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Targum Onkelos, a sixteen hundred-year-old Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch, to this day, is universally recognized as the most important translation of the Bible ever made. In fact, the Talmud promises that fulfilling the rabbinic tradition of shnayim mikra v echad Targum, studying the weekly Torah portion twice in the original and once with Onkelos, lengthens the days and years of all who fulfill this enriching mandate. It was with this in mind that veteran Bible scholars and teachers Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin and Rabbi Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, zl, and published a five-volume English translation of Targum Onkelos together with a running English commentary, entitled Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text (Gefen Publishing House, 2005 2012). This seminal work made the Aramaic text of Onkelos accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Now Rabbis Drazin and Wagner have done the same for a Hebrew-speaking audience. Iyunim B Targum, translated from the English by Yehoshua Rabinowitz, is a Hebrew edition of the previously published Understanding Onkelos: The Greatest Bible Translator(Targum, 2012), a companion volume to Onkelos on the Torah that focuses on the methodology of Targum Onkelos, explaining how its author treated depictions of God (especially the anthropomorphisms), negative portrayals of Israelite ancestors, obscure biblical phrases, and much more. It deepens the reader's understanding of the Torah as the talmudic rabbis and codifiers who extolled Onkelos wanted the Torah to be understood.

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Dr. Israel Drazin served for thirty-one years in the US military and attained the rank of Brigadier General. He has a PhD in Judaic studies, a master s degree in psychology, a master s degree in Hebrew literature, and is an attorney and a rabbi. He developed the legal strategy that saved the military chaplaincy when its constitutionality was attacked in court, and received the Legion of Merit for his service. He was the scholar who recognized that Targum Onkelos incorporated hundreds of words from the Tannaitic Midrashim, edited around 400 CE, and therefore must have been composed after that date, a period much later than has been widely accepted. He is the author of twenty-five books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authored with Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth-century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House. Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, z l, was Rabbi of the Beth HaMedrosh HaGadol Congregation in Denver, Colorado, for twenty-five years, during which time he was also a professor of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, as well as Founding Director of the Mizel Museum in Denver. He wrote, co-authored, edited, or co-edited fifteen volumes, including the five-volume Onkelos on the Torah, A Piece of My Mind, Traditions of the American Jew, Great Confrontations in Jewish History, and Great Schisms in Jewish History. He was also general editor of a six-volume series entitled Christian and Jewish Traditions in the 20th Century. Professor Wagner received six degrees of higher learning from Yeshiva University, including a doctorate in Jewish history. Before his recent demise, he resided in Jerusalem.

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