אונקלוס הגר

Onkelos was not born a Jew. By tradition he was the nephew of the emperor Titus or Hadrian, born to the ruling family of Rome, with everything open before him. And yet he chose to leave the palace and enter under the wings of the Divine Presence, a righteous convert by free choice (Gittin 56b).

The Talmud relates that Onkelos raised up the great enemies of Israel by necromancy to ask them the standing of the people of Israel in the world of truth, and all of them, even the wicked among them, answered that Israel is very important on high. Out of honest inquiry, and not out of interest, he came to the truth.

His great contribution was the Targum. Onkelos composed, or more precisely restored and established, the Aramaic translation of the Five Books of the Torah, in days when Aramaic was the language of the people and many no longer understood the Holy Tongue. The Sages said that the Targum was originally given at Sinai and forgotten, and Onkelos set it up again from the mouths of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua (Megillah 3a).

Targum Onkelos is not a merely literal translation. It explains, removes physical descriptions from the Creator, and decides between the plain meanings of the verses, until it became the foundational commentary that Rashi and all the early authorities rely upon.

The Sages fixed a law for the generations: a person must complete his weekly portions together with the community, 'twice Scripture and once Targum' (Berakhot 8a), and the Targum is that of Onkelos. So the convert entered into the study routine of every Jew, week after week.

Onkelos teaches that a righteous convert is not a guest among the people, but can be one of the pillars of the transmission of the Torah. A man who came from the outside, by the power of truth, gave every future generation a tool without which the study of Torah cannot be done.