Quand lit-on la Tora ? Qu’est-ce que “monter” à la Tora ? Qui a découpé le texte biblique en parachiot ? A quoi sert la “haftara” ? À sim’hat Tora on clôt le cycle de lecture public de la Tora pour en recommencer immédiatement un nouveau.
Philippe Haddad fait le point en quelques minutes.
00:00 Le cycle de lecture
03:28 La paracha
06:21 Déroulement de la lecture
The reading of the Torah is vital for Jewish life. It is the rythm of the jewish calendar. But you’ve probably wondered when, and how, was the text cut up? By who ? Who set the reading rules for the synagogue? like the calling up to the Bimah, or the reading cycle adjustments.
Well, it is very simple and logical. Follow me on a guided tour of the rules of reading. When is the Torah read? The most important reading is on Saturday morning. But the regular synagogue attendants actually listen four times in a week the Torah reading In addition to the saturday morning,
The Torah is read on Monday morning, Thursday mornings and Saturday afternoons On Mondays and Thursdays, we read the beginning of the coming sabbath section and on Saturdays afternoon, the start of the of the following week, in order to link one sabbath to another. Why six days of reading ? because in ancient times,
Mondays and Thursdays were market days and therefore gathering places for the people. As for the Sabbath, the day off par excellence, is it dedicated to listening and studying the Torah. When does the reading cycle begin? Well, there’s no beginning and no ending. On Simchat Torah, “the Torah’s joy”
The last holiday of the month of Tishri, after Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, we read the last lines of the Torah scroll that deal with the death of Moses. Then we rewind to read again the entire parchment and we start with the creation of the world.
Reading the Torah is therefore an eternal beginning. There is no break, just like the scroll in which it continues. When was this reading first introduced? It is an ancient tradition back from the Vᵉ century BC. It was instituted by Ezra, the great guide of the Jewish community,
On the way to the Babylonian exile. In fact, according to the Talmud, Ezra only took on the institution that Moses had established before in the desert Moses didn’t want the children of Israel to have three days in a row without a date with God. by listening to the Torah.
The sages link religious duty of reading the Torah on Monday, Thursday and saabbath with a verse, that is seemingly unrelated to the subject, it follows the opening of the Red Sea. ” The Children of Israel walked three days in the desert, and found no water.” What does that have to do with anything?
Traditionally, water symbolizes the Torah, and Israel cannot go three days without Torah’s water. It highlights the vital nature of the Torah for the Jewish people. From Monday to Thursday, from Thursday to Shabbat, from Shabbat to Monday. We can’t get through three days without the Torah
The parashiyot division : what do we read exactly ? So far, I’ve talked about sections. The Torah scroll is actually divided into 54 parts, sections, i.e. the number of weeks in a solar year. On every Shabbat, we read one of these 54 sections. Not a single line is omitted.
Each of these sections is called a parasha or a sidra. The word “parasha” comes from the word “parosh”, which mean to extract. The parasha is therefore aTorah’s excerpt. The word “sidra” comes from the word “seder”. It is the chronological “order” of the reading. Sephardim usually prefer “parasha”, and Ashkenazi prefer “sidra”.
Each parashah has a name, and it is always the first meaningful word of the text. Thus, the first parashah is called Bereshit, “in the beginning”, which is the inaugural word of the Genesis. The second is called Noah, Noé, named of the hero of the Deluge episode,
And the third will relay them for you, from the first words God speaks to Abraham when he reveals himself to him, and and so on. How do you recognize a parashah in parchment? We know that the text of the Torah is presented without vowels and punctuation.
The only visible punctuation, so to speak, is a wide space between two verses and line breaks. When there is a blank space, the space for write nine letters. The chapter is said to be Saint-Thomas which means closed. But when you go to the line, which leaves a space
Free to the end of the column, then we say that the chapter P toucha, i.e. open. Another purely oral punctuation is that of cantillation. Indeed, the Torah is actually sung. A whole range of short musical phrases give melody to biblical texts. These musical phrases are called Tamim,
Are the same for all Jewish communities worldwide. But tunes differ greatly from one community to another. to each other. An extraordinary diversity of melodies between Jews from Germany, from Poland, Morocco, Yemen or Iraq, even if everyone naturally thinks theirs is the best. more beautiful. This cantillation determines the cutting
Of the biblical text in inverted verses. And what about the chapters, you may ask? The division into chapters is of Christian origin. And yes, on the occasion of the disputatio instituted by the Church against Judaism in the Middle Ages, and here, I refer you to the Alef Beth clip on the subject.
The division into chapters was also accepted by the synagogue. So how does a Torah reading work? to the synagogue? Well, the scroll of the Torah came out of Aaron’s holy cupboard, then carried in procession to the Taba, i.e. the reading platform. The Sefer Torah is then stripped of its cloak.
Then we proceed to what is known as the. The uprising of these do Torah, i.e. the scroll is lifted by a devotee and presented to the whole community. With this presentation, the Torah is placed at the center of the community of Jewish life. Then the officiant calls a certain number of faithful
To the stage. Everyone recites blessings before and after the reading. This ascent to the Torah is called aliyah, as in there is talk of a rise in Israel on shabbat. This person is brought up to the Torah on Monday and Thursday, as well as Shabbat after 12 p.m., when reading is much more
Short. We only take three people upstairs. If, during weekday services, the number of ascents remains invariable, it is possible to add it on the Sabbath to all when you want to honour a great number of people. This is the case, for example, on a Shabbat that follows a wedding or bar mitzvah.
This is also the case at Yom Kippur, when we bring up all the people who only come on that day. Each additional call is called a motif, i.e. the one we add. The Order to ascend to the Torah is not random. If in the synagogue, there is a Mr. Cohen and
A Monsieur Lévy, well, first we’ll call Monsieur Cohen and then Mr Lévy. So this precedence is justified by the role of the played by the Cohen and Levy in the Jerusalem Temple. Cohen was in charge of the sacrifices. As for the Levys, they were in charge of the songs and donation management.
Of course, in the absence of Cohen and Lévy, any faithful can be called to ascend the Torah. Then each person called to the Torah recites two blessings before reading the passage. The faithful hate to belong to the people who received the Torah and after the reading,
He blesses God for having given us the Torah as a source of eternal life. After reading the Shabbat and holiday parasha another reading takes place the reading of the haftara. The term derives from the word pas tour means acquitted. It’s a text taken from the Book of the Prophets and
On a subject related to that of the parasha. The origins of this reading of the Torah date back at the time of the Greek occupation, in the IIIᵉ century B.C. the Christian era, the Greeks having forbidden public reading of the Torah. The sages of the time circumvented the ban by proposing
To read a text from the prophets echoing the texts of the Torah. I would also refer you to clip Aleph Beth, dedicated to the Book of the Prophets. Here we are. The tour is over, but really, like reading the Torah, it knows no end. So don’t worry, I’m not proposing to review
This clip over and over again, but one of the very numerous commentary conferences that an executive can offer you every week on the parasha.