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Rabbi Ishmael was known as a master of dream-interpretation. Two students with identical dreams could come to him and walk away with opposite readings, because Ishmael understood t...
When Rabbi Judah the Prince — the great redactor of the Mishnah — lay dying at Tzippori, the rabbis gathered around his bed. The people of Israel fasted and prayed. On ...
The old collections preserve a small anecdote about a woman named Justina, daughter of Asverus, who was said to have been married at six years old and to have borne a child at seve...
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...
The Torah gives one of its most peculiar laws. If a Hebrew slave, after six years of service, chooses to stay with his master rather than go free, his ear is brought to the doorpos...
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 Abraham took two of his young men. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 22:3 names them: Eliezer, the faithful servant, and Ishmael, the firstborn son whom Abrah...
When Isaac laid his hands on Jacob a second time, this time with full knowledge of whom he was blessing, he called down the name by which the patriarchs had always known the Holy O...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 15:27 reads the stopover at Elim as a map of Israel's constitution: And they came to Elim; and in Elim were twelve fountains of water, a fountain f...
When the people again cried for water, the Holy One's instruction to Moses, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders Exodus 17:5, is quietly pointed: Pass over before the people, and take...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes a remarkable scene: "Jethro took burnt offerings and holy sacrifices before the Lord, and Aaron and all the elders of Israel came to eat bread ...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates Jethro's criteria for judges into four clear qualifications: "Thou shouldst elect from all the people men of ability who fear the Lord, uprigh...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the triage principle Jethro proposed: "Let them judge the people at all times, and every great matter bring to thee, but every little thing let...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan spells out the staggering arithmetic of Moses's judicial reform: "Moses selected able men from all Israel, and appointed them chief over the people — rab...
One of the strangest rituals in the civil law is the piercing of a servant's ear. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with bureaucratic precision. "His master shall bring him bef...
One of the most interpretively rich laws in the Torah is the difference between stealing an ox and stealing a sheep. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not leave the puzzle unsolved. ...
The plain verse of Exodus 24:18 is almost flat. Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain, and he was there forty days and forty nights. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot le...
The construction of the Mishkan is described in Exodus 26 with a catalog of measurements and materials that reads, on the surface, like an architect's invoice. Ten curtains of fine...
Why five curtains on one side and six on the other? The Torah simply gives the numbers (Exodus 36:16). But Targum Pseudo-Jonathan offers a staggering interpretation: he joined five...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 39:33 does something the plain Hebrew text does not. It tells us where, exactly, the finished tabernacle was brought. Not to a random tent. Not to ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 40:11 turns the consecration of the bronze laver into a vision of the distant future. Anoint the laver, the meturgeman says, on account of Jehoshua...
Open the Torah to its first verse and you find God alone. No angels, no counselors, no assistants. The Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 1:1 — a compilation edited in the Buber rece...
A Roman noblewoman — the matrona of Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 2:1 — once walked up to R. Yose ben Halafta, a second-century sage of Tzippori, and asked a question she clearl...
How do you know who the teacher is? By who shows up first. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 4:2 offers a second riff on Psalm 18:36's line about divine humility, and this one turns...
Earthly kings love main gates. They enter cities through the grandest archway, with trumpets and banners, so everyone sees the procession. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 4:4 argu...
Genesis 18:22 contains one of the most famous scribal corrections in the Hebrew Bible. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 4:6 brings it out into the open. R. Simon read the verse alo...
A king introduces himself first. "I am the king," he says, "and I have built this city." The name comes before the work. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 4:7 records Ben Azzai poin...
Heretics once cornered R. Simlai, a third-century sage of the land of Israel, and tried to trap him on a grammatical point. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 7:1 records the exchang...
The first verse of the Torah contains two words that English translations almost always skip. The Hebrew et (את) appears twice in Genesis 1:1 — "in the beginning God created et the...
There was once a moment — so the rabbis taught — when the universe would not stop growing. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 11:3 preserves a cosmology that would sound at home in m...
The Torah has a default order. Moses before Aaron. Joshua before Caleb. Father before mother. Heaven before earth. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 14:1 collects the quiet exceptio...
