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The
Torah is made of five books :
· The
Book of Bereshit or Genesis
· The
Book of Shemot or Exodus
· The
Book of Vayikra or Leviticus
· The
Book of Bamidbar or Numbers
· The
Book of D’varim or Deuteronomy
The
names of those books correspond to the first words in Hebrew
written in the portion of the Torah. For example:
The
word Bereshit בראשית means « At
the beginning... »
The
word Shemot שמות means
« Names »
The
word Vayikra ויקרא means
« And (the L-rd) called... »
The
word Bamidbar במדבר means « In
the desert... »
The
word D’varim דבריםmeans
« ...the words... »
Each
Shabbat, and all year around, a portion of the Torah is read
each morning at the service.
And
he came to Nazareth, where he was brought up; and he entered,
according to his custom, into the synagogue on the sabbath
day, and stood up to read. Luke
4:16
In
this way, the Torah is read in a year by all the Jewish people
together in all four corners of the earth at the same time
than in Israel. The end of the Feast of Sukkoth (Tabernacles)
closes the Torah reading with a Feast called Simchat
Torah : the Joy of the Torah.
This
reading which starts with the Creation and ends with the
entering in the Holy Land leads us, through the journey of
the Israelites, to the learning of the knowledge of the G-d
, Creator of the heavens and the the earth. It is an Allyah,
an ascent to the Promised Land, the learning of the life
with G-d,
and the Jewish people is the prophetic lively reflect of
it.
Moshe
(Moses), despite his stature and his rightful title of great
prophet, won’t enter the Promised Land, because this
privilege has only been granted to the One who has the ability
of leading us into His Shabbat, where the ideal of the Torah
is fully achieved,
....In
Him.
The
Torah is divided in 54 portions. Each
portion or Parasha is read along with a portion of
the Prophets, called Haftara :
And
the book of the prophet Esaiah was given to him; and having
unrolled the book he found the place where it was written,
The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed
me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to
preach to captives deliverance, and to the blind sight,
to
send forth the crushed delivered, to
preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And
having rolled up the book, when he had delivered it up
to the attendant, he sat down; and the eyes of all in the
synagogue were fixed upon him.
And
he began to say to them, To-day this scripture is fulfilled
in your ears. Luke
4 :17-21
The Haftara is
a complement and has a similar significance than the weekly
Torah portion read each Shabbat morning.
It
was the Men of the Great Assembly, composed of 120 rabbis
who came back from the exile of Babylon who canonized the Tanach (Bible)
and classified the different books and readings.
The
word Tanach is an acrostic for the following books :
Torah composed
of the five first books:
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Neviim (Prophets)
composed of the first prophets :
Joshua
Judges
Samuel
(I and II)
Kings
(I and II)
and
of the last prophets :
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
which
include the twelve little prophets:
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
Ketuvim (Writings)
composed of the :
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
Song
of Songs
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Daniel
Ezra
Nehemiah
Chronicles
(I et II)
This
classification has been changed later by the Christians and
this is why there is a difference between the Christian Bibles
and the Jewish Tanach.
“...
who are Israelites; whose [is] the adoption, and the glory,
and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the service,
and the promises; whose
[are] the fathers; and of whom, as according to flesh,
[is] the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever.
Amen.” Romans 9:4-5
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