537 texts · Page 10 of 12
A merchant on the road was joined by an innkeeper who asked to travel with him. As they walked, they passed a blind man by the roadside. The merchant stopped, opened his purse, and...
Rabbi Yudan was famous in his city for two things. He was very rich. And he was so charitable that he had been known to run down the street after the collectors of alms, begging to...
A man named Yochanan once kept a pet frog. The frog, according to the Rabbis, was not a frog at all. It was a child of Lilith, the demon of night. The creature taught Yochanan. Fir...
The Mishnah in tractate Sotah teaches that four kinds of people tear down the world from within: foolish pietists, crafty villains, sanctimonious women, and self-afflicting Pharise...
The old rabbis were poets of the short sentence. Here is a small anthology of proverbs preserved in the Midrash — each one a stone you can carry in your pocket. On speech: Op...
The Roman governor Turnus Rufus and Rabbi Akiva argued often. Once they argued about tzedakah. “Akiva,” said Turnus Rufus, “if your God decreed that a certain man...
The Temple had been burned. Rabbi Joshua walked through the ashes of Jerusalem and said aloud, to no one in particular, “Woe to us. The place where Israel atoned for its sins...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:20) preserves Shem-Malkizedek's blessing and the patriarch's response. Blessed be Eloha Ilaha, who hath made thine enemies as a shield which r...
The Hebrew of (Genesis 18:20) says only that the outcry of Sedom and Amorah is great and their sin very heavy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan will not leave that vague. It hands us, in Ara...
Here is the Targum's most beloved expansion of the patriarchal story. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:33), the Hebrew says Abraham planted a eshel — a tamarisk — in Beersh...
Ten camels left Beersheba with a mission no caravan had ever carried before. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:10) notes something most readers breeze past: "all the goodly tre...
The servant has arrived. He is standing at the well outside the city of Nachor, and he has to figure out, in a single afternoon, which woman at that well is meant to become the mot...
A small verse. A large courtesy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:32) describes the moment after the greeting: the servant enters, the camels are unharnessed, straw and proven...
Given permission to speak, Eliezer opens with a sentence that is not small talk. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:35) has the servant list the blessings God has poured on Abra...
Jacob set a pillar and poured oil on it (Genesis 28:22). Then he made a promise about what that pillar would become. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan goes further than the plain verse. T...
After Issachar, Leah bears Zebulun, the sixth son of her own womb. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:20) gives his name a meaning that becomes a pillar of Jewish economic e...
"Receive now the present which is brought to you, because it has been given me through mercy from before the Lord." Jacob's insistence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 33:11) res...
The Targum catches a small pastoral detail. Joseph asked the chiefs of Pharoh who were with him in the custody of his master's house, saying, Why is the look of your faces more evi...
When the dream was decoded, Joseph did not stop at interpretation. He handed Pharaoh a policy. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:34), the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah that t...
There is a quiet engineering decision tucked inside Joseph's plan that the Torah narrates in a single breath but the Targum lingers on. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:35) de...
The Torah says Joseph stored grain in cities. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:36) adds a detail that changes the picture entirely: the provision was laid up "as in a cavern i...
Seven harvests, gathered with deliberate care. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:48) records the logistics Joseph used: "he laid up the produce in the cities; the produce of th...
The moment the famine deepened, Joseph opened the storehouses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 41:56) records the mechanics: "Joseph opened all the treasures and sold to the Miz...
After three days in custody, Joseph reconsiders. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:19) preserves his revised terms: one brother stays in prison, the rest go home with grain "fo...
After the test, the quiet kindness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 42:25) describes Joseph's instructions: fill their vehicles with grain, return each man's money to his sack, ...
When Joseph bought up every private field in Egypt during the second year of famine, he left one class untouched. (Genesis 47:22) says he did not buy the land of the priests becaus...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan expands Jethro's counsel into a short curriculum of communal life. "Give them counsel about the statutes and laws, make them understand the prayer they a...
There is a warning at the heart of the covenant that has nothing to do with courts. It has to do with a woman weeping in a small room, and a child watching her weep, and no one els...
There is a moment when a poor person walks up to a wealthier neighbor and asks for a loan. The wealthier neighbor has a choice. He can treat the moment as a market opportunity. Or ...
A lender holds collateral. The borrower is poor enough that his only pledge was the cloak on his back. Evening comes. The air cools. What does the Torah require? Targum Pseudo-Jona...
This verse is among the strangest in the Torah, because it seems to contradict everything else the Torah says about the poor. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 23:3) is blun...
Six years you plow. Six years you harvest. Six years you measure the field by what it produces for you. Then the seventh year arrives — and the ledger flips. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
It would have been enough to say: rest on the seventh day. That alone would have been a radical gift in the ancient world. But the Torah cannot stop there. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan o...
When the Holy One commanded Israel to contribute materials for the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the instruction could have been simple taxation. Every household owes ...
One of the most radical moments in Torah commerce: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the Torah's command that the rich shall not add to, and the poor shall not diminish from, the half...
What happened to all those half-shekels? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan follows the Torah's answer: Moses was to gather the silver of the ransom from the sons of Israel and apply it to the...
When the Tabernacle needed building, the Torah says donations poured in from everyone whose heart moved him (Exodus 35:21). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a remarkable detail: these g...
When the call went out for Tabernacle offerings, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:22) records a scene the Torah's plain text only hints at: with the men came the women. And the...
The Torah often speaks in categories — the priests, the Levites, the heads of tribes. But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:29) zooms out to the widest possible frame: Every man...
Some kinds of generosity come in a single burst and then exhaust themselves. The Tabernacle campaign was not that kind. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 36:3) notes the strange rh...
There is only one fundraising story in all of Jewish history where the problem was too much money. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 36:6) describes it: Mosheh commanded, and they ...
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...
We find a fascinating glimpse into this idea in Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic commentaries on the Book of Numbers. It centers on a seemingly simple verse: "A man who gi...
We're going to unpack the rules surrounding the offerings brought at the conclusion of their period of separation. The verse we’re focusing on is (Numbers 6:19): “The priest shall ...
Could I do more?" The sages certainly wrestled with that feeling, and they had some pretty strong opinions about what happens when we ignore it. The Book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohele...
Our tradition offers some powerful, and perhaps surprising, answers. Take, for example, the interpretation offered by Rabbi Tanhum bar Ḥiyya on a verse dealing with the poor and th...
That nagging sense of "Is this all there is?" That, my friends, is a feeling as old as time itself. The book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet as it’s known in Hebrew, grapples with this...
It all starts with the verse in (Leviticus 22:29): “When you slaughter a thanks offering to the Lord, you shall slaughter it to garner favor for yourselves.” Now, Rabbis Pinḥas, Le...
