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Gaster's exemplum No. 348 preserves a Jewish folk tale about the strangest accounting in the heavenly court. A wicked man died and was brought before the Holy One for judgment. The...
Gaster's exemplum No. 414, drawn from Rabbenu Nissim Gaon's 11th-century Chibbur Yafeh Me-HaYeshuah, tells the story of a rich man who decided to conduct an experiment on despair. ...
A pagan once approached Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai — the sage who had smuggled himself out of besieged Jerusalem inside a coffin and refounded Judaism at Yavneh — and said bluntly,...
Rabbi Meir, on his yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, used to lodge with Judah the butcher, whose wife took loving care of him. One year Judah's wife died. Judah remarried, and when R...
Rav Huna, the third-century head of the Babylonian academy at Sura, owned a vineyard and hired laborers to work it. One harvest day he refused to share wine with the men who were w...
A Jewish man named Nathan traveled to an island and was on the brink of committing a serious sin with a famous courtesan. The room was prepared. The door was closed. He was about t...
A father drank too much. His children, embarrassed, tried an extreme intervention. They refused to give him wine. They cut off the household supply. And when he kept finding it any...
When Adam understood that his own transgression had drawn death into every future generation, he did not try to defend himself. He mourned. He fasted for one hundred and thirty yea...
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?" ...
Elijah the Tishbite once appeared to Rav Yehudah, brother of Rav Salla the Holy, and the prophet asked him a question that could only come from a man who walked between worlds: &ld...
The tale is told of a certain Abu Golis, a pagan priest in the city of Damascus who later lived in Tiberias. He served an idol and prospered in its shadow, taking what he pleased o...
The Temple had been burned. Rabbi Joshua walked through the ashes of Jerusalem and said aloud, to no one in particular, “Woe to us. The place where Israel atoned for its sins...
The Torah's "Where are you?" is one of the shortest questions in Scripture. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:9) unfolds it. God calls to Adam and says, in the Targum's longer r...
Adam's answer, in the Torah, is evasive: "I was afraid because I was naked." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:10) lets him say more. "The voice of Thy Word heard I in the garde...
God turns to the woman, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:13) lets Eve expand on the Hebrew's terse "the serpent beguiled me." In the Targum she says, "The serpent beguiled ...
The Torah's warning to Cain — "sin crouches at the door" — becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:7), one of the clearest statements of Jewish free will in the entire Tor...
Cain's response to the curse, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:14), includes a nuance the Hebrew does not spell out. "Behold, Thou hast cast me forth today from the face of ...
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...
The Torah says Cain went to dwell in "the land of Nod." Nod in Hebrew means "wandering," and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:16) translates it plainly: "the land of the wander...
Lamech's argument continues in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:24). He does a piece of theological arithmetic in front of his wives. "For Cain who sinned and was converted by ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 4:25) slows the Torah down. Adam did not immediately father another son after the murder. The Targumist tells us it took a hundred and thirty yea...
The Torah's "his days shall be 120 years" gets a full theological frame in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 6:3). God speaks by His Word: "All the generations of the wicked which...
Even at the last possible moment, the door of repentance stays open. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:4) has God tell Noah: "Behold, I give you space of seven days; if they wil...
Before the first drop of the Flood struck the earth, heaven waited. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 7:10) teaches that the Holy One delayed the deluge for seven full days after ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 8:21) preserves one of the gentlest and most realistic sentences the Holy One ever speaks. After Noah's sacrifice, the Lord said in His Word, I w...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 10:11) adds a twist no one reading the plain Hebrew would expect. From that land went forth Nimrod, and reigned in Athur, because he would not be...
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 Hebrew of (Genesis 18:21) says only, "I will go down now and see." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens a window into what God is actually going down to see. And the window is heartbre...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 19:24) preserves one of the most heartbreaking traditions in all of rabbinic literature about the destruction of Sedom and Amorah. "And the Word ...
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...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns (Genesis 24:31) into a confession. Laban greets the servant with the warmest possible words — "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord" — and then lets slip ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:8) records the death of Abraham in a phrase so compact it can be read in five seconds and pondered for a lifetime. "Abraham expired, and died ...
The Torah in (Genesis 25:17) gives us a short obituary for Ishmael: one hundred and thirty-seven years, and then he "expired and was gathered to his people." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
Of all the Targum's expansions, this one may be the darkest. Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 25:29) describes the day Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils — and tells us exac...
When the warning finally reached Esau — do not marry a Canaanite — he did what a man who has already lost tries to do. He went sideways to find a wife who might count. The Targum P...
Jacob's vow at Bethel is, in the plain Torah text, a conditional prayer: if God keeps me and feeds me, then the Lord will be my God (Genesis 28:20–21). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan r...
The second son born through Bilhah is named Naphtali, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan hears in the name a principle of Jewish spiritual life. Rachel says: With affliction afflicted ...
As Jakob prepared his message to Esau, he did something strange. He instructed his servants to announce that the great blessing stolen years before had, in effect, come to nothing....
Here is why Jakob's fear was so great. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives the reason the plain Hebrew only hints at: he was greatly afraid, because for twenty years he had not been mindf...
Jacob was a strategist, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the tactical cleverness of his gift to Esau (Genesis 32:17). He did not send one large herd. He sent flock after flock,...
"I will make his countenance friendly by the gift which goes before me, and afterward I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's priv...
"And he himself went over before them, praying and asking mercy before the Lord; and he bowed upon the earth seven times, until he met with his brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ge...
"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they wept." In the plain Torah text, this is a moment of pure reconciliation. Targum Pseudo-...
"I have seen the look of your face, and it is to me as the vision of the face of your angel." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Jacob's most startling line to his brother (Genesis 3...
"Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar unto Eloha, who revealed Himself to you in your flight from before Esau your brother." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gene...
"Put away the idols of the peoples which are among you, which you took from the temple of Shekem, and purify you from the uncleannesses of the slain whom you have, and change your ...
"And they delivered into Jacob's hand all the idols of the people which were in their hands, which they had taken from the temple of Shekem, and the jewels that had been in the ear...
