The Torah is the key text of Judaism, consisting of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. It contains the history of the Jewish people and the 613 laws passed down to Moses. The text is highly valued and preserved through rigorous copying methods. Printed versions, known as Chumashism, are also available. The Torah is part of the Tanakh, which includes the Books of the Prophets and the Writings, and is not ordered chronologically.
The Torah is the key text of Judaism. Specifically, it refers to the five books that make up the beginning of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. In a more general sense it can sometimes be used simply to mean the entire body of Jewish law, including the Tanakh, the midrash and the Talmud.
The five books of the Torah are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books are all attributed to Moses, as told to him directly by God. The Torah gives the history of the world and of the Jewish people, as well as the 613 laws that were passed down to him. Some of the laws of the text are not directly given, but are hinted at enough that later teachers derived them and eventually recorded them in the Talmud.
When the Torah was revealed to Moses is a matter of debate. Some argue that all five books were given to Moses during his fellowship with God on Mount Sinai in 1280 BC. Others believe that the books were given to Moses by God throughout his life. Still others believe that most of the five books were told to Moses during his lifetime, but that some passages, such as those describing Moses’ death, were later written by Joshua or some other prophet.
In Orthodox Judaism, it is believed that not only is the general message of the Torah important, but that the actual words and even the seemingly minor signs all contain lessons given by God to man. This belief is part of the reason the text has been so well preserved over the millennia.
To ensure perfect reproduction of the Torah, rigorous methods are used to copy the sacred text. Copies made in this way are known as sefer Torah. It is written on a particular type of parchment called gevil, treated with flour, wasp enzyme and salt. The complete Torah contains exactly 304,805 letters, with exactly 42 lines per column. The placement of each character is crucial, as is the stylization of the letters. As one might expect, the ability to create a sefer Torah is a highly specialized skill, and throughout history a community’s copy has been valued as one of its most valuable assets.
Given the difficulty of creating ritually suitable Torahs, printed versions abound, both for personal use and for the use of communities that cannot afford a sefer Torah. These printed texts are known as Chumashism, which means “Book of Five”. A Chumash will often contain not only the Torah but other texts as well.
The Torah is also known by a number of other names, the most common being “The Five Books of Moses” and “The Pentateuch”. It and two other large sections make up the Tanakh. Directly following the Torah are the Books of the Prophets, consisting of eight books and covering the seven major prophets and the 12 minor prophets. After the books of the prophets there are the writings, made up of 11 books, from the Psalms to the Chronicles. While the Torah and the accompanying books are in a set order, it is understood that they are not ordered chronologically, and instead are often ordered according to the concepts to which they refer.
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