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The Torah and the Law

If you have ever been to a synagogue service or seen parts of a service on television or in a movie, you know that Jews read from a scroll. This scroll is the Torah. In this day of sophisticated digital publishing, a highly trained scribe (sofer in Hebrew) still produces each scroll by hand. The sofer writes on parchment using a quill and special ink in the same way and to the same exacting standards as has been done for centuries. Specifically, the Torah refers to the Five Books of Moses (the Pentateuch). Sometimes, however, people may use the word Torah in a general sense to refer to the entire Bible or to all the religious texts of the Jewish people.

The phrase “the Jewish Bible” refers to three distinct groups of Jewish writings. First is the Torah (the Pentateuch). These are the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), recorded on the Torah scroll as described previously. Portions are read each week during synagogue services.

The second section is known as the Prophets (in Hebrew, Nevi’im) and includes the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel I and II, Kings I and II, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets, which count as one book (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi).

The third section is variously known as the Writings, the Hagiographa, or Ketuvim, a Hebrew word. This section includes the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah (these count as one book), and Chronicles I and II.

Using the first letters of the word Torah and the Hebrew words for the other two books (Nevi’im and Ketuvim), you arrive at the acronym TNK, which is pronounced “Tanakh” and is what Jewish people call the Bible (the Holy Scriptures) in Hebrew.

Many of the laws, passages, and directives in the Torah are not fully explained, are confusing, or may seem contradictory. Over the centuries, law based upon study and analysis of the Torah was passed down by word of mouth. This oral law, which provided explanations and amplifications of the written law, was finally organized and written down by the earliest rabbinic scholars in the first through third centuries CE and is known as the Mishnah (Hebrew for “recapitulation”). The Mishnah deals with temple rituals, holiday observances, agricultural issues, and family life, but it also contains many proverbs and philosophical observations.

As scholars studied the Mishnah, they wrote down their commentaries and discussions about it. These commentaries, called the Gemara (Aramaic for “study”), are interspersed into each paragraph or section of the Mishnah and give insight into historical, spiritual, ethical, and legal issues.

The combination of the Mishnah and the Gemara is called the Talmud. In case you’re not already confused, there are two versions of the Talmud: the Jerusalem (or Palestinian) Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. These days, when we refer to the Talmud, we refer to the Babylonian Talmud, which was completed in about 500 CE. Talmudic study, while quite challenging, opens a world of spiritual wisdom, humor and anecdote, and rabbinical arguments and puzzles.

As a matter of fact, the Talmud is a storehouse of advice, recommending that it’s a good idea to begin a lecture with a humorous story, that we should try not to have more than twenty-five students in a classroom, and that we should always give a person the benefit of the doubt. It also gives practical advice for otherwise arguable situations. For example, when is Shabbat over? The answer is at the end of the day, when it is dark. How dark must it be for the day to be ended? The Talmud tells us that a person must be able to see three stars in the sky. But what if it is a rainy or overcast night? Consult the Talmud for the solution.

A plan to schedule and systematically read the Talmud from beginning to end was formalized in 1923, and since that time tens of thousands of people have taken part in this reading program, called Daf Yomi (a page, or “folio” per day). The complete reading cycle takes about seven-and-a-half years, and after personally participating in the 13th cycle, I can say that it’s quite an educational adventure!

Throughout the ages, many illustrious and renowned Jewish scholars have contributed to the oral tradition, the Mishnah and the Talmud, and the Midrash, a collection of rabbinical questions and commentaries on the Bible (for example, “Why did God appear to Moses as a burning bush and not a tree?”). Midrash is a Hebrew word meaning “investigation,” and passages in the Midrash often take the form of a story about whatever issue is being discussed or explained.

It is not unusual to refer to this group of rabbinical scholars as a source of information or authority when describing a particular law or practice in Judaism. Some people believe that the first rabbis were the Pharisees, a Jewish group that lived in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus. Their interpretation of the Torah was liberal for that day, and they introduced new ideas and concepts that were contrary to much of what was believed at the time. For the next thousand years, these scholars, teachers, and philosophers—collectively referred to as “the Rabbis” or “the Sages”—worked on the religious books and documents that form the core of Jewish religious writings.

The entire body of Jewish law is known as Halachah, and it is this law that guides observant Jews through life, indicating what should be done at any given time or in a given situation as well as what should not be done and what is not acceptable. In other words, Halachah indicates patterns for behavior and for life in general. The root of the word Halachah means “to go” or “to walk,” and Halachah can be thought of as a person’s “path through life.” Halachah, therefore, is a set of codes based on the Talmud that regulates family relationships, legal matters, education, diet, and personal and religious observances.

During the many years when Jews were self-governed in their own communities, these codes provided a legal system, which was a guide to what was acceptable and what was punishable as a crime. After Jews were no longer subject to the discipline of their own community, the law of the land in which they lived took precedence, but the Halachah lived on as a guide to personal behavior.

Modern Jews continue to seek spiritual guidance as well as practical advice from their rabbis and scholars, just as people of other religious groups seek help and advice from their pastors, ministers, and priests. While the Jewish tradition of law and commentaries on the Torah may not always be followed to the letter, these sources, spanning thousands of years and written and collected by the great minds of the ages, provide a wealth of guidance and wisdom from the past to be used in the present.

Issues covered by these writings vary in depth and importance, from marriage to divorce, from kosher kitchen practices to experimental scientific research, and from smoking in or near the synagogue to the introduction of female rabbis and cantors in congregations. Whatever the question or issue, Jewish tradition, wisdom, and scholarship can often help solve contemporary problems. While members of the different branches of Judaism follow these sources to different degrees (or not at all), they can be spiritual (as well as secular) guides if we wish them to be.