998 related texts · 2 related myths · Page 17 of 21
The Song of the Sea in (Exodus 15) is one of the oldest poems in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan rewrites it with additions so bold they create entirely new theology, includi...
The Hebrew Bible says Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan. The Targum Jonathan says he sent "keen-sighted men", then reveals how spectacularly their vision failed them. Moses dispa...
Targum Jonathan transforms the assembly laws of (Deuteronomy 23) with details that reshape who belongs to Israel and why. A man "born of fornication" cannot enter the congregation....
The Torah says write the law on plastered stones after crossing the Jordan. Targum Jonathan says write it "with writing deeply engraven and distinct, which shall be read in one lan...
The one who offered his sacrifice on the first day was Nachshon ben Aminadab of the tribe of Judah (Numbers 7:12). Our Rabbi, the one who offered the sacrifice to the altar, taught...
Every corner of the known world smelled like paradise the day King Solomon completed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Pesikta Rabbati, a collection of midrashic (rabb...
Teach us o teacher: toward where should one who prays orient his heart? This is what our Rabbis taught: one should orient his heart toward the place of the Holy of Holies (Berachot...
He lay down in that place – R’ Yehudah says ‘here he lay down, but all fourteen years that he was hidden away in the land serving Ever he never laid down.’ R’ Nechemia says ‘here h...
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...
The Hebrew Torah scroll contains a hidden layer of meaning that most readers never notice: certain letters are written larger or smaller than normal. The Midrashim (rabbinic interp...
Another thing said R. Zerika in the name of R. Ami, who speaks in the name of R. Joshua b. Levi: "In the presence of the dead it is not proper to speak of anything except things co...
(4) R. Joshua, however, says: "Whence do we know that the Patriarchs were born in the month of Nissan? It is said (I Kings 6, 1) In the fourth year, in the month Ziv (glory), which...
The daughter of the Emperor said to Rabbi Joshua: “Your God is a builder, so let Him build a tent here." She became leprous and had to be placed in a tent as they do in Rome. She a...
Adrianus asks R. Joshua why God’s name is not mentioned in the five last commandments, which appears to apply to all nations. Joshua takes him over the town and shows him his statu...
Rabbi Akiva was locked in a Roman prison, cut off from his students and colleagues. But the study of Torah does not stop for prison walls. Rabbi Johanan ben Nuri had an urgent ques...
R. Eleazar b. Shimeon, who was appointed an official of the government, was accustomed to catch thieves in a very clever way when he found them drinking very heavily in the drinkin...
Rabbi Shimon ben Antipatros had a reputation that troubled the sages of Israel. Travelers who stayed at his house reported something alarming: their host beat his guests. Not robbe...
Dispute between R. Eliezer and R. Joshua about levi- tical purity. Appealed to in turn, the Harub tree [uprooted itself], the water turned back, the walls of the Midrash (rabbinic ...
Simeon ben Rabbi forgot to invite Bar Kappara to dinner. The latter wrote on the door: ‘‘After joy death.” Invited afterwards to another dinner, he kept the guests so amused by his...
2. A merchant whilst travelling, is asked by an innkeeper to be allowed to go with him. Near a town they meet a blind man. The merchant gives him something; the other refuses sayin...
12. Rabbi Joshua b. Levi and the prophet Elijah travelled together although the prophet said R. Joshua would see things which he would not understand. The first night they slept at...
B) Two men again are pointed out to R. Beroka as worthy of Paradise. On enquiring he learned that wherever people were in grief and sorrow, those two used to go and cheer them and ...
The martyrdom of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon is one of the most searing stories in all of rabbinic literature. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 18a) records that the Romans found him sittin...
The martyrdom of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon is among the most harrowing passages in all of rabbinic literature. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 17b-18a) describes his execution with the k...
When the Romans decreed that teaching Torah was punishable by death, Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon did not stop. He gathered his students in the open, placed a Torah scroll in his lap...
David lifts his eyes to the mountains and prays, "A song of ascents". And God answers him through a text he might not have expected: Moses's blessing of Judah. "And this is the ble...
"Go forth and gaze, daughters of Zion, upon King Solomon" (Song of Songs 3:11). The sages of Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:3 read that word tziyyon as m'tzuyanim, the distinguished ones,...
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...
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...
Someone once came to Rabbi Ishmael, the son of Joshua, with a question that must have been asked in every generation: how did the wealthy of the land of Israel come by their wealth...
The sages counted two hundred and forty-eight limbs in the human body, the same number, they noted, as the positive commandments of the Torah. A curse, they taught, enters and exit...
The rabbis counted the wounds and found that five had opened on the seventeenth of Tammuz and five more on the ninth of Av, the two fast days that frame the Three Weeks of summer m...
Every day three choirs of ministering angels stand before the throne and sing. The first class sings, "Holy!" The second answers, "Holy!" The third completes the line: "Holy is the...
In the days when Alexander the Great marched through Asia, the Ishmaelites came before him with a lawsuit. They claimed Canaan. They were descended from Abraham, they argued; the I...
Rumor reached the sages that Rabbi Shimon ben Antipatros was in the habit of beating his dinner guests. Beating them. Not turning them away at the door, not refusing them a second ...
Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 64, preserves one of the cleverest moments in rabbinic history. Rabbi Akiva was imprisoned, a fate he would eventually die in. And his student Rabbi Jo...
In one Jewish town, the leaders of the community had developed a custom of carrying a Torah scroll with them when they went to meet the king on ceremonial visits. The Torah in its ...
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...
When Esau came back from the hunt and saw that Jacob had taken the blessing, he plotted his revenge quietly. The sages, reading the reunion years later in Genesis 33, noticed that ...
Abraham stands at the headwaters of the Jewish story, and the Talmud gathers around him a flood of legends, score upon score of traditions that stretch far beyond what the Book of ...
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God, who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant,...
The Jewish community of Alexandria was enormous, perhaps the largest outside Judea in the first century CE. And its scholars were known for asking difficult questions. Once, they s...
The Emperor Hadrian once asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah a sharp question. “Why is the Name of God mentioned only in the first five of the Ten Commandments, and not in the la...
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 ...
One of the most useful things a targum does is flag which commandments were meant to last forever and which were meant only for a single moment. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 1...
Leftovers are rarely a theological problem, but in the Pesach laws they become one. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:10) addresses what to do with any remnant of the lamb that ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:14) finishes the fourfold answer from the verse before. Two parties still need their reply: the fighters and the screamers. " Your voice is...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 14:31) records the moment Israel becomes a nation of faith. They have just watched the mightiest army in the world drown. Now they "feared bef...
