi Akiba. Then he turned away from the tradition so completely that the rabbis sto...
There was a man called Yosef Mokir Shabbat, "Yosef the Honorer of the Sabbath." Every Friday he spent whatever he had on the best food available for the Shabbat table. Anything the...
The verse in (1 Kings 4:30) tells us that Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the east and all of Egypt. The midrash on Kings, preserved in Yalkut Eliezer, offers a story t...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus loved to bait Rabbi Akiva with theological questions. One day he asked, "Why is the Shabbat distinguished from other days?" Akiva answered with a qu...
The sages taught a secret about Friday night that changes the way you walk home from synagogue. Every Jew is escorted by two angels, one good, one evil, who follow him from the Bei...
Two of Rabbi Meir's sons died on Shabbat afternoon. They had been in the house while their father was at the synagogue leading the congregation. When Rabbi Meir came home, he asked...
There were fifteen steps in the Temple that led down from the Court of Israel to the Court of the Women. The rabbis said they matched the fifteen Shir HaMa’alot, the Songs of...
The rabbis noticed a quiet escalation in the promises made to the patriarchs about the land. To Abraham, God said, “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in th...
When God commanded Aaron and his sons to kindle the lamps of the menorah in the Tabernacle, Aaron worried. The tribal princes were bringing their own magnificent dedication offerin...
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 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...
The eighth day is the answer to a careful question: how soon can a newborn be brought under the covenant? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:12) settles the timing and then push...
When Isaac draws Jacob close and breathes him in, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what the patriarch actually smells. It is not the field. It is not the goats. It is the incens...
With her third son, Leah reaches for a new hope. This time, she thinks, Jacob will at last be yilaveh, attached, to her (Genesis 29:34). So she names the child Levi, from the root ...
"And he built there an altar, and named that place, To God, who made His Shekhinah to dwell in Bethel, because there had been revealed to him the angels of the Lord, in his flight ...
When Joseph and Benjamin finally embrace, their tears do not flow for the reasons we expect. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads the verse as prophecy. "He bowed himself upon his brother ...
When the grumbling began in the wilderness of Sin, the Holy One responded not with rebuke but with a test. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:4) renders it: Behold, I will cause ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan grounds the Sabbath in cosmology. "For in six days the Lord created the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and whatever is therein, and rested on the s...
Before Aaron's household held the priesthood, someone else did. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:5) preserves this little-known tradition: Mosheh sent the firstborn of t...
The Torah closes the Tabernacle construction chapters with a quiet command. In the Tent of Meeting, outside the parochet that conceals the Ark, Aharon and his sons are to tend a la...
(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...
Most translations of (Exodus 28:39) describe the weaving of the tunic and leave it there. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses that minimalism. Each garment atones for something spec...
The last of the priestly garments was the most private. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 28:43) explains that Aaron and his sons had to wear the fine linen undergarments, the ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 29:30) legislates how the high priesthood is passed on. For seven full days, the son who rises after his father wears the vestments and enters...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not soften the law. It specifies the method: "Whoso doeth work upon the Sabbath, dying he shall die, by the casting of stones" (Exodus 31:15). Stoning, ...
At the heart of the Sabbath command stands a theological riddle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it faithfully: "In six days the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the ear...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:5) refuses to let a single detail of the sanctuary pass without meaning. The golden altar of incense is to be placed before the ark of the test...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:6) gives the outer altar a location and a purpose that the plain Hebrew leaves unspoken. Place it before the door of the tabernacle of ordinanc...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:8) takes a simple instruction, set up the court around the tabernacle and hang a curtain at its gate. And turns it into one of the most strikin...
When the Tabernacle stood finished in the wilderness and every board was raised into place, the Holy One turned Moses's attention from the walls to the men who would serve inside t...
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...
Between the outer altar and the inner tent of the Tabernacle, a bronze basin sat on its foundation. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 40:30) describes what Moses poured into it, no...
