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In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro visits Moses in the wilderness, gives advice about delegating judges, and leaves. The Targum Jonathan on (Exodus 18) transforms this administrative visi...
Leviticus 12 is one of the shortest chapters in the Torah—just eight verses about purification after childbirth. The Targum Jonathan keeps it concise but adds small details that re...
Leviticus 18 lists the prohibited sexual relationships. The Targum Jonathan frames the entire chapter with a promise and a threat that go far beyond the Hebrew text. The promise co...
Leviticus 21 restricts which priests may serve at the altar. The Targum Jonathan expands the list of disqualifying blemishes with clinical precision that goes well beyond the Hebre...
The Sotah ritual—the ordeal of the woman accused of adultery—is already one of the strangest passages in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan makes it stranger, adding psychologic...
Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses. The Hebrew Bible is vague about why. The Targum Jonathan fills in the backstory with a Cushite queen, a celibate prophet, and a divine rebuke tha...
When Miriam died on the tenth day of the month Nisan, the well that had sustained Israel throughout their desert wanderings vanished. The Targum makes this connection explicit in a...
After Aaron died, the protective Cloud of Glory vanished. Amalek, who had disguised himself by taking the throne of Arad, saw his opportunity. The Targum's version of (Numbers 21) ...
The place was called Shittim, and the Targum explains the name: it derives from shetutha, meaning foolishness and depravity. The Targum's version of (Numbers 25) describes Moabite ...
After the plague killed twenty-four thousand, God ordered a new census. The Targum's version of (Numbers 26) opens with a phrase absent from the Torah: "the compassions of the heav...
The five daughters of Zelophehad—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah—heard that the Promised Land would be divided only among males and immediately went to the court. The Targ...
The Targum transforms the Torah's bare itinerary of Israel's wilderness journeys in (Numbers 33) into an annotated guide of miracles and disasters. Every campsite gets a story, a n...
The final chapter of Numbers in the Targum's version (Numbers 36) resolves a legal crisis that the daughters of Zelophehad had inadvertently created. The heads of the clan of Gilea...
The Torah's rule against cross-dressing in (Deuteronomy 22:5) is brief and absolute. Targum Jonathan rewrites it entirely, replacing the general prohibition with something specific...
Targum Jonathan transforms the assembly laws of (Deuteronomy 23) with details that reshape who belongs to Israel and why. A man "born of fornication" cannot enter the congregation—...
The Torah's divorce law in (Deuteronomy 24) states that a second husband may dislike the wife. Targum Jonathan adds something astonishing: "should they proclaim from the heavens ab...
The levirate marriage ceremony in (Deuteronomy 25) is already dramatic in the Torah. Targum Jonathan turns it into theater. The brother-in-law's refusal must happen "before five of...
Jeremiah said: when I was coming up to Jerusalem, I lifted up my eyes and saw a woman sitting on the mountaintop, her clothes were black and her hair unkempt. She cried: I am seeki...
Another explanation: “O poor tempestuous one, who was not consoled…” (Isaiah 54:11) R’ Levi said any where that it says she does not have, she has. It is written “…that is Zion who...
Chapter 2 Our forefather Jacob was 63 when he was blessed. Ishmael died at that time as is written, "Esau saw that Isaac had blessed...Jacob listened to his father...Esau saw [the ...
"And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year..." (Numbers 1:1).1Guggen...
Chapter 9 They [the Israelites]--the entire congregation--came to the wilderness of Tzin in the first month, and the nation settled there, and Miriam died there and was buried ther...
Chapter 10 “And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that th...
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said t...
With ten utterances the world was created. And what does this teach, for surely it could have been created with one utterance? But this was so in order to punish the wicked who des...
"So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with back breaking labor [b'farech]" (Ex. 1:13). R. Elazar says, "B'pe rach—with a soft mouth." R. Shmuel says, "B'frichah—With ri...
Another explanation: As she purified the entire house of her father like the blood of a bird (tzipor, used in purifying some impurities). Rabbi Yose bar Chaninah said, 'They sought...
Rabbi Meir had a problem. Hooligans in his neighborhood were making his life miserable. His solution was direct—he prayed to God for them to die. His wife, Beruria, one of the shar...
When Pharaoh decided to enslave the Israelites, he consulted three advisors. According to Sotah 11a, what happened to each of them perfectly matched the advice they gave. Balaam re...
The Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt because of the righteous women. According to Sotah 11b, Rav Avira taught that while the men had given up hope under Pharaoh's slavery, th...
When Moses was born, the entire house filled with light. According to Sotah 12a, his mother Yocheved saw immediately that he was special—the Torah's phrase "she saw that he was goo...
Pharaoh's daughter did not accidentally find Moses. According to Sotah 12b, she came to the river to immerse herself—not for bathing, but to wash away the spiritual impurity of her...
On the night of the Exodus, while the entire nation of Israel was loading Egyptian gold and silver, Moses was doing something else. According to Sotah 13a, he was searching for the...
The death of Moses is the most devastating scene in the Torah—and the Talmud in Sotah 13b expands it into something almost unbearable. Moses pleaded with God not to let him die. He...
Rabbi Elazar ben Dordia was a man consumed by desire. The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah says there was not a single prostitute in the world he had not visited. When he heard abou...
The Romans wrapped Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion in a Torah scroll, piled bundles of vine branches around him, and set him on fire. To prolong his agony, they placed wet wool over his...
"A husband inherits from his wife." From where do we learn this? Learn it from “And he shall inherit it,” (Numbers 27:11) with the word “it” written in the feminine “otah,” which c...
Deborah the prophetess did something no other judge in Israel had done — she held court outdoors, beneath a palm tree. The Yalkut Shimoni on Nach explains exactly why, and the reas...
Why does the text announce him (by name), and his wife, and his sons? Because they didn't prevent each other [from abandoning the poor in Beit Lechem and leaving for Moav], [and th...
The daughter of the Emperor said to Rabbi Joshua: “Your God is a builder, so let Him build a tent here." She became leprous and had to be placed in a tent as they do in Rome. She a...
A Roman noblewoman — a Matrona, as the sages called her — came to a rabbi with a question that seemed trivial but concealed a deep truth. "Why," she asked, "is the letter Lamed tal...
Beruria and the wife of a Min disputed about the words "Rejoice O barren one”, and the woman asked why she should rejoice because she had not had any children and the answer was, l...
Woman cannot keep a secret. A Hegemon twits a Jew with that saying, and is convinced of the truth by feigning illness and telling his wife under an oath, that he had become pregnan...
The beautiful son and daughter of R. Ishmael were sold as slaves, and were shut up by their masters in one room in order to obtain similarly beautiful children, not recognising one...
Zophnat, daughter of the high priest, was torn from everything she had ever known. Sold into slavery, she stood on the auction block while the seller stripped away her garments one...
Rabbi Akiva sat in a Roman prison, and his captors gave him a choice: abandon the Torah, or rot in chains. He chose the chains. The Roman authorities pressed him repeatedly. They o...
The son of Hananya joined a band of robbers and betrayed them to one of the great men of Rome. They found it out and killed him. In the funeral oration his father delivered, he tri...
When the Roman siege tightened around Jerusalem, starvation became a weapon more terrible than any sword. Doeg ben Josef was a man of means — he offered a full measure of gold for ...
