Q&A: A Letter from Mi
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
A Letter from Mi
Question
Hello Rabbi,
How are you?
I wanted to ask: in the Torah it says that Noah’s ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, but in Targum Onkelos it says “the mountains of Kardu.” I didn’t understand the connection between Ararat and Kardu. After all, Ararat is the name of a place, so what does the translation mean by that?
Answer
The name of one of the two mountains of Ararat was Kedron or Kardu. See Keter Yonatan there:
(4) And the ark came to rest in the seventh month, which is the month of Nisan, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. There the name of one mountain was Kardania, and the name of one mountain was Arminia, and from there the city of Armenia was built in the land of the east: