Halakhah Study Group 036

1:
We have already mentioned on several occasions that strictly speaking there are no 'official' haftarot. Originally, the person called as maftir would decide what passage he would like to read as the haftarah. It was expected that he would choose a passage from the prophets that had some kind of link to what had just been read from the Torah. Originally there was no set lectionary from the Torah that was uniform for all congregations: we have mentioned on several occasions that in each congregation each honoree would read a few verses (as many as he wanted, provided they were more than three verses); when seven honorees had thus read they would end the reading for that Shabbat and on the following Shabbat they would continue from the point where they had concluded the previous Shabbat. This means that the maftir could not know where the reading would end until it ended, so he would perforce have to have a good command of the contents of the prophetic literature. He would select some topic that had been read from the Torah and then freely choose a passage from the prophets that had some connection – however remote – with the topic selected from the Torah.

2:
Paragraph 1 of Section 144 simply states that the person reading the haftarah could jump from place to place in his selection. The only restrictions placed upon him were that he could only jump from place to place in the same prophetic book and he could only jump forwards in the book, not backwards and that he should not waste too much time in finding his place. What this basically means is that if within the passages that he had chosen to read there were verses that were not really relevant to the theme he had chosen he could skip them and resume his reading further on where the verses were more relevant.

3:
The term Tré-Asar refers to the twelve books of the so-called 'minor prophets' (from Hosea to Malachi). They are 'minor' only as regards to their size (compared with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel). In the Massoretic text all twelve are considered as one book. (This is because originally a 'book' was a scroll. The parchment scrolls were of a standard size, more or less, so the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel filled one scroll each; the Twelve – Tré-Asar in Aramaic – all together filled another scroll.)

4:
When the Babylonian system of reading the whole Torah in one year became generally adopted it became easier to create a lectionary of haftarot as well. But even so, to this day there are considerable differences in the selection of such readings from community to community and even from congregation to congregation within that community. Not always do Jews hailing from the Yemen read the same haftarah as Jews hailing from North Africa; and not always did the good Jews of Frankfurt-am-Main read the same haftarah as was read in Kalisch. (These places are, of course, just examples.)

5:
As regards the reading from the Torah the situation is very different. Paragraph 1 of Section 144 is concerned with the reading from the Torah on all occasions except Shabbat morning, as is pointed out by the classical commentaries (see, for example, Mishnah Berurah #2 and Sha'ar ha-Tziyyun #1 on our present section). On Shabbat morning there is an over-riding requirement that the reading be consecutive and nothing omitted – not only within the lectionary for any given Shabbat but also between one Shabbat and the next. (See HSG 002 for a full explanation.)

6:
On other occasions – weekdays, Shabbat afternoon, feast days and fast days – it is permitted to skip parts of the Torah reading. For instance, if one Monday morning the second or third honoree missed some verses that came after the verse where the first honoree had concluded his reading, this was acceptable (though not 'recommended'). Remember that the term parashah that appears in Paragraph 1 of Section 144 means a paragraph of the Torah (see explanation #3 in HSG 015).

7:
We can give two examples of such 'skipping'. To this day, when we read from the Torah on a fast day afternoon we read the aftermath of the apostasy of the Golden Calf. However, in the Torah there is some extraneous material included which is not really relevant. Therefore, it is customary to read Exodus 32:10-14 and then skip to Exodus 34:4. This is because what concerns us is to recall God's mercy and forgiveness and not the apostasy itself and Moses' reaction to it, which intervene in the Torah. 144:1 itself gives the other example. In the Bet Mikdash on Yom Kippur the High Priest would read from the Torah. He would read Leviticus 16:1-34 (as we still do today) and then he would skip a large section and continue with Leviticus 23:27-32. See Sotah 078 for a fuller explanation. According to the halakhah which is the subject of our shiur this is permissable because both passages are dealing with the same topic: Yom Kippur.

8:
As regards haftarot, paragraph 2, which we shall study next time, will bring further examples of exceptions to the general rule.