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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...
When the Torah says simply "and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night," Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:5) pauses to explain why. Naming, in the Targum, i...
The Torah tells us the sun, moon, and stars are for "signs and seasons, days and years." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 1:14) lets this sentence breathe. The luminaries, in the...
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 says God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:3) lets the sentence expand: the Lord blessed the seventh day more than all the d...
The eighth day is the answer to a careful question: how soon can a newborn be brought under the covenant? Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 17:12) settles the timing and then push...
Until the night before the Exodus, time belonged to Egypt. The calendar that mattered was the calendar of Pharaoh, its new year set by the flooding of the Nile. Targum Pseudo-Jonat...
Passover has two names. The night of deliverance is Pesach. The week that follows is Chag haMatzot — the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 12:17) preserv...
At Marah, where the water was too bitter to drink, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells us what the Hebrew only hints at. Moses prayed, and the Lord showed him the bitter tree of Ardiphne,...
When the grumbling began in the wilderness of Sin, the Holy One responded not with rebuke but with a test. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:4) renders it: Behold, I will cause ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:5) reads the Sabbath instructions for the manna as a halakhic footnote to the whole story: And on the sixth day they shall prepare what they se...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:23) gives us the first explicit teaching of Sabbath cookery in the Torah, and the Targumist relays it with a domestic precision that would be a...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 16:29) transforms a short Hebrew verse into the founding document of the Sabbath's geography: Behold, because I have given you the Sabbath, I gave...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the Sabbath commandment with a widening circle. "But the seventh day is for rest and quietude before the Lord your God: you shall not perform any...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan grounds the Sabbath in cosmology. "For in six days the Lord created the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and whatever is therein, and rested on the s...
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan opens the civil law section of Exodus with an astonishing clarification. "If thou shalt have bought a son of Israel, on account of his theft, six years h...
A calf is born. A lamb is born. The farmer knows this one is destined for the altar — a firstborn male, dedicated to God from its first breath. What happens in the interval between...
Six years you plow. Six years you harvest. Six years you measure the field by what it produces for you. Then the seventh year arrives — and the ledger flips. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan...
It would have been enough to say: rest on the seventh day. That alone would have been a radical gift in the ancient world. But the Torah cannot stop there. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan o...
The Targum on (Exodus 24:16) preserves a detail that the plain text rushes past. The glory of the Lord's Shekhinah rested on Mount Sinai, and the Cloud of Glory covered it for six ...
The Mishkan was about to be built. Artisans had received the Spirit of wisdom. Materials were being gathered. And then, in the middle of the construction commands, God paused and s...
The Sabbath command carries a severity that shocks modern readers. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it in its original sharpness: "Ye shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy to ...
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not soften the law. It specifies the method: "Whoso doeth work upon the Sabbath, dying he shall die, by the casting of stones" (Exodus 31:15). Stoning, ...
The Hebrew Torah commands Israel to keep the Sabbath. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds three words that change the flavor entirely: Israel shall keep the Sabbath "to perform the delight...
At the heart of the Sabbath command stands a theological riddle. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it faithfully: "In six days the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the ear...
The Jewish year moves with the grain. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 34:22) marks two hinges of that turning wheel: the feast of weeks at the first of the wheat harvest, and the...
The Sabbath is called menucha — rest — but Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 35:2) makes clear it was never optional. The verse commands six days of work, then on the seventh day t...
Creation had a schedule. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 17:1 records the Schools of Shammai and Hillel debating when the day began — and then offers a tidy accounting of what was...
(Genesis 2:3) ends with a grammatically odd phrase: God rested from all His work "which God had created to make." Not "which God had made." Which God had created to make. Midrash T...
Maybe, just maybe, you're missing the Shabbat (the Sabbath). You know, the Sabbath. That sacred pause in the week, that island of stillness in our often-frantic lives. But did you ...
It's called Shabbat, the Sabbath. And it’s powerful. The mystics teach us that keeping Shabbat is more than just refraining from work. It's about entering a different dimension of ...
Jewish ritual is rarely about only the action — it's about the choreography of meaning. Take (Leviticus 23:11), which instructs us about waving the omer "before the Lord, for accep...
We all know rain is a blessing, a sign of divine favor. But what if it rained at the wrong time? What if the heavens opened up right when you were trying to do your weekly shopping...
A Question.9Sections 2 and 3 of “In the Beginning” and the fourth section of “Noah” were taken from the She’iltot of R. Ahai, a distinguished Babylonian scholar who left Palestine ...
A response to an inquiry from the Academy.13Probably a reference to the Academy at Pumbeditha. R. Ahai, who wrote this in his She’iltot, expected to be appointed head of the Academ...
May it please our master to teach us: If one of two sons is born to a man on Friday and the other on the Sabbath,8Either half-brother born of two different wives or twins born of o...
In the third month (Exod. 19:11). May it please our master to instruct us: May one cure a pain in his mouth on the Sabbath? Thus do our masters teach us: One who has a pain in his ...
(Numb. 3:40:) “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Enroll every [first-born] male….’” Let our master instruct us: When an infant is born at six months, does one profane the Sabbath for ...
