Sotah 41a — the Talmud in English

And Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the assembly, from man to woman and every one who understood to hear, on the first day of the seventh month.

And he read from it before the square that was before the Water Gate [

one of the southern gates of the azarah].

And now this is difficult: how can you say that the reading was in the Women's Courtyard, when the Sages hold that the reading was in the azarah, and the unqualified term azarah means the Israelites' Courtyard!?

He said

he answered,

Rav Hisda:

That which the first tanna said in the beraita, that the reading was in the azarah, means

in the Women's Courtyard.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he reads [the passages] “After the death” and “On the tenth”:

And we raise a contradiction,

and this is difficult from a Mishna that we learned in Megilla [24a]:

One may skip in the Prophets

from passage to passage,

but one may not skip in the Torah!?

because one who hears someone jumping from place to place does not have his mind settled to listen.

He said

he answered,

Abaye: It is not difficult;

for:

Here—

in the Mishna in Megilla—where he comes to skip

in such a manner that the translator will have to stop,

for the translator, who translates the preceding verse that he read, will stop translating until the reader begins to read at the place to which he skipped, and it turns out that the public stands in silence, and this is not the honor of the public.

Here—

in our Mishna—a small skip is made from the passage “After the death” to the passage “Say,” and

in such a manner that the translator will not have to stop

translating what the High Priest read in the passage “After the death,” and it turns out that there is no silence here; therefore it is permitted to skip.

And we object to this:

But it teaches

in that same Mishna in Megilla: “

One may skip in the Prophets, but one may not skip

in the Torah, and how far may he skip

in the Prophets?

As far as the translator will not have to stop.”

By implication,

necessarily,

in the Torah, not at all

may one skip, even in such a manner that the translator will not have to stop, because one who hears someone jumping from place to place does not have his mind settled to listen.

Rather,

because of this difficulty,

Abaye said

to answer in another manner:

It is not difficult;

for:

Here—

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

within one subject

he skips from place to place, for everything concerns the subject of Yom Kippur.

Here—

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

it is only concerning two subjects

that they said so.

And the Gemara supports Abaye's words:

And it was taught [

pleasantly]:

One may skip in the Torah within

one subject, and in the Prophets

even

within two subjects; and here and here [

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

in such a manner that the translator will have to stop;

it is thus explained in accordance with Abaye's answer, that within one subject one may skip in the Torah.

And the Gemara continues to bring the continuation of the beraita:

And one may not skip from one Prophet to another, but in the Prophet of the Twelve [

the Twelve],

one may skip

even from one Prophet to another, because it is all 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 must 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 have read before you is written here”:

And we explain:

And why all this

does he need to say to the people!?

In order not to cast aspersion upon the scroll of

the

Torah

from which he read, so that they should say that it is defective and lacks the third passage that the High Priest reads.

We learned in the Mishna:

And in “On the tenth,” which is in the Book of the Numbered, he reads by heart:

And we object:

Let him roll the scroll [

let him roll the scroll to that place]

and read [

and read from it]!?

He said

he answered,

Rav Huna bar Yehuda said in the name of Rav Sheshet:

Because one does not roll a Torah scroll in public

because of the honor of the public, since they would wait and remain silent for this.

And we object:

And

it is still difficult: let them not roll the scroll, but

let them bring another Torah scroll and read [

let them bring another Torah scroll that is rolled to the passage of Pinhas and read from it]!?

Rav Huna bar Yehuda said,

he answered:

Because of the defect

of

the

Torah scroll

first,

so that they should not say that he found a defect in it.

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said:

Because one does not recite an unnecessary blessing,

and if he brings another Torah scroll, he will have to recite the blessing again. And we object to Rav Huna bar Yehuda:

And are we concerned about a defect [

that is, do we indeed concern ourselves with a defect in the scroll]!?

But Rabbi Isaac Nappa said: When the first of Tevet occurs on Shabbat, he brings three Torah scrolls [

three Torah scrolls]

and reads

in

one concerning the subject of the day [

the weekly portion],

and

in

one for the first of the month, and

in

one for Hanukkah.

It follows that they are not concerned about a defect in the first scrolls, and they bring out other scrolls!?

And we answer:

Three men with three scrolls—there is no defect [

when three men read from three Torah scrolls, there is no defect here], but when one man reads

from two scrolls [

one man with two scrolls],

there is a defect.

We learned in the Mishna:

And he recites eight blessings over it:

The Sages taught:

They recite the blessing over the Torah as they recite the blessing in the synagogue

after it.

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

as we say them in the prayer.

Over the Temple

he recites a blessing

by itself; and over the priests by itself, and over Israel by itself, and over Jerusalem by itself, and over the rest of the prayer.

The Sages taught:

The rest of the prayer

that is taught in our Mishna is as follows: “

Entreaty, song, and request,

for Your people Israel require salvation,”

and he concludes with

the blessing of

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 house and reads from it.

And why all this

that they bring and read from their Torah scrolls?

In order to display its appearance to the public,

to display the beauty of the Torah scroll and the splendor of its owners, who took pains to beautify themselves through the mitzva, as it is said: “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 called by the expression “the holy tongue.”

b. It is written [Deuteronomy 31:10]: “And Moses commanded them, saying: At the end of seven years, at the appointed time of the year of release, on the Festival of Sukkot, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their ears. Assemble the people—the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger who is in your gates—in order that they may hear and in order that they may learn, and they shall 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 through it are called “the king's passage,” because the king is the one who reads them.

Mishna:

The king's passage,

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

how

is it recited?

On

the conclusion of the first Festival day

of the Festival

of Sukkot,

in the eighth,

that is, in the eighth year, which is

at the conclusion of

the

seventh

year, which is the year of release,

they make for him

for the king

a wooden platform

in the azarah

in the Temple,

and he sits upon it.

And the source of the mitzva and its time is from what

is stated: “

At the end [

at the conclusion]

of seven years, at the appointed time

of the year of release, on the Festival of Sukkot. When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their ears.”

And this reading is by the king, because it is written in the passage “You shall surely set over you a king”: “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 in it all the days of his life.” And it is taught in the Sifrei: “‘This copy of the Torah’—on the day of the hakhel they read only in the second Torah [the Book of Deuteronomy].” And this was the order of the reading:

The synagogue attendant [

assistant] of the

synagogue [

which was on the Temple Mount, near the azarah],

takes

the

scroll of the

Torah,

and gives it to the head of the synagogue, and the head of the synagogue gives it to the deputy,

of the High Priest,

and 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 he is

sitting.

King Agrippa stood

on his feet

and received

the Torah scroll,

and read

from it while he was

standing, and the Sages praised him

for having read while standing.

And when

Agrippa, in his reading,

reached

the verse, “

You shall not be able to place over yourself [

a king]

a foreign man

who is not your brother,”

his eyes shed

Agrippa’s

tears!

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

The Sages said to him:

the Sages:

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

For his mother was from Israel, and therefore you are fit for the kingship.

And the king reads

in this gathering

from the beginning of

“These are the words”

at the beginning of Deuteronomy

until

the section of

“Hear

Israel” in the section of Va’ethanan.

And

afterward he reads the section of

“Hear”,

because this section is acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven.

And from there he skips to the section of Ekev, and reads there the section of

“And it shall be, if you surely hearken”,

which is acceptance of the yoke of mitzvot.

And 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 time of gathering, of gifts to the poor, and of separating terumot and tithes.

And again he skips until the section of Ki Tavo, and reads there also the section of

“When you have finished tithing

all the tithe of your produce,” which is the mitzva of removing the tithes. And afterward he returns to the section of Shoftim,

and

reads

the section of the king,

which is 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 finishes

the

entire section

that ends with the verse, “These are the words of the covenant,” because this section is acceptance of the covenants of the Torah, as explained above, page 37.

Those eight

blessings that the High Priest blesses

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

also

the king blesses them

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

rather he gives [

blesses] a

festival [

the fourth blessing in the festival prayer]

in place of

the blessing of

forgiveness of iniquity,

for it is the time of the festival.

Gemara:

We learned in the Mishna: “The section of the king—how is it [read]? On the day after the first Festival day of the festival, on the eighth, at the conclusion of the Sabbatical year”:

It might have entered our minds that “the eighth” means the eighth day of the festival, namely, the Eighth Day of Assembly; and therefore we ask:

On the eighth

day of the festival,

might it enter your mind

that it is the time of the assembly? But did we not learn in our Mishna, “on the day after the first Festival day of the festival,” that this is the time of the assembly?

And we answer:

say [

that you should teach as follows]: “On the day after the first Festival day of the festival,

in

the

eighth

year, at the conclusion of the Sabbatical year.”

The Gemara further raises a difficulty from 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 for this mitzva—“at the end of seven years,” “at the appointed time 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

if the Merciful One had written: “At the end of

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

I would have thought

that the law is not dependent upon the Sabbatical year, but

let us count from now [

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

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

even though it does not happen to fall [

that same eighth year does not fall]

in

the year of

the Sabbatical year.

year.

Therefore

the Merciful One wrote “the year of the

year of the

Sabbatical year,”

to teach us that the matter is dependent upon the Sabbatical year.

And if the Merciful One had 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 Hashanah of the eighth year, for “at the end of seven years” implies at the end of the seventh year.

Therefore

the Merciful One wrote: “

at the appointed time,”

that is, on the festival; from this it is compelled that the time of the mitzva of assembly is not at the end of the year, for there is no appointed time in it, and you cannot say [that it means] another appointed time during the Sabbatical year, since the verse says: “at the end [at the conclusion] of seven years.”

And if He had written

the Merciful One, “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 is speaking of the appointed time that is

from the beginning of the year [

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

the Merciful One wrote: “

on the festival of Sukkot.”

And if the Merciful One had written: “At the appointed time of the Sabbatical year

on the festival of Sukkot,”

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 assembly.