Concepts of Scripture in the Synagogue Service 17reading consists of a reading from the Pentateuch (hereaft er, parashah, pl.
parshiyot) and a reading from the prophetic literature (hereaft er, haft arah,
pl. haft arot). Th e weekly parshiyot follow the order of the canonical To-
rah: each successive parashah picks up where the previous one left off. Th e
weekly haft arot, however are not arranged sequentially. Instead, they are
excerpts from the prophetic corpus that have a thematic or verbal link to
either the parashah or, in the case of festivals and special Sabbaths, to the
occasion on which they are read. On festivals, the Torah portion also cor-
responds to the festival itself rather than following the sequence of weekly
readings. For example, the Torah reading for the festival of Rosh Hashanah
comes from the book of Genesis even though the surrounding Sabbaths
will have readings of sequential selections from Deuteronomy. On Mon-
days and Th ursdays, there is no haft arah, and the reading from the Torah
anticipates the opening part of the subsequent Sabbath’s reading.5 In ad-
dition to the recitation of the entire Pentateuch and the haft arot, the fi ve
scrolls (Ecclesiastes, Esther, Song of Songs, Ruth, and Lamentations) are
also part of the lectionary: each scroll is recited on a particular festival over
the course of the year.
As is the case with most Jewish liturgical practice, the lectionary was
quite fl uid in the rabbinic period. Th e Mishnah (third century CE) man-
dates the recitation of parshiyot and haft arot and specifi es the parshiyot
for holidays and special sabbaths (m. Meg. 4:4 – 6). Th e Toseft a, a collection
containing materials roughly contemporaneous with the Mishnah, desig-
nates haft arot for four special Sabbaths (t. Meg. 4:2), while a tradition cited
in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Meg. 31a – b) designates haft arot for holidays
and other special Sabbaths. Th e fi rst complete extant lectionary lists date
from the medieval period. Th ese lists demonstrate that while individual
communities had standardized lectionaries, there was still variation from
community to community with regard to the parameters of the parshiyot
and the texts selected as haft arot. By the modern period, two major lec-
tionary traditions came to dominate: the Ashkenazic tradition and the Se-
phardic tradition. While some communities still follow other more local
traditions, these two are the most common and are followed by the major-
ity of synagogues today. By the modern period, all the lectionary traditions
had become quite similar to one another. For example, in the Ashkenazic
and Sephardic traditions, as well as the Yemenite tradition, which is the
largest of the remaining local rites, the parshiyot are identical, and the haf-
tarot only diff er from rite to rite in a minority of cases. In all modern tradi-
tions, the entire Torah is recited over the course of a year, yielding fi ft y-four