The Torah and the Hebrew Bible

The Written Torah is the five books on the scroll. The Oral Torah, later written down in the Mishnah and the Talmud, explains how they are lived. Tanakh is an acronym: Torah, Neviʾim (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings).

Christians call these books the Old Testament and read them in a different order. Here they are described as Jews describe them.

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃

“And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

Deuteronomy 6:5, JPS 1917 · Sefaria

As Jews hold

The Torah was given by God to Moses at Sinai and handed down, copied with extreme care from scroll to scroll.

As scholars discuss

Many scholars see several sources woven together (the Documentary Hypothesis and its successors), with the final shaping often dated to the Persian period. The Dead Sea Scrolls (c. 250 BCE–68 CE) show the text both remarkably stable and with some variants. Between the 7th and 10th centuries the Masoretes added vowel signs and cantillation marks; the Aleppo Codex (c. 930) and the Leningrad Codex (1008/9) come from their work.

The Torah is divided into 54 weekly portions. Each Shabbat portion is read in seven parts (aliyot), followed by a reading from the Prophets (the haftarah). Open the player to find this week's.

• A Sefer Torah is written by a scribe on kosher parchment with a quill and black ink; one mistake can make it unfit until corrected.
• It is read with a yad, a pointer, so that the letters are not touched by hand, and kept in the ark (aron kodesh), dressed in a mantle or, in Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, a case (tik).
• The congregation stands as the ark is opened. The Torah is read on Monday, Thursday, Shabbat and festivals, chanted by a reader following the taʿamim.
• On Simchat Torah the last words of Deuteronomy are read and Genesis begins again, often with dancing.
• Worn-out scrolls are not thrown away but buried with respect (genizah).

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

Deuteronomy 6:6–7, JPS 1917 · Sefaria

The divine Name (four Hebrew letters) is printed in the Hebrew text, as in printed Bibles; in reading aloud, Jewish tradition says Adonai instead.

Isaac Leeser's translation (1853) and the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 version, which this site quotes because it is in the public domain. Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz's Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London, 1929–36) has been widely used in British synagogues. Later versions include the Soncino books, the new JPS (1985), the ArtScroll Stone Chumash (1993), Koren, Everett Fox and Robert Alter (2018).

A thousand years earlier, Saadia Gaon translated the Torah into Arabic: see A rabbi's Arabic Torah.

• The Memorial Scrolls Trust in London cares for Torah scrolls from Czech communities destroyed in the Holocaust, rescued and now lent to communities around the world: a story of remembrance and rescue.
• The British Library holds great Hebrew manuscripts.
• Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London (1701) is the oldest synagogue in Britain still in use.

See Places to visit.

The cantillation marks are music and punctuation at once: they show where a verse rises, pauses and ends. Hear the Shema chanted, then read it with the English.