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Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, the great twelfth-century Spanish Jewish scholar, once wanted to know who his equal might be in the world. He was told: Maimonides. He set out at once to fi...
A pious man on a journey found a cave in the mountains. He entered. Inside was a small pool of water, and behind it, a narrower dark inner chamber. He stepped into the inner chambe...
In the Temple service, everyone bowed thirteen times, corresponding to the thirteen shofar-shaped collection boxes and the thirteen tables arrayed in the sanctuary. Yet those who b...
The prophet Ezekiel writes, "I have set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations, and countries are round about her" (Ezekiel 5:5). Taken in its plain sense, the verse places the holy...
A Roman governor once made the acquaintance of the prophet Elijah. The meeting changed him. Elijah persuaded him to take the huge wealth he had amassed in office and, instead of sq...
Four tannaim ascended into the Pardes, the orchard of mystical contemplation, and Rabbi Akiva warned his companions before they entered. "When you come to the pavement of pure marb...
In the house of Rabbi Elazar a strange filly was born. Every attendant who came near it was killed. Rabbi Elazar, unable to tame or destroy the beast, presented it to the king. At ...
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day (Deuteronomy 4:4). The verse is beautiful until you read four lines later: For the Lord thy God is...
The Talmud tells of four sages who entered Pardes — the orchard — and only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Rashi read the story literally: they ascended to heaven in ecstatic vision. Bu...
There was a season when Solomon was not Solomon. The demon king Ashmedai had stolen his signet ring — the one engraved with the Ineffable Name — and taken his place on the throne o...
Somewhere beyond the known world, the sages said, there runs a river that refuses to behave like a river. It is called the Sambatyon, and it does not flow with water. It rushes wit...
In the town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, a dangerous group practiced sorcery. Among their victims was Chananya, the nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua. They cast a spell on him — the ...
King Solomon wanted to build the Temple from unhewn stone. The Torah forbade iron tools on the altar, and Solomon, meticulous as always, extended the prohibition to the whole sanct...
King Solomon warned a skilled builder — the man who had constructed his palace — that the builder's wife was unfaithful. The builder refused to believe it. Solomon did not argue. H...
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...
Abba Benjamin used to say, “If our eyes were permitted to see the malignant sprites that beset us, we could not rest for a moment on account of them.” The air, the rabb...
A medieval Jewish legend tells of a king of Poland who fell under the influence of a sorcerer — a wizard — and issued a decree: the Jews of his kingdom must convert, be...
Before the world had shape, it had nothing. No animals. No people. Not even a horizon. The Aramaic of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:2) calls it tohu va-vohu, rendered as "va...
The Torah says God "made the firmament." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:7) gives us a sculptor's hand. The Lord, the Aramaic says, made the expanse upbearing it with three fi...
Here the Targumist drops a myth into the middle of the verse. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:21) says the Lord created the great tanninim — sea dragons — and among them Levia...
The Torah simply says God created Adam "male and female He created them." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:27) hands us an anatomy textbook. The Lord created Adam "with two hun...
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...
The Torah says God formed man from the dust of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:7) takes this one sentence and turns it into a cosmic geography. "The Lord God create...
The Torah says God planted a garden in Eden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:8) goes further. The garden "was planted by the Word of the Lord God before the creation of the wo...
The Torah names two trees in the garden. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:9) tells us the dimensions of one of them. The Tree of Life, the Targumist says, stood "in the midst o...
The Torah says God took "one of his ribs" to make the woman. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:21) gets oddly specific. "He took one of his ribs, it was the thirteenth rib of th...
The Torah says their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:7) adds a detail that changes the image entirely. They realized "they were...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:8) uses a phrase it will return to again and again: "the Word of the Lord God" — the Memra, the divine speech as a presence in its own right. A...
The Torah says God made "garments of skin" for Adam and his wife. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:21) tells us whose skin. "The Lord God made to Adam and to his wife vestures ...
Adam's expulsion becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:24), a sweeping theological statement about everything God made before He made anything. God drove the man out fro...
What was the "mark of Cain"? The Torah only says God placed a sign on him so no one would kill him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:15) tells us what the sign was. "The Lord s...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 5:3) reopens old wounds. "Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat Sheth, who had the likeness of his image and of his similitude: for be...
The Torah says cryptically of Enoch: "he walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us where he went. "Hanok served in the trut...
The enigmatic "Nephilim" of (Genesis 6:4) get names in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. "Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days." These are the Watche...
The Torah says to set a "tzohar" in the ark — a mysterious word usually translated "window" or "light." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:16) tells us Noah had to fetch it. "Go ...
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 8:11) takes a verse every child knows and slips a piece of mystical geography into it. The dove returns at evening. She carries a fresh-plucked o...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:12) introduces the idea of a sign — an ot — that will anchor the covenant through all time. This is the sign of the covenant which I establish ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:14) explains the rainbow with a detail the plain Hebrew does not supply. When I spread forth My glorious cloud over the earth, the bow shall be...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:16) sharpens the promise one more time. The bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between th...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:17) closes the rainbow passage with a final seal. Noah is told face to face: This is the sign of the covenant that I have covenanted between My...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:20) is one of the most dreamlike details in the whole Flood cycle. Noah began to be a man working in the earth. And he found a vine which the r...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:1) opens the story of the Tower of Babel with a claim so bold it has echoed through Jewish thought for two thousand years. All the earth was (...
At the spring in the wilderness, Hagar does something that no one in Genesis has done before. She gives God a name. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 16:13) renders her declaratio...
When the Lord frames the covenant in (Genesis 17:7), Targum Pseudo-Jonathan slips in one of its most telling technical terms. The covenant is established between My Word and thee. ...
Chapter 18 of Genesis opens with one of the most intimate moments in the Torah, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives it a medical detail the Hebrew leaves implicit. The glory of the Lo...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:2) gives the three visitors at Abraham's tent their heavenly job descriptions. They are angels in the likeness of men, the Targum says, and th...
The Hebrew of (Genesis 18:3) is famously ambiguous. Is Abraham speaking to the angels, or to God? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan answers with a confident rearrangement. Abraham addresses t...
