Parashah


The term parashah formally means a section of a biblical book in the masoretic text of the Tanakh. In common usage today the word often refers to the Weekly Torah portion. This article deals with the first, formal meaning of the word. In the Masoretic Text, parashah sections are designated by various types of spacing between them, as found in Torah scrolls, scrolls of the books of Nevi'im or Ketuvim, masoretic codices from the Middle Ages and printed editions of the masoretic text.
The division of the text into parashot for the biblical books is independent of chapter and verse numbers, which are not part of the masoretic tradition. Parashot are not numbered, but some have special names.
The division of parashot found in the modern-day Torah scrolls of all Jewish communities is based upon the systematic list provided by Maimonides in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and Torah Scrolls, chapter 8. Maimonides based his division of the parashot for the Torah on the Aleppo Codex. The division of parashot for the books of Nevi'im and Ketuvim was never completely standardized in printed Hebrew bibles and handwritten scrolls, though important attempts were made to document it and create fixed rules.
Incorrect division of the text into parashot, either by indicating a parashah in the wrong place or by using the wrong spacing technique, halakhically invalidates a Torah scroll according to Maimonides.

Purpose

A parashah break creates a textual pause, roughly analogous to a modern paragraph break. Such a pause usually has one of the following purposes:
  1. In most cases, a new parashah begins where a new topic or a new thought is clearly indicated in the biblical text.
  2. In many places, however, the parashah divisions are used even in places where it is clear that no new topic begins, in order to highlight a special verse by creating a textual pause before it or after it.
  3. A special example of #2 is for lists: The individual elements in many biblical lists are separated by parashah spacing of one type or another.
To decide exactly where a new topic or thought begins within a biblical text involves a degree of subjectivity on the part of the reader. This subjective element may help explain differences amongst the various masoretic codices in some details of the section divisions. It may also explain why certain verses which might seem like introductions to a new topic lack a section division, or why such divisions sometimes appear in places where no new topic seems indicated. For this reason, the parashah divisions may at times contribute to biblical exegesis.

History

Parashot appear in manuscripts as early as the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which the division is generally similar to that found in the masoretic text. The idea of spacing between portions, including the idea of "open" and "closed" portions, is mentioned in early midrashic literature and the Talmud. Early masoretic lists detailing the Babylonian tradition include systematic and detailed discussion of exactly where portions begin and which type they are.
As a group, Tiberian masoretic codices share similar but not identical parashah divisions throughout the Bible. Unlike the Babylonian mesorah, however, Tiberian masoretic notes never mention the parashah divisions or attempt to systematize them. This is related to the fact that the Babylonian lists are independent compositions, while the Tiberian notes are in the margins of the biblical text itself, which shows the parashot in a highly visible way.
In the centuries following the Tiberian mesorah, there were ever-increasing efforts to document and standardize the details of the parashah divisions, especially for the Torah, and even for Nevi'im and Ketuvim as time went on.

Spacing techniques

In most modern Torah scrolls and Jewish editions of the Bible, there are two types of parashot, an "open portion" and a "closed portion". An "open portion" is roughly similar to a modern paragraph: The text of the previous portion ends before the end of the column, and the new "open" portion starts at the beginning of the next line. A "closed portion", on the other hand, leaves a space in the middle of the line of text, where the previous portion ends before the space, and the next portion starts after it, towards the end of the line of text.
In some manuscripts and in many printed editions, an "open portion" is abbreviated with the Hebrew letter "פ", and a "closed portion" with the Hebrew letter "ס", often in place of the visual gap in the line. Rough English equivalents are "P" and "S" respectively.
In masoretic codices and in medieval scrolls, these two spacing techniques allowed for a larger range of options:
Open portions often seem to reflect the beginning of a new topic or a major subdivision within a biblical book, while closed portions seem to reflect smaller units or minor subdivisions.
Most printed Hebrew bibles today represent the parashot using the more limited techniques found in typical modern Torah scrolls: A space in the middle of a line for a closed portion, and beginning at the start of the next line for an open portion. A notable exception is The Jerusalem Crown, whose typography and layout is fashioned after the Aleppo Codex, and follows the medieval spacing techniques for parashah divisions by leaving an empty line for and starts on a new line with an indentation.
Medieval Ashkenazic sources beginning with the Mahzor Vitry also refer to a third spacing technique called a parashah sedurah. This involved starting a new parashah at the same point in the line where the previous parashah ended on the line above.

Halakhic significance

Validity of scrolls

According to the ruling of Maimonides, any error regarding a parashah completely invalidates a Torah scroll. This includes a parashah in the wrong place, of the wrong type, or a missing parashah.
However, there is also a responsum by Maimonides in which he ruled that one may recite a blessing over reading from an invalid scroll, based on the reasoning that the commandment is in the reading itself, not in the text being read from.
Maimonides' strict ruling that any error in the parashot completely invalidates a Torah scroll led to a major halakhic debate that continues to this day. Among those who ruled against Maimonides' stricture in practice were his son, Rabbi Abraham, Rabbi Menachem HaMeiri, Maharam Halava, Mahari Mintz, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
All of the above authorities rule that a scroll containing parashot based on alternative scribal traditions that disagree with Maimonides' list of parashot is nevertheless a valid scroll. However, even according to the lenient opinion, a blatant error with no source in any scribal tradition invalidates a Torah scroll.

Rules and customs for public reading

One basic halakhic rule for public reading of the Torah is that no fewer than three verses at a time be read. As a corollary to this, there is a specific rule regarding parashot: One may not leave off reading less than three verses before the end of a parashah, nor may one end off reading by starting a new parashah but leaving off less than three verses from its beginning.
When a Torah portion is read in public from a scroll as part of the synagogue service, it is divided into smaller sections among several people. The points at which the portion is subdivided often take the parashot into account, but there is no hard and fast rule for this.
The selections from Nevi'im that are read as haftarot are based on custom. At times, some of these customs choose the exact beginning or end of a haftarah because it coincides with a parashah division.

Torah

Due to the influence of Maimonides, parashah divisions in the Torah have become highly standardized, and there is close to exact agreement among Torah scrolls, printed Jewish bibles, and similar online texts. The following list thus presents the parashah divisions as found in modern Torah scrolls, Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, and the Aleppo Codex. Rare inconsistencies between these three sources are explained in footnotes.
The list is constructed as follows:
Symbols:
Variants:
Variants:
Variants:
Variants:
The Aleppo Codex is intact starting at Deuteronomy 28:17. Parashot from the extant parts are in bold, as are the parashot shown in the Segall photograph.
Variants:
Parashot in Nevi'im are listed here according to the Aleppo codex, with variants from other masoretic traditions noted at the end of each book's section.
The Aleppo codex is intact for the bulk of Nevi'im. The few parashot noted here from its missing parts are listed according to the notes taken by Joshua Kimhi, who recorded the parashot of the Aleppo codex in the nineteenth century in the bible of Rabbi Shalom Shachna Yellin. These are indicated by an asterisk.

Joshua

The Aleppo codex is missing three folios from II Kings that included 14:21 to 18:13. Parashot listed from the missing section are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex and marked with an asterisk.
Jeremiah is divided into distinct prophecies, each of which begins with an announcement of "the word of the Lord to Jeremiah" or a similar phrase. Each such prophecy begins a new open parashah in the Aleppo Codex, with the single exception of the sixth prophecy that begins with a closed parashah.
The Aleppo codex is missing two folios from Jeremiah, and the folio following them is also partly torn. The missing text included parts of chapters 29-32. Parashot listed from the missing parts are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex and marked with an asterisk.
Prophecies of Destruction :
Prophecies interwoven with narratives about the prophet's life :
Prophecies against the nations :
Narrative :
The Aleppo Codex leaves four empty lines between each of the books of the Twelve Minor Prophets. The Leningrad Codex leaves three lines. Parashot within each of the twelve individual books are listed below.
The Aleppo Codex is missing seven folios from two different sections of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Parashot listed from the missing sections are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex and marked with an asterisk. The two sections are: three missing folios that included Amos 8:13 to the end, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah until 5:1 ; four missing folios that included Zephaniah 3:10 to the end, Haggai, Zechariah until 9:17.
The three poetic books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job are collectively known as Sifrei Emet. These three books share a unique system of cantillation unlike that of the other 21 books in Tanakh, a system designed to highlight the parallelisms in their verses.
In the Tiberian masoretic codices, the unique system of cantillation for Sifrei Emet is complemented by a scribal layout unlike that of the rest of the Bible: Instead of the three narrow columns per page typical of these codices, Sifrei Emet are written in two wide columns per page. In each line of these wide columns text begins on the right, followed by a gap, and then continued by further text until the left margin of the column. Although there is ample evidence that the scribes attempted to place the gaps in the middle of the lines at the points where the cantillation divides the verses, they often did not succeed in doing so because of space limitations. Modern editions based upon the Aleppo Codex have implemented the idea fully by allowing wide full-page columns for Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
In poetic layout, parashah divisions are typically indicated by a blank line for an open parashah. The gaps in the middle of lines are not considered parashah divisions, and each scribe formatted the verses as he saw fit for aesthetic and practical reasons. An exception to this rule, however, is for the introductory titles of many individual psalms which are followed by formal parashah breaks, often by continuing the text at the beginning of the next line. These formal breaks will be indicated in the list of parashot for Psalms.
The special poetic cantillation and layout are not implemented for the narrative opening and conclusion of the book of Job.

Ketuvim

Parashot in Ketuvim are listed here according to the Aleppo codex, with variants from other masoretic traditions noted at the end of each book's section. The books of Ketuvim are presented in the order they appear in most printed Hebrew bibles. In Tiberian and early Sephardic masoretic codices the order is as follows: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah.
The Aleppo codex is largely intact until the word ציון in Song of Songs 3:11. It is missing the rest of Song of Songs, as well as the final books of Ketuvim in their entirety: Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel and Ezra–Nehemiah. It is also missing two folios which included about 10 psalms. Parashot listed here from its missing parts are according to the notes taken by Joshua Kimhi, who recorded the parashot of the Aleppo codex for Rabbi Shalom Shachna Yellin in the nineteenth century. These are indicated by an asterisk. For some of the books that are largely or completely missing, charts have been provided below to allow for easy comparison of the parallel data found in the masoretic manuscripts.
Key to symbols for variants:
The Aleppo Codex leaves two empty lines between the five Books of Psalms. Otherwise there is one blank line between each two psalms, the standard way of indicating an open parashah break in poetic layout.
There is no break at all, however, between psalms 114-115, which were apparently considered a single psalm by the scribes. Psalm 119, which has sets of eight verses for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has an open parashah break between each set of eight verses.
The titles of individual Psalms have formal rules. Symbols for representing these rules are as follows, based on examples:
Book One :
Book Two :
Book Three :
Book Four :
Book Five :
I. Narrative Opening :
II. Poetic Disputations: The disputations, which constitute the bulk of the book of Job, employ the special poetic layout in common with Psalms and Proverbs, along its associated poetic cantillation. In Tiberian masoretic codices, the formal title of each individual speech appears in the center of its line, while the body of the reply appears in poetic form. The break between the title and the body is considered an open parashah, and the verse numbers for these titles appear in bold in the list. Blank lines as open parashot are also used occasionally, and these are noted as.
III. Narrative Conclusion :
The Aleppo codex is extant until the word ציון in Song of Songs 3:11. Bibles that show parashot in the Song of Songs based upon the Aleppo Codex include two editions following the Breuer method. The flow of text in such bibles is as follows:
The Tiberian masoretic codices are nearly identical in the parts at which they show parashah breaks in the text. However, while A and L have almost exclusively, Y shows for the large majority of parashot, as shown in the chart below:

Ruth

In the Tiberian masoretic codices, the only parashah found in Ruth is for the short chronology at the end of the book:
Variant:
The Aleppo codex lacks Lamentations in its entirety. Parashot listed here are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex.
Variants:
The Aleppo codex lacks Ecclesiastes in its entirety. Parashot listed here are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex.
There are no further parashah divisions at all in the rest of the book according to Kimhi's notes on the Aleppo Codex, an unusually large amount of unbroken text that is confirmed by Y. The Leningrad codex has a solitary parashah break: at 9:11. The following chart compares the meager parashah breaks for Ecclesiastes as found in manuscripts:

Esther

The book of Esther is traditionally read by Jews on the holiday of Purim from a handwritten scroll on parchment that must be [|halakhically valid]. This means that the rules of open and closed parashot are of more practical relevance for Esther than for any other book in Nevi'im or Ketuvim. Despite this—or perhaps because of the large numbers of scrolls of Esther that have been written, and the special attention that has therefore been paid to the problem by rabbis and scribes—manuscripts of Esther and opinions about how they should be written betray a relatively large number of discrepancies regarding the parashah divisions.
In the nineteenth century, Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried published a manual for scribes called Keset HaSofer, in which he follows the rule that all parashot in Esther are closed . This is currently the dominant tradition for Ashkenazic and Sephardic megillot today. But the Tiberian masoretic codices contain both open and closed portions. Also, Yemenite scribes did not entirely adopt the tradition of closed portions, leaving the divisions in many scrolls of Esther similar to what is found in the masoretic codices.
Ganzfried ruled that a scroll of Esther with open portions is invalid, but added that "some authorities validate it". When discussing these authorities in his additional notes, Ganzfried cites a list open parashot found in the book Orhot Hayyim, and concludes: "And even though our custom is that all of these are closed, it nevertheless seems that if some or all of these are open one may read from the scroll with a blessing." These have been listed in the chart below under at "OH" under Keset HaSofer, and they are very similar to what is found in the Tiberian masoretic codices.


Most printed Jewish bibles, even those based on manuscripts, show the flow of text in Esther according to the widespread tradition based on Keset HaSofer. Such editions include the Koren edition, Breuer's first edition and Dotan's editions. The flow of text in such bibles is as follows:
Bibles that show the parashot in Esther based upon a reconstruction of the Aleppo Codex include two editions following the Breuer method. The flow of text in such bibles is as follows:
The Aleppo codex lacks Daniel in its entirety. Parashot listed here are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex.
The Aleppo codex lacks Ezra–Nehemiah in its entirety. Parashot listed here are based upon Kimhi's notes on the codex.
In addition to the common "open" and "closed" parashot, the masoretic scribal layout employs spaces in an elaborate way for prominent songs found within narrative books, as well as for certain lists. Each such "song" is formatted in its own exact way, though there are similarities between them. These sections include:
Torah
Nevi'im
Ketuvim
The following sections discuss the layout and formatting of each of these songs in detail.

Haman's Sons (Esther)

Esther 9:7–9 lists Haman's ten sons in three consecutive verses. Each name is preceded by the Hebrew particle ואת. The format for this list is as follows:
The format described here originated in the typically narrow columns of the Tiberian masoretic codices, in which a line of text containing only two words at opposite margins with a gap between them appears similar to a standard closed parashah. However, in many later scrolls the columns are much wider, such that lines with single words at opposite margins create a huge gap in the middle. In many scrolls these eleven lines are written in very large letters so that they form one full column of text in the megillah.

Literature cited

Books and articles cited in the [|references] to this article:
Bible editions consulted :
  1. Mossad Harav Kuk: Jerusalem, 1977-1982. Mordechai Breuer, ed.
  2. Horev publishers: Jerusalem, 1996-98. Mordechai Breuer, ed.
  3. '. Jerusalem, 2000. Yosef Ofer, ed..
  4. Jerusalem Simanim Institute, 2004.
  5. Mikraot Gedolot Haketer, Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992–present.
  6. Mechon Mamre, .
Bible editions consulted :
  1. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft: Stuttgart, 1984.
  2. Adi publishers. Tel Aviv, 1986. Aharon Dotan, ed.
  3. The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Philadelphia, 1999.
  4. Biblia Hebraica Quinta: General Introduction and Megilloth. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004.
Bible editions consulted :'''
  1. : Jerusalem, 1962.