The Torah sums up the family's first years in Egypt in a single line: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen, and they had possessions therein, and grew and multiplied exceedingly" (Genesis 47:27). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears something more concrete inside that general statement. It translates: "they built there schools and mansions in the land of Goshen, and inherited therein fields and vineyards; and they increased and multiplied greatly."
The very first infrastructure the Israelites put up in Egypt, according to the Targum, was not houses. It was houses of study.
The Order of Building
Notice the sequence the Targum preserves: schools first, then mansions. A people who had arrived as famine refugees — seventy souls in a foreign empire — invested their first efforts not in personal luxury but in institutions of learning. Only after the batei midrash were raised did they turn to comfortable homes, vineyards, and estates.
This matches the instruction Jacob had given Judah earlier in (Genesis 46:28), where the Targum reports Judah was sent ahead to establish a house of Torah instruction before the family arrived. The Targum is telling a consistent story. Whatever else is happening in the lives of the Israelites — famine, migration, marriage, commerce — Torah comes first.
Why Schools Protected the Family
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, shaped in its final form between the 4th and 8th centuries CE, understood the question every diaspora community eventually faces: what keeps a minority from dissolving? The answer in this verse is schools. Without them, a family of seventy becomes a memory in three generations. With them, seventy becomes 600,000 warriors at the Exodus — and they walk out of Egypt still speaking Hebrew, still remembering the covenant of Abraham.
The Sifrei Devarim, among the many <a href='/categories/midrash-aggadah.html'>Midrash Aggadah</a> collections in our database, makes the same point. Israel is held together not by territory alone but by the beit midrash. Goshen is proof of concept. A Jewish community in foreign soil, guaranteed to be persecuted within a few generations, nonetheless produces a redeemed nation — because the schools went up before the mansions.
The Seed of Return
The vineyards and fields the Targum mentions also matter. They are the economic base that sustains the schools. The balance here is precise. No schools without vineyards; no vineyards without schools. The material and the spiritual economy are braided.
The takeaway is a question we can answer only for ourselves: when our families land somewhere new — literally or metaphorically — what do we build first? The Targum suggests that the answer shapes how the next chapter of the story will read.