2,569 texts · Page 36 of 54
A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God — who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant...
Four small teachings, stitched together like beads on a string, preserve what the sages thought mattered most in daily life. Rava said the man who pursues wisdom will receive the b...
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 story takes two breaths. Hillel the Elder was returning from a journey and walking the final miles toward his home in Jerusalem. As he approached the city, he heard loud noise ...
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...
The Rabbis gave practical instructions for living in a town visited by plague. When pestilence walks the streets, do not walk down the middle of the road. The middle is where the a...
On a lonely road, Rabbi Akiva met an ugly, exhausted man bent double under a massive bundle of firewood. "I adjure you," Akiva said. "Tell me — are you a man, or are you a demon?" ...
The Talmud keeps a ledger of shorter sayings — proverbs worn smooth by repetition, each one a whole argument compressed into a sentence. "Do not do to others what you would not hav...
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 curse of thorns and thistles arrives, and for the first time in the story, Adam argues back. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:18) has Adam pray: "I pray, through mercies fr...
In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:4), Abel's offering is described in three careful words: "the firstlings of the flock, and of their fat." The firstlings — the first-born of...
The Torah says, about the generation of Enosh, "then men began to call upon the name of the Lord." The Targumist reads this exactly the opposite way. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Gen...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 9:15) is a verse that has carried comfort through every Jewish generation. I will remember My covenant which is between My Word and between you a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 12:3) performs one of its most characteristic moves — it drops the future straight into the past. The plain verse says, I will bless those who bl...
In (Genesis 12:7) the covenant becomes architectural. The Lord appears to Abram, says To thy sons will I give this land, and Abram answers with stones. He builds an altar. Targum P...
Abram pitches his tent on a mountain east of Bethel, Ai on the other side, and the moment in (Genesis 12:8) almost passes without incident. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan catches the one d...
The verse is a hinge the Hebrew Bible almost hides. After the humiliation of Egypt, after Pharaoh hands Sarah back and sends the family away, (Genesis 13:3) tells us that Abram ret...
The verse in (Genesis 13:18) is the closing note of a long chapter. Abram pulls up his tent, moves south, and pitches it in the vale of Mamre at Hebron. He builds an altar. Targum ...
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...
It is a small verb and it does a great deal of work. He brought him forth without. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:5) keeps the gesture literal: the Lord brings Abraham outsi...
Two Hebrew words make a whole theology: and he believed. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 15:6) unpacks them with Aramaic precision, and the unpacking is worth the effort. He bel...
In the wilderness, Hagar meets an angel. And the angel does what angels rarely do — he names a child. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 16:11) keeps the name-meaning the Hebrew en...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:17) is the mirror image of Sarah's later laugh at the tent door. Abraham falls on his face. He does not argue out loud. He laughs — wondered, ...
(Genesis 17:20) is the Lord's answer to the previous verse's quiet sadness. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with full warmth. Concerning Ishmael I have heard thy prayer. Behold, ...
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...
(Genesis 18:5) in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns a simple meal into a moment of blessing. Abraham will bring bread so that the travelers may strengthen their hearts — and, the Targum...
(Genesis 18:14) is the Torah's answer to every reader who has ever wondered whether God notices the small disbeliefs of the faithful. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan takes the Hebrew's ha-y...
There is a quiet line in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 18:17) that changes how you read the whole Sodom episode. God speaks, as the Targum puts it, bememra — with His Word — a...
The angels turn. They set their faces toward Sedom. And the Targum on (Genesis 18:22) pauses to tell us what Abraham does in that moment: he "supplicated mercy for Lot, and ministe...
When Abraham begins his famous bargain in (Genesis 18:24), the Hebrew simply says "perhaps there are fifty righteous within the city." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns this into a deta...
The bargain continues. Abraham has offered fifty — ten righteous in each of the five plain-cities. Now, in (Genesis 18:28), he tries a different tactic. "Perhaps of the fifty innoc...
Abraham is not tired yet. In (Genesis 18:29) he descends one rung further in his negotiation, and the Targum spells out the logic most translations hide. "Perhaps there may be fort...
At (Genesis 18:30), Abraham's nerve almost breaks. "Let not the displeasure of the Lord, the Lord of all the world, wax strong against me, and I will speak." The Targum is tracking...
By (Genesis 18:31), Abraham is calling God "the Lord of all the world" — ribbon kol alma in the Targum's Aramaic — and apologizing in advance. "Imploring mercy, I have now begun to...
Here is where the bargain ends, and here is where Targum Pseudo-Jonathan slips in the detail most English readers miss. "I implore mercy before Thee! Let not the anger of the Lord,...
Sometimes the purest image of divine mercy in Torah is also the most embarrassing. (Genesis 19:16) in the Targum reads this way. "But he delayed: and the men laid hold on his hand,...
The angel has commanded Lot to flee to the mountain. Lot looks at the rising sun and the distant ridges and says, in (Genesis 19:19), a deeply human thing. "Behold, now, thy servan...
Lot continues his nervous negotiation in (Genesis 19:20). "Behold, now, I pray, this city, it is a near habitation, and convenient to escape thither; and it is small, and the guilt...
In (Genesis 19:21), the Targum renders the angelic answer with a startling economy. "And He said, Behold, I have accepted thee in this matter also, that I will not overthrow the ci...
(Genesis 19:29) gives the whole Sodom episode its underlying machinery in a single sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it plainly. "And it was when the Lord destroyed the c...
(Genesis 20:4) is remarkable for how boldly Abimelech speaks back to Heaven. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: "But Abimelek had not come nigh to defile her; and he said, Lord, shall the son...
(Genesis 20:7) is the final piece of God's word to Abimelech in the dream. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: "And now let the wife of the man return; for he is a prophet; he will pray for th...
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 Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan never lets a wilderness story pass without asking why the suffering. In Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:15), the answer is uncomfortable: when they cam...
The moment of turning is never where you expect it. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:16), the Aramaic paraphrase inserts a single gesture that changes the story's spiritual...
When the angel finally calls from heaven, the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 21:17) gives the reason out loud: for the righteousness' sake of Abraham. Ishmael lives not beca...
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...
