Sotah 41a (מא.) — the Talmud in English

And Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the assembly, from man to woman and to everyone capable of understanding what he heard, on the first day of the seventh month.

And he read from it before the square that was in front of the Water Gate

[which was one of the southern gates of the Temple courtyard].

And now the question arises: How can you say that the reading took place in the Women’s Court? Surely the Sages maintain that the reading took place in the Temple courtyard, and the unqualified term “courtyard” refers to the Israelites’ Courtyard!?

He said

Rabbi Ḥisda

explained:

The statement of the first tanna in the beraita that the reading took place in the courtyard means

in the Women’s Court.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he reads the passage beginning “After the death” and the passage beginning “On the tenth”:

And it is contradicted—

a difficulty is raised from a Mishna that we learned in Megilla [24a

: One may skip in the Prophets

from one passage to another,

but one may not skip in the Torah!?

because when one hears someone jumping from one place to another, his mind is not settled enough to listen.

He said

Abaye

explained: This is not difficult;

for:

Here—

in the Mishna in Megilla—where he wishes to skip

in a manner that will cause the translator to pause,

meaning that the translator who is translating the preceding verse that was read will have to stop translating until the reader begins reading at the place to which he skipped; consequently, the congregation is left standing in silence, and this is not respectful of the congregation.

Here—

in our Mishna—the skip is a short one, from the passage beginning “After the death” to the passage beginning “Speak,” and

in a manner that will not cause the translator to pause

from translating what the High Priest read in the passage beginning “After the death.” Consequently, there is no silence here, and therefore it is permitted to skip.

And we challenge this:

But it was taught

in that same Mishna in Megilla: “

One may skip in the Prophets but one may not skip

in the Torah; and how far may one skip

in the Prophets?

As far as will not cause the translator to pause.”

By inference,

it necessarily follows that

in the Torah one may not skip at all

—even in a manner that will not cause the translator to pause—because when one hears someone jumping from one place to another, his mind is not settled enough to listen.

Rather,

as a result of this difficulty,

Abaye said

to resolve the matter differently:

This is not difficult;

for:

Here—

in our Mishna, where he may skip from one place to another, even though he is reading from the Torah—

it concerns one subject

and he skips from one place to another because everything concerns the subject of Yom Kippur.

Here—

in the Mishna in Megilla, where it is forbidden to skip in the Torah from one place to another—

they said this only with regard to two subjects.

is what they said.

The Gemara supports Abaye’s statement:

And it was taught

[as an unqualified, harmonious statement]:

One may skip in the Torah within

one subject, and in the Prophets

even

within two subjects; and in both cases

[in the Torah and in the Prophets, whether within one subject or within two subjects], one may not skip except

in a manner that will not cause the translator to pause

—thus it is clear in accordance with Abaye’s explanation that one may skip in the Torah within one subject.

The Gemara continues by citing the remainder of the beraita:

And one may not skip from one prophet to another; but in the book of the Twelve Prophets

[the Twelve

one may skip

even from one prophet to another, because they all constitute one book.

Provided that he does not skip—

whether in the Torah or in the Prophets, whether within one subject or within two subjects—

from the end of the book to its beginning,

that is, the skip may not be backward.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he rolls up the Torah scroll and places it in his lap,

and says: “More than what I read before you is written here”:

And we explain:

And why so

does he need to say this to the people!?

In order not to cast aspersions upon the scroll of

the

Torah

from which he read, so that they should not say that it is defective and lacks the third passage that the High Priest reads.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he reads by heart the passage beginning “And on the tenth,” which is in the book of Numbers:

And we raise a difficulty:

Let him roll the scroll

[let him roll the scroll to that passage]

and read

[from it]!?

He said

Rabbi Huna bar Yehuda

said in the name of Rav Sheshet:

Because one may not roll a Torah scroll in public,

out of respect for the congregation, so that they will not have to wait and remain silent while it is being rolled.

And we challenge this:

And

the difficulty still arises: They should not roll the scroll, but

let him bring another Torah scroll and read

[they should bring another Torah scroll that is already rolled to the passage of Pinḥas, and he should read from it]!?

Rabbi Huna bar Yehuda said

in explanation:

Because of the disrepute

of

the

first

Torah scroll,

so that people should not say that a defect was found in it.

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said:

Because one does not recite an unnecessary blessing,

and if he brought another Torah scroll, he would have to recite the blessing again.

And we challenge Rabbi Huna bar Yehuda:

But are we concerned about disrepute

[do we in fact take into account the disrepute of the scroll]!?

But didn’t Rabbi Yitzḥak Nappaḥa say: When the first day of the month of Tevet occurs on Shabbat, he brings three Torah scrolls

and reads

from

one concerning the matter of the day

[the weekly Torah portion],

and

from

one concerning the New Moon, and

from

one concerning Hanukkah.

Thus, we are not concerned about the disrepute of the first scrolls, and we bring out other scrolls!?

And we resolve:

When three men read from three scrolls, there is no disrepute,

[when three people read from three Torah scrolls, there is no disrepute here]. But when

one man reads from two scrolls

[one person from two scrolls],

there is disrepute.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he recites eight blessings over it:

The Sages taught:

He recites the blessing over the Torah in the manner in which the blessing is recited in the synagogue,

afterward.

And over the Temple service, over thanksgiving, and over forgiveness of sin, in their established form,

as we recite them in the prayer.

Over the Temple

he recites

a blessing separately; and over the priests separately; over Israel separately; over Jerusalem separately; and over the rest of the prayer.

The Sages taught:

The rest of the prayer

mentioned in our Mishna is as follows: “

Supplication, song, and plea,

for Your people Israel are in need of salvation,”

and he concludes with

the blessing of

He Who hears prayer.

From this point onward,

after the completion of the reading and the blessings,

each and every one

of the people

brings a Torah scroll from his home and reads from it.

And why so

do they bring and read from their own Torah scrolls?

In order to display its beauty to the public,

to display the beauty of the Torah scroll and the glory of its owner, who took the trouble to beautify himself through the mitzva, as it is stated: “This is my God, and I will glorify Him”—beautify yourself before Him through mitzvot.

a. The following Mishna continues the explanation of the matters taught in the first Mishna of this chapter, which are recited in the sacred language.

b. It is written [Deuteronomy 31:10–13]: “And Moses commanded them, saying: At the end of seven years, at the appointed time, in the Festival of Sukkot, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger who is in your cities, so that they may hear and so that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to perform all the words of this Torah.”

a. The following Mishna continues the explanation of the matters taught in the first Mishna of this chapter, which are recited in the sacred tongue.

b. It is written [Deuteronomy 31:10]: “And Moses commanded them, saying: At the end of seven years, at the appointed time, in the Festival of Sukkot, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their hearing. Assemble the people—the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger who is in your cities—in order that they may hear, and in order that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to perform all the words of this Torah.”

This mitzva is called “the mitzva of Hakhel,” and the passages that are read before the people are called “the king’s passage,” because it is the king who reads them.

Mishna:

The king’s passage,

which we learned at the beginning of our chapter is recited in the sacred tongue—what is it, and

how

is it recited?

On

the night following the first Festival day

of the Festival

of Sukkot,

on the eighth,

that is, in the eighth year,

which follows

the seventh year, which is the Sabbatical year,

they make for him

for the king

a wooden platform

in the courtyard

of the Temple,

and he sits upon it.

The source and time of the mitzva are based on what

is stated: “

The source of the mitzva and its appointed time are derived from what

is stated: “

At the end

[at the conclusion]

of seven years, at the appointed time, the Sabbatical year, during the Festival of Sukkot: When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their hearing.” This reading is performed by the king, because it is written in the passage “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself”: “And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Torah in a book, from before the priests and the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life.” And it is taught in the Sifrei: “‘A copy of this Torah’—on the day of the Hakhel ceremony, one reads only from the second book of the Torah [the book of Deuteronomy ]. And this was the order of the reading:

The synagogue attendant

The sexton

[the attendant] of the

synagogue

[which was on the Temple Mount, near the courtyard]

takes

the

scroll of the

Torah and gives it to the head of the synagogue; the head of the synagogue gives it to the deputy

of the High Priest;

the deputy gives it to the High Priest, and the High Priest gives it to the king, and the king stands and receives

the Torah scroll in this manner,

and reads

from it while

sitting.

King Agrippa stood

on his feet

and received

the Torah scroll

and read

from it while

standing, and the Sages praised him

for reading while standing.

When

Agrippa, in his reading,

reached the

verse

“You shall not be able to appoint over yourself

a

foreign man

who is not your brother,”

his eyes overflowed

with Agrippa’s

tears!

For this verse disqualified him from being king, since he was descended from Herod the Edomite, who had been a slave.

The Sages said to him

:

“Do not fear, Agrippa! You are our brother; you are our brother!”

For his mother was Jewish, and therefore he was fit for the monarchy.

And the king reads

on this occasion

from the beginning of

“These are the words”

at the beginning of Deuteronomy

until

the section of

“Hear

O Israel,” in the section of Va’ethanan.

And

afterward he reads the section of

“Hear,”

because this section constitutes acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.

From there he skips to the section of Ekev and reads there the section of

“And it shall be, if you diligently obey,”

which constitutes acceptance of the yoke of mitzvot.

From there he skips and reads the section of

“You shall surely tithe

all the produce of your seed,” in the section of Re’eh, because it is the season of gathering, the gifts to the poor, and the separation of terumot and tithes.

He again skips until the section of Ki Tavo and reads there also the section of

“When you have finished tithing

all the tithes of your produce,” which concerns the mitzva of removing the tithes. Afterward he returns to the section of Shoftim

and

reads

the section of the king,

which concerns the mitzva of appointing a king.

And

he skips to the section of Ki Tavo and reads the section of the

blessings and

the

curses, until he completes

the

entire section

that concludes with the verse, “These are the words of the covenant,” because this section constitutes acceptance of the covenants of the Torah, as explained earlier, on page 37.

Those eight

blessings that the High Priest recites

on Yom Kippur after reading from the Torah in the Temple, which are detailed in the Mishna and the beraita above—

also

the king recites them

after his reading, except for the blessing concerning forgiveness of sin, which he did not recite

but instead he gives

[recites] a blessing

of the Festivals

[the fourth blessing in the Festival prayer],

in place of

the blessing of

forgiveness of sin,

since it is the time of the Festival.

Gemara:

We learned in the Mishna: “The section of the king”—how is it read? At the conclusion of the first Festival day of the holiday, in the eighth, at the conclusion of the Sabbatical Year:

The initial assumption was that “the eighth” means the eighth day of the Festival, namely, Shemini Atzeret, and therefore the Gemara asks:

On the eighth

day

could it enter your mind

that this is the time of the mitzva of Hakhel? Did we not learn in our Mishna, “At the conclusion of the first Festival day of the holiday,” that this is the time of Hakhel?

And we answer:

Say

[that the text should read:] “At the conclusion of the first Festival day of the holiday,

in

the

eighth

year, at the conclusion of the Sabbatical Year.”

The Gemara raises another difficulty concerning the wording of the verse: “At the end of seven years, at the appointed time, in the year of release, on the Festival of Sukkot, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God”:

And all these

times specified for this mitzva—“At the end of seven years,” “in the year of the Sabbatical Year,” “on the Festival of Sukkot,” and “when all Israel comes to appear”

why do I need

all of them?

And we answer: All these times

are necessary

to be written.

And because

had the Merciful One written: “At the end of

seven years,” and had not written “the year of the Sabbatical Year,”

I would have thought

that the law does not depend on the Sabbatical Year, but rather,

we should count from now

[the counting should begin immediately], from the time Israel was commanded regarding this mitzva, in the fortieth year after the Exodus from Egypt, in the plains of Moab.

And we might mistakenly say that the time of Hakhel is in the eighth year from that year,

even though it does not coincide

[that the eighth year does not fall]

with

the year of

the Sabbatical Year.

year.

Therefore,

the Merciful One wrote “

the year of the

Sabbatical Year,”

to teach us that the matter depends on the Sabbatical Year.

And had the Merciful One written “

At the end of seven years, in the year of the

Sabbatical Year,”

and had not written “at the appointed time,”

I would have thought

that the time of the mitzva is

at the end

of the

Sabbatical Year,

before Rosh HaShana of the eighth year, since “at the end of seven years” implies the end of the seventh year.

Therefore,

the Merciful One wrote: “

At the appointed time,”

that is, on the Festival. From this it is necessarily evident that the time of the mitzva of Hakhel is not at the end of the year, since there is no Festival then; and one cannot say that it refers to another appointed time during the Sabbatical Year, since the verse says, “At the end [at the conclusion] of seven years.”

And had

the Merciful One written, “At the end of seven years

at the appointed time

of the Sabbatical Year,” and had not written “on the Festival of Sukkot,”

I would have thought

that it refers to the appointed time that is

at the beginning of the year

[on Rosh HaShana] following the completion of seven years, which is also called an appointed time. Therefore,

the Merciful One wrote: “

On the Festival of Sukkot.”

And had the Merciful One written: “

At the appointed time in the year of the Sabbatical Year

on the Festival of Sukkot”

and had not written “when all Israel comes,”

I would have thought: even

on

the last Festival day

it would be possible to fulfill the mitzva of Hakhel.