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The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 9) contains one of the most dramatic expansions in all of Aramaic literature. When Moses recalls the golden calf, the Hebrew says God was angry ...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 11) turns the promise of rain into a precisely timed agricultural calendar. The Hebrew says God will give "the early rain and the late rain." Th...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 12) is obsessed with a single idea: the place where God's Shekinah (שכינה), His divine presence, will choose to dwell. The Hebrew text says "the...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 13) confronts one of the most dangerous problems in ancient Israelite religion: the prophet whose miracles actually work. The Hebrew text warns ...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 14) transforms a list of dietary laws into a detailed zoological manual. Where the Hebrew names animals and moves on, the Targum adds identifyin...
The Targum Jonathan on (Deuteronomy 17) puts hard numbers on royal power. The Hebrew says the king shall not "multiply horses" or "multiply wives." But how many is too many? The Ta...
Targum Jonathan transforms the dry legal code of (Deuteronomy 19) into something visceral. Where the Torah simply warns that the blood avenger might overtake a fleeing killer, the ...
The Torah's rule against cross-dressing in (Deuteronomy 22:5) is brief and absolute. Targum Jonathan rewrites it entirely, replacing the general prohibition with something specific...
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's divorce law in (Deuteronomy 24) states that a second husband may dislike the wife. Targum Jonathan adds something astonishing: "should they proclaim from the heavens ab...
The levirate marriage ceremony in (Deuteronomy 25) is already dramatic in the Torah. Targum Jonathan turns it into theater. The brother-in-law's refusal must happen "before five of...
The first-fruits ceremony in (Deuteronomy 26) is beautiful in the Torah. Targum Jonathan makes it lavish. Where the Hebrew says simply to bring produce in a basket, the Targum adds...
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 blessings of (Deuteronomy 28) receive domestic detail. Being blessed "when you go out" becomes "blessed shall you be in your coming in to your houses of instruction, and blesse...
The covenant at Moab in (Deuteronomy 29) is addressed to the Israelites standing there. Targum Jonathan expands the audience to infinity: "all the generations which have arisen fro...
The Torah's promise of return from exile in (Deuteronomy 30) is hopeful. Targum Jonathan makes it messianic. Where the Hebrew says God will gather the scattered, the Targum says: "...
The Song of Moses in (Deuteronomy 32) is the Torah's great poem. Targum Jonathan wraps it in an elaborate theological commentary that dwarfs the original. It opens with Moses choos...
[What about all] the praise of Joseph, who exceeded in the honor of his father? And yet he did not enter into him all the time, such that were it not that they came to tell him, "Y...
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said t...
In ten articles the world was created, and what is meant to be said, and in one article he could recover, but heal the wicked who destroy the world created in ten sayings and give ...
And from where is "Aleph" called one, it is said, "How shall one rout one thousand?" And from where is the Holy One, blessed be He, called one as it is said "Hear O Israel the Lord...
“YHVH Elohim” – a parable to a king . . . who poured hot and cold mixed into his [glass] cups and they withstood (didn’t break). Thus says the Holy One: If I create with the qualit...
Trees talk to each other. That is not a modern botanical discovery — it is a teaching from the Yalkut Shimoni, a medieval anthology of midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary)ic ...
The field that Abraham bought from the children of Chet etc --- R Tanchuma said: from the burial of Sarah to the burial of Abraham was 38 years...... it comes to teach you that all...
And he arrived at the place – Why do we use a pseudonym and call the Holy One ‘place’ (makom)? Because He is the place of the world and the world is not His place. R’ Yosi ben Hali...
"So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with back breaking labor [b'farech]" (Ex. 1:13). R. Elazar says, "B'pe rach—with a soft mouth." R. Shmuel says, "B'frichah—With ri...
Another explanation: As she purified the entire house of her father like the blood of a bird (tzipor, used in purifying some impurities). Rabbi Yose bar Chaninah said, 'They sought...
Rabi Pinchas and Rabi Chilkiyah said in the name of Rabi Simon: the ministering angels gathered to Hashem and said before Him: Master of the world, when is the beginning of the yea...
Said R' Levi: The Holy One Blessed Be He appeared to them like a picture which is visible form all angles. A thousand people may gaze on it and it gazes on all of them. So is the H...
Parashat Masei These are the journeys of the children of Israel. The Lord said to Moses, "Write down the journeys that the Israelites have taken in the wilderness, so that they may...
Pray let me cross over. The word nah indicates that this is a request. the good land that is on the other side of the Jordan. This is what R’ Yehudah meant when he said that the la...
Another explanation: And you will quickly perish (Deuteronomy 11:17)—exile after exile. And thus do you find with the ten tribes, exile after exile. And thus do you find with the t...
The people of Judea were precise with their language. The people of Galilee were not. According to Eruvin 53a, this difference was not a minor cultural quirk—it had real consequenc...
Beruria—wife of Rabbi Meir, and one of the only women cited as a legal authority in the Talmud—was famous for her sharp tongue and sharper mind. According to Eruvin 53b, she once c...
Berurya, one of the sharpest minds in all of Talmudic literature, once caught a student studying Torah in a whisper. She kicked him and said: Scripture teaches that Torah must be "...
The Talmud in Tractate Eruvin asks a strange question: why is the Torah compared to a deer? The answer: a deer's womb is narrow. Every time the deer mates, it is as cherished as th...
What does God do all day? The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah takes this question seriously. The rabbis laid out a detailed twelve-hour schedule. During the first three hours, God ...
The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah says that every afternoon, God plays with Leviathan—the colossal sea creature described in (Job 41:1) and (Psalms 104:26). The fourth quarter of...
The Hebrew Bible opens with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Targum Onkelos, the authoritative Aramaic translation read alongside the Torah ...
The Hebrew Bible says God established a covenant with Noah, setting the rainbow as its sign (Genesis 9:12-17). Targum Onkelos renders every instance of "between Me and you" as "bet...
The Hebrew Bible says God "appeared" to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18:1). Targum Onkelos says God "became revealed." It sounds like the same thing. It is not. Appearing ...
The Hebrew Bible says Jacob "wrestled a man" until dawn (Genesis 32:25). Targum Onkelos stays with the Hebrew here—it was "a man," not an angel, not a demon, not a divine being. Bu...
The Hebrew Bible commands: "Hear, O Israel! God is our Lord, God is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Targum Onkelos translates the Shema—Judaism's central declaration of faith—with perfect ...
The Hebrew Bible begins with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Targum Neofiti, the Palestinian Aramaic translation, opens with something gran...
“They still bear fruit in old age” (Ps. 92:15). Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korḥa said: [The verse refers to] one who produces foolish behavior (nivim). There was an incident involving a ma...
Avot d'Rabbi Natan: One of the minor tractates in the Babylonian Talmud under the order of Nezikin. It serves as a kind of Braitot or Tosefta (supplementary teachings to the Mishna...
Eikha Rabbah: A midrash (Jewish rabbinic literature) on the Book of Lamentations (Eikha). It is also called Eikha Rabati, Aggadat Eikha, or Midrash Kinot. In the Tosefta (supplemen...
The "Book of the Ways of Life," attributed to Rabbi Eliezer, reads like a father's urgent final letter to his son — a distillation of everything that matters into short, unforgetta...
