All you ever wanted to know about Torah (and more.) This document, prepared in conjunction with the exhibition As It Is Written: Project 304,805, on view Oct 8, 2009–Mar 29, 2011 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, explores the role of Torah as a source text (content), as a material object (how it is created), as a ritual object (the function in most Jewish congregations), and as a muse (as a source from which law and stories and history have been created for centuries.)
To view the other two parts of this series, or to download all three parts as a single, printable document, click below.
The Torah was commanded to us through Moses, an inheritance for all the Jewish people,
The Torah service is an elaborate gathering in the synagogue, filled with readings, singing, chanting, and silent prayer. This public reading of the Torah is one of the most important rituals in Judaism and has continued as a centerpiece of contemporary religious Jewish life throughout the world. Reading from the Torah Scroll is extremely difficult. Hebrew consists of consonants and vowels, however, the script in the Torah Scroll contains no vowels, only consonants. In fact, the vowel system in Hebrew, which appears as a series of dots and dashes under and around the consonants, was invented sometime around the fifth century when Jews no longer spoke Hebrew as their primary language and required the help of vowel notations to pronounce holy texts correctly. In addition, the text is always chanted, following a standardized notation system with cantillation symbols that signify the proper way to chant the text.
The main Torah services are held on Saturday mornings, with additional services on Saturday afternoons, Mondays, and Thursdays, depending on the specific congregation. The ritual for reading from the sacred Sefer Torah symbolically reenacts the giving of the Torah to Moses at Sinai and the worship of it in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.
While a printed version of the Torah can be read alone by anyone, at any time, in any location, the Torah Scroll can only be used for public worship when a minyan—a quorum of ten people—is present. The first call to read the Torah publicly came from Moses himself, who toward the end of Deuteronomy states, “every seventh year . . . at the feast of Booths . . . you shall read this Torah aloud in the presence of all Israel . . . that they may hear and so learn to respect the Lord your God and observe faithfully every word of this Torah.” Historians believe that a regular public reading or chanting of the Torah was introduced by Ezra the Scribe after the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity (c. 537 BCE).
To read from the Torah scroll, one needs at least a minyan, or quorum of ten. The congregation stands while the doors of the ark are opened and the Torah is taken out and typically given to the cantor or other honoree, who cradles it in both arms. Then the Torah is carried on a slow procession through the synagogue. As the Torah passes, congregants often touch its mantle with their hand, prayer book, or tallith (prayer shawl) and then kiss the object that has touched the mantle. The Torah is then taken to the bimah (reading platform) and its coverings (breastplate, finials, mantle) are removed to prepare for the reading from the scroll. After the reading, the Torah is dressed, sometimes raised, and paraded around the room once again while members of the congregation stand and are given another opportunity to kiss the scroll before it is finally returned to the ark.
The Torah is divided into fifty-four sequential sections, each known as a parshah (Hebrew for portion). Each week, a different portion is read, advancing until the entire Five Books of Moses are completed in a single year. Sometimes two passages are read in a single day in order to ensure that the cycle is completed over the course of one calendar year. After reading from the Torah, the haftorah that is thematically linked to the parashah is chanted. The haftorah is a series of selections from the book of Nevi’im (Prophets).
Many synagogues in the United States have rethought the structure of the weekly Torah readings and have adopted a triennial cycle, which was once used in ancient Israel. This approach allows congregations to shorten the weekly service and devote more time for discussing the Torah portion and its relevance to contemporary life. In the triennial cycle, only one-third of the weekly parashah is read in a given year; the parashah read is still consistent with the annual cycle but the entire reading of the Torah is completed over three years.
In addition to the weekly public readings, two annual Jewish holidays feature a special celebration of the Torah. Translated as “rejoicing the Torah,” Simchat Torah occurs during the Hebrew month of Tishrei (September or October) and marks the conclusion of the annual reading of the Torah, and its beginning. The last chapters of Deuteronomy—the final book at the Torah—are read, immediately followed by the first chapter of Genesis. This tradition ensures that the study of the Torah never comes to an end. For this holiday, the Torahs are taken from the arks and carried in a procession around the sanctuary, with all of the congregants given the opportunity to hold the Torah and pass it along. The parading of the Torah is accompanied with joyful singing and dancing. In some synagogues, the entire Torah scroll is unrolled as part of the celebration, with each congregant having the chance to hold part of the unrolled scroll.
Shavuot was originally an agricultural festival, but it has evolved to have an additional meaning: the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. While Shavuot has few rituals associated with it, many stay up all night studying Torah, especially the Book of Exodus and the chapter containing the Ten Commandments. Other customs include eating dairy foods and reading the Book of Ruth. Shavuot occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (late May or early June).
In the Jewish community, the first experience that many people have with the Torah is connected to their bar or bat mitzvah, when they are first allowed to read from a Sefer Torah. Bar mitzvah literally means “son of the commandment,” and bat mitzvah, “daughter of the commandment.” Until their bar or bat mitzvah—after their thirteenth birthday—children are not permitted to read from the Torah during a Torah service.
The modern-day bar or bat mitzvah is a ceremony in which the child steps up to the bimah (the platform or table in the synagogue’s sanctuary) and performs ritual activities for which he or she has prepared for months. The child’s role varies but nearly always includes being called up to the Torah for his or her first aliyah, the recitation of blessings over the Torah (in traditionalist synagogues, girls do not receive an aliyah). The celebrant also reads from the weekly Torah portion and chants the haftarah, the reading from the Tanakh that follows the Torah reading. In many synagogues, the child also offers an interpretation of the Torah reading, an opportunity to derive personal meaning from the sacred communal text. Traditional Jewish law says that after a person has a bar mitzvah they are considered an adult, capable of fulfilling a variety of obligations under Jewish law. In contemporary Jewish life, it is becoming more commonplace for adults to have a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony if they did not have one in their youth.
Dropping a Torah is an extremely severe offense. According to Jewish law, one is supposed to fast for forty days after the incident. Anyone who happens to witness the Torah fall is supposed to fast as well. There are many ways to interpret the rule about fasting, and when a Torah is accidentally dropped, each congregation determines the appropriate response.
L’dor v’dor—from generation to generation—is a dictum that permeates all aspects of Jewish life. Each Torah scroll is made with the understanding that a Torah written today will be passed down to future generations, just as Torahs we use today were passed down to this generation. Torah scrolls, as sacred objects, are protected in every way possible—from the way they are “dressed,” to how they are stored, to how they are read. The materials used to make a Torah Scroll are durable. However, throughout the life of a Torah, it is not unusual to have repairs made to the lettering or to the parchment or stitching.
When a Torah scroll—for whatever reason—can no longer be used for public worship, it is rendered pasul. These Torahs are either used for educational purposes or buried in a Jewish cemetery according to the prohibition against destroying sacred texts, particularly those containing the name of God. We learn this prohibition from a midrash on Deuteronomy 12:4 that states, while we are bidden to destroy the places and implements of idolatry in the land of Canaan/Israel, “you shall not do that to Adonai, your God.” The accepted custom of ceremonial burial preserves the text from profanation.
Leading up to and during World War II, as Jewish communities throughout Central and Eastern Europe were in jeopardy, Jewish synagogues were often damaged beyond repair or destroyed completely. The sacred objects, Judaica, and books in the synagogues were pillaged by the Nazis. Many of these objects were collected with the intention of creating a museum devoted to the extinct Jewish race. In the former Czechoslovakia, for example, over 1,500 Torah scrolls were found deteriorating in a basement of a synagogue that had been turned into a warehouse during the war. In 1964, these Torahs were taken to London, and many have since been restored and distributed to synagogues, museums, and educational institutions around the world. In addition to their religious and instructional uses, these restored Torahs carry important stories and memorialize communities that have been destroyed.
Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Contemplate it, grow old over it, and never depart from it, for there is no finer pursuit.
The Torah scroll is a handwritten ritual object, the text is accessible in a variety of printed forms.
Chumash (translated as “Five”) is the Five Books of Moses in the form of a printed bound book.
The Five Books of Moses are also known as:
Genesis Bereshit, בראשית
Exodus Shemot,שמות
Leviticus Vayikra, ויקרא
Numbers Bamidbar, במדבר
Deuteronomy Devarim, דברים
Tanakh (Hebrew Bible or Scriptures) is the most widely used printed bound book containing the Torah. Tanakh is an acronym for the three different parts of the book: Torah (the Five Books of Moses); Neviim, or prophets, which includes eight different sections; and Ketuvim, or writings, made up of eleven different books. Christians refer to the Tanakh as the Old Testament.
Although the Torah refers explicitly to the Five Books of Moses, informally, it also encompasses the entire ecosystem of teachings, commentaries, and laws that have evolved over thousands of years.
Lively discussion around the Torah is at the heart of Jewish life and study, and the process of offering Torah commentaries (and commentaries on the commentaries) continues unabated, with an increasing variety of literary, psychological, feminist, and queer approaches. At the core of all these practices is the goal of connecting the Torah’s key principles of living in contemporary society.
The Talmud, also known as the Oral Torah, is the basis of the oral tradition and includes centuries of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. While for many centuries these discussions were taught and preserved orally, the Talmud was ultimately written down to ensure its preservation. The rabbinic discourse captured in the Talmud involves intricate logic interspersed with stories from the rabbis’ lives to prove their cases. There are two versions of the Talmud—the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud, compiled from the second to the fifth century CE, and the Babylonian Talmud, compiled until the eighth century CE in current-day Iraq. The Babylonian Talmud is more often studied and more frequently cited as the definitive source for Jewish law. The text of the Talmud was formally “fixed” by 600 CE. The page format of the Babylonian Talmud has remained almost unchanged since the very first editions.
This kabbalistic dictum refers to the Torah with the black fire symbolizing the written letters and the white fire representing the white space around them.
The white space represents the ocean of interpretive possibilities, all of which, in some sense, are holy. Both fires are meant to be read and interpreted, and while the black fire tells us what the Torah says literally, the white fire opens space for understanding what the Torah means.
Midrash is a body of canonical rabbinic literature that was codified during the Rabbinic period. Midrashic literature explains the biblical text from both ethical and devotional points of view. This provides a context for the Torah’s narrative and helps to clarify and fill in the blanks of the skeletal biblical text. The midrash, in lower case, refers to the process of study and interpretation of the text that continues to this day. When rabbis give sermons after the Torah service in synagogue, they often provide their own midrashic interpretation, which might involve the telling of stories based on the Bible.
Pardes is a Hebrew word meaning “orchard” or “garden.” This term is also applied to a method of studying Torah.
Since the Middle Ages, practitioners of the kabbalah—Judaism’s tradition of mystical wisdom—have believed that every scriptural text has at least four levels of meaning, which together create a path to comprehending the divine. Peshat (“plain” or “simple”) is the literal meaning of the text; Remez (“hint”) is the allegorical meaning; Derash, from the Hebrew word darash (“inquire” or “seek”), indicates the comparative meaning, as given through similar occurrences; and Sod (“secret” or “mystery”) is the mystical meaning, given through inspiration or revelation, which can be referred to as the kabbalistic level of interpretation. The initial letters of the words Peshat, Remez, Derash, and Sod form the acronym PaRDeS. Hence, Pardes has become the designation of the four-level approach to Torah study and interpretation.
Closely associated with the concept of Pardes is Rabbi Akiva (c. 50–135 CE), who was considered one of the great spiritual masters of the Jewish tradition. There is a well-known legend of Rabbi Akiva entering Pardes with three other great rabbis seeking to explore the Torah to its ultimate depth. It is a tale about the importance of being fully prepared to study the Torah on multiple levels, and the consequences of attempting to enter into a level of learning for which one is not ready. The story ends with one rabbi dying, another going crazy, and a third becoming a heretic. Only Rabbi Akiva “entered in peace and left in peace.”
Spanning the lobby of The Contemporary Jewish Museum is the Pardes wall, an architectural installation incorporating an abstract representation of the concept of Pardes. You can see the four Hebrew letters that create the word Pardes—Peh, Resh, Dalet, and Samech—embedded in the wall and floor.
The phrase Shiv’im Panim l’Torah—“the Torah has seventy faces”—expresses the understanding that the Torah has many and varied meanings. The interpretation of the Torah is an essential element of its role in Jewish life, with the study of each verse yielding different interpretations, and each interpretation yielding new meaning.
Header image and photos: Installation views of As it is Written: Project 304, 805. On view October 8, 2009–March 29, 2011 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. Photo credit: Ben Blackwell.