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Simeon the Temanite — a Sage from Teman, a region in ancient Arabia where Jews had lived for centuries — was a regular fixture of the study hall. He could be counted on to attend t...
An apostate — a Jew who had abandoned his people — invented a blood libel and decided to prove it. He found a bird, slaughtered it, drained its blood into a small bottle, and then ...
Rabbah bar Nachmani ran one of the great academies of Babylonia, and twice a year — in the month before Passover and the month before the Feast of Tabernacles — thousands of Jews t...
Rabbi Eleazar said that the month of Tishri holds more Jewish history than any other. "Abraham and Jacob were born in Tishri," he taught, "and in Tishri they died. On the first of ...
A man in need entrusted his entire savings to a neighbor who was famous for piety. The neighbor wore his observance on his sleeve; his neighbors spoke of him with admiration. The m...
Rabbi Judah bar Ilai was known for many fine qualities, but one of them became a teaching in itself. Whenever a bridal procession passed through the streets, Rabbi Judah would stop...
On the Feast of Sukkot, the Torah commands Israel to offer seventy bullocks across the seven days (Numbers 29:12–36). Rabbi Eliezer asked the obvious question in Sukkah 55b: sevent...
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 ...
A group of children in a Jewish village were playing on Shabbat. As the sun rose higher over the day of rest, they wandered too close to the edge of an old well and fell in. The we...
A pious man in a certain town gave charity every day to the poor. The townspeople hated him for it. They passed a decree that anyone who gave charity would be cast into the sea or ...
Midrash Rabbah on Deuteronomy preserves a strange detail about the fall of the First Temple. When the Babylonian conquerors carried away the holy vessels, they did not carry away t...
The children of Israel left Egypt in the Hebrew month of Nisan, in springtime, and immediately the sukkot — the booths of the wilderness — went up. They lived in these booths for f...
On the twenty-eighth of Adar the Jewish community received word that the Roman government had passed a cruel decree: Jews were forbidden to study Torah, to circumcise their sons, o...
The midrash taught that the arba minim — the four species shaken on the festival of Sukkot — are not a random bouquet. Each one maps to a part of the human body, so that when a Jew...
The Second Temple had a section called the Ezrat Nashim, the Court of Women — a gallery where women could gather for the great ceremonies while men stood on the lower floor. During...
Two brothers lived side by side. One was rich and had a bad wife. The other was poor and had a good one. On the eve of Passover, the poor brother's wife urged him to open his home ...
The schools of Hillel and Shammai disagreed even about how to kindle a candle. On Chanukah, Shammai said: begin with eight lights on the first night and remove one each evening, so...
The Holy One has often worked wonders in the lives of His children at the hour of their greatest need. These miracles are recorded not for spectacle but as a brake against disbelie...
Two brothers lived in the same town — one rich, one poor. After the festival of Sukkot, the poor brother walked through the neighborhood gathering up the etrogim that families had ...
Every year, in the dark weeks of winter, Jewish homes kindle flames for eight nights — the Chag HaChanukah, the Feast of Dedication. The festival commemorates the purifying o...
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...
Elijah the Tishbite once appeared to Rav Yehudah, brother of Rav Salla the Holy, and the prophet asked him a question that could only come from a man who walked between worlds: &ld...
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...
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 Torah says God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:3) lets the sentence expand: the Lord blessed the seventh day more than all the d...
The Torah simply says Cain brought an offering "in the course of time." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:3) fixes a date: the fourteenth of Nisan. That is the eve of Passover. ...
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 8:22) anchors the new covenant in something every farmer and every child understands. Sowing in the season of Tishri, and harvest in the season o...
This is one of the most extraordinary passages in the entire Targum. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:13) takes a single Hebrew word — ha-palit, the fugitive who brought news ...
(Genesis 19:3) has one of the most charming details in all of Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan doubles down on it. "And he persuaded them earnestly, and they turned aside to be wi...
Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:13), the Aramaic adds the detail that places this animal outside or...
Before he walks down the mountain, Abraham offers one more prayer. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 22:14), the Aramaic paraphrase turns the Hebrew's terse place-naming into a...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens the scene of Rebekah's plan with a line the Hebrew does not speak. "Behold, this night those on high praise the Lord of the world, and the treasure...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not let Rebekah's instruction pass as a simple culinary request. She tells Jacob, "Go now to the house of the flock, and take me from thence two fat...
The Torah says Reuben went out in the days of the wheat harvest and found dudaim, mandrakes, in the field (Genesis 30:14). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan specifies the month: Sivan, th...
"Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew which shrank." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:33) preserves the origin of one of the oldest kosher laws — the prohibition aga...
When Jacob returned to Bethel — the very stones where he had dreamed of the ladder decades earlier — he did not simply set up a marker and move on. He raised a pillar of stone on t...
Before Moses ever steps into Pharaoh's throne room, God rehearses the scene with him in advance. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the expansive Aramaic paraphrase, preserves the staging: th...
The confrontation finally arrives. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the opening line with ceremonial weight: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Release My people, that they ma...
When Pharaoh refuses, Moses and Aaron press the request with a telling clarification. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves their plea: The Name of the God of the Jehudaee is invoked by...
God outlines the Exodus in a sequence of verbs that the sages will later count as the Arba Leshonot Shel Geulah — the Four Expressions of Redemption. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserv...
When Pharaoh asks who will be going to worship, Moses answers without hesitation. "With our children and with our old men will we go; with our sons and with our daughters we will g...
Until the night before the Exodus, time belonged to Egypt. The calendar that mattered was the calendar of Pharaoh, its new year set by the flooding of the Nile. Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
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...
Some commandments are famous for their grandeur. This one is famous for its neighborliness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:4) addresses a perfectly mundane problem: what if y...
The most dangerous sentence in the Passover story is the one where Israel was told to tie a lamb to a post and wait. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:6) turns those four days o...
The original Passover meal was not symbolic. The bitter herbs on the first seder plate were real bitter herbs, eaten in a real hurry on a real night. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exo...
One reason the first Passover feels archaic to modern readers is that it was archaic even to the people eating it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:9) piles up the restrictions...
