1,416 texts · Page 20 of 30
A strange episode is preserved in the Talmud: a witch once transformed a man into an ass. He found himself in the marketplace on four legs, mounted like any beast of burden. One of...
A Roman emperor challenged a sage about the verse in Amos (3:8): The lion hath roared, who will not fear? "Where is this excellence?" the emperor scoffed. "A single horseman kills ...
Shechem son of Hamor once assembled a troupe of girls with tambourines to play outside the tent of Dinah, and when she "went out to see them" (Genesis 34:1), he carried her off. Fr...
A later midrashic legend reimagines Joab, the great general of King David, on one of his hardest campaigns. He had been hurled by the Israelites into a city called Kinsari, a forti...
A young boy was traveling by ship when a terrible storm overtook them. The other passengers were wealthy merchants. Each one reached into his bag and took out a small idol — some c...
A poor man, driven by his weeping wife and starving children, went to the marketplace in despair. He had nothing to sell and no trade to offer. He prayed to God for help, and the p...
A great scholar who spent all his days teaching Torah had a son late in life. He cherished the boy and kept him inside the study house, afraid that the world would distract him. Hi...
The moment when Joseph's brothers recognized him in the palace at Memphis was, according to the midrash, more violent than the Torah lets on. Some of the brothers, the sages said, ...
Elazar, son of Shimon bar Yochai, had inherited from his mystical father not only the secrets of Torah but a body of extraordinary strength. The Talmud says his belly was so large ...
Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair was one of the strictest ascetics in the Talmud. He never touched another person's bread. He would not allow his donkey to eat untithed fodder — the animal i...
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa was a miracle-worker from the Galilee in the first century, known for a faith so exact that his prayers came true almost by default. He lived in poverty. He ...
The halachah is clear: a man must not leave the synagogue before the chazzan finishes the Amidah, and must not pass a synagogue without entering it to pray. Gaster's Exempla (No. 3...
A tradition delivered at Sinai remembers the day Og, king of Bashan, nearly crushed the camp of Israel under a single stone. Og stood above the valley and measured the camp with hi...
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...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such poverty that his family often had nothing for Shabbat. One Friday, his wife stood in the empty kitchen, ashamed. The neighbors would notice the ...
When Moses sent twelve spies into the land of Canaan, the legend of the Rabbis remembers that the land was inhabited by giants — not merely tall men but beings of such scale that a...
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...
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...
When Israel went up to Jerusalem for one of the three pilgrimage festivals (Exodus 34:23-24), a season came in which the wells ran dry. There was no water for the pilgrims to drink...
The emperor Antoninus was a secret friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah. They visited each other, but Rome could not know of it. Antoninus had an undergrou...
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa lived in such fearless piety that the scorpions feared him. The Talmud tells this miniature story like a punchline. A scorpion had taken up residence in a hol...
Rabbi Gamliel and Rabbi Akiva were once sailing together on the Mediterranean when a storm struck. Akiva’s vessel went down in deep water. Gamliel, on a different ship, assum...
Beruriah, the brilliant wife of Rabbi Meir, was the daughter of the martyred sage Hanina ben Teradyon. When her father was burned at the stake by the Romans for teaching Torah, her...
The Torah says simply that God finished His work by the seventh day. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:2) smuggles in one of Judaism's most famous traditions: "the ten formation...
The Torah's "a mist went up from the earth" becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:6), something far grander. "A cloud of glory descended from the throne of glory, and wa...
How did every species find the ark? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:20) gives an answer the Torah does not. "Of the fowl after its kind, and of all cattle after its kind, and ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:16) adds a single detail to the biblical verse that changes the entire picture. The creatures entered, male and female, of all flesh, just as t...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:1) turns the tide of the story with a phrase the Hebrew does not quite say. And the Lord in His Word remembered Noah, and then — listen careful...
The Hebrew Bible says simply that Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth (Genesis 11:28). One quiet sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens that sentence like a...
The verse in (Genesis 12:19) is Pharaoh's outburst, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan sharpens its center. Why saidst thou, She is my sister? When I would take her to me to wife, plagues ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:14) delivers one of the boldest numeric readings in the Aramaic tradition. The Hebrew Bible says Abram armed three hundred and eighteen traine...
When God promised Abraham a great reward, Abraham's answer was not gratitude. It was an honest complaint. Gifts without children are not quite gifts. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Gen...
The Hebrew of (Genesis 15:14) promises judgment on the nation whom they shall serve. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the judgment a number that has startled readers for centuries. Two...
The door is about to break. The mob is surging forward. And then (Genesis 19:11), in the Targum's rendering, becomes the moment the heavens intervene directly. "But the men who wer...
God answers Abimelech in (Genesis 20:6), and the Targum's rendering is extraordinary. "And the Word of the Lord said to him in a dream, Before Me also it is manifest that in the tr...
Here is a line that rewards slow reading. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:1), the Aramaic translator takes a short Hebrew verse and opens a window onto a principle the rab...
The newborn in Sarah's arms is laughter made flesh. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:7), she remembers who first carried the promise to her tent: not a man, not a neighbor,...
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...
There is a phrase in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan that can stop you in your tracks. "And it was in that little hour, while he had not ceased to speak, that, behold, Rivekah came forth" (...
The trip home was supposed to take weeks. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 24:61) says it took a day. "And as the way was shortened to him in his journey to Padan Aram, so was it...
This is one of the Targum's most humane glosses, tucked into a genealogy verse no one usually stops for. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:19) says: "These are the generations ...
Twenty years of marriage and no child. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:21) says Isaac did not pray in his tent, did not pray in his field, did not pray at the local altar. He...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a detail to the first quarrel in Gerar that changes the whole story. The plain text says only that the shepherds of Gerar fought Isaac's shepherds o...
The Torah says only that Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran (Genesis 28:10). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan refuses to let the sentence stay that quiet. It unpacks the day into...
The Torah says Jacob rolled the stone from the well, watered the flock, and kissed Rachel (Genesis 29:10–11). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns the well itself into a character. Jac...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 30:21) preserves one of the most startling moments in the entire tribal genealogy. Originally, says the Aramaic tradition, the baby in Leah's...
Laban did not just separate the flocks. He placed three days of walking between them — a buffer wide enough that no marked goat could wander home by accident, no hopeful lamb could...
