If you unroll a Torah scroll, the whole thing is close to fifty yards long. My shul does this on Simchat Torah -- it's pretty cool.
on the holiday of Simchat Torah, finish it up, scroll the whole thing back to the beginning, and start over Nitpick: since this takes a while (scroll technology is not good at random access; that's why the codex became so popular. The Torah scroll is really far too long to be a practical scroll; nobody in ancient times would've wanted to have a scroll that long for any reason other than religious ones. I'm sure that, for example, Homer's works were never published in one (OK, two) big scrolls, but rather each "book" or chapter had its own scroll. OK, long digression over), synagogues who have more than one scroll usually have one which is already pre-rolled to the beginning, and one which is rolled to the end. In fact, during the services on Simchat Torah, it's traditional to lift the (a) Torah 3 times: once after ending a scroll, once after reading the first bit of the scroll, and once after the additional Maftir reading, which I am too lazy to look up what it is exactly, but probably something from Parsha Pinchas, because that's what most of the special Maftirs are. You can do this all with one scroll, but there are much more fun ways to make SImchat Torah services long than waiting for a couple of people to roll the Torah.
Clarification: the tradition is that the 5 books of Moses (Torah) were given to Moses by G-d; the rest of Tanakh is attributed to various other authors. Another digression, interesting to me: nowadays people say that the entire 5 books were given on Mt. Sinai, but up until fairly recently[1], it was generally accepted that G-d gave some of Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and the rest during the rest of the wandering in the desert.
I'm not going to go into whether this is literally or historically true, or about the textual analysis you can do to determine stylistically whether different parts were written at different times, or any of that -- for RELIGIOUS purposes, this is how we look at it. Yep. I can hold "tea" and "no tea" in my inventory at the same time. :-)
It also includes stories, legends, parables, a little bit of snark and shitposting about each other, some bad medical advice, some okay medical advice, and a couple recipes. Don't forget geometry! There's a section which, if I recall correctly (and may not be), where the Rabbis are inscribing a circle in a square (in the context of a round table in a square Sukkah[2], and for the sake of their calculations approximate Pi to 3. I think that they're aware it's an approximation, but in their context it's probably OK. I'd like to argue that the non-law parts of Talmud ("aggadah") are just as important as the other portions, not that I'm an expert either.
Sorry this is so long... if you weren't writing interesting posts, I wouldn't write long comments! :-)
[1] When I speak of "recently" in a Jewish context, I may mean a mere 1-200 years. [2] Or is it a square table in a round Sukkah[3]? It's been a while. [3] Tabernacle[4] [4] Is Tabernacle an actually useful definition for anyone nowadays? It's like calling Tefillin Phylacteries. Um, hello, not helpful, IMHO. A Sukkah is a temporary shack, originally used as shelter during the harvest, and in this context used durring the religious holiday of Sukkot.
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Date: 2018-11-02 12:13 pm (UTC)My shul does this on Simchat Torah -- it's pretty cool.
on the holiday of Simchat Torah, finish it up, scroll the whole thing back to the beginning, and start over
Nitpick: since this takes a while (scroll technology is not good at random access; that's why the codex became so popular. The Torah scroll is really far too long to be a practical scroll; nobody in ancient times would've wanted to have a scroll that long for any reason other than religious ones. I'm sure that, for example, Homer's works were never published in one (OK, two) big scrolls, but rather each "book" or chapter had its own scroll. OK, long digression over), synagogues who have more than one scroll usually have one which is already pre-rolled to the beginning, and one which is rolled to the end. In fact, during the services on Simchat Torah, it's traditional to lift the (a) Torah 3 times: once after ending a scroll, once after reading the first bit of the scroll, and once after the additional Maftir reading, which I am too lazy to look up what it is exactly, but probably something from Parsha Pinchas, because that's what most of the special Maftirs are. You can do this all with one scroll, but there are much more fun ways to make SImchat Torah services long than waiting for a couple of people to roll the Torah.
Clarification: the tradition is that the 5 books of Moses (Torah) were given to Moses by G-d; the rest of Tanakh is attributed to various other authors. Another digression, interesting to me: nowadays people say that the entire 5 books were given on Mt. Sinai, but up until fairly recently[1], it was generally accepted that G-d gave some of Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and the rest during the rest of the wandering in the desert.
I'm not going to go into whether this is literally or historically true, or about the textual analysis you can do to determine stylistically whether different parts were written at different times, or any of that -- for RELIGIOUS purposes, this is how we look at it.
Yep. I can hold "tea" and "no tea" in my inventory at the same time. :-)
It also includes stories, legends, parables, a little bit of snark and shitposting about each other, some bad medical advice, some okay medical advice, and a couple recipes.
Don't forget geometry! There's a section which, if I recall correctly (and may not be), where the Rabbis are inscribing a circle in a square (in the context of a round table in a square Sukkah[2], and for the sake of their calculations approximate Pi to 3. I think that they're aware it's an approximation, but in their context it's probably OK. I'd like to argue that the non-law parts of Talmud ("aggadah") are just as important as the other portions, not that I'm an expert either.
Sorry this is so long... if you weren't writing interesting posts, I wouldn't write long comments! :-)
[1] When I speak of "recently" in a Jewish context, I may mean a mere 1-200 years.
[2] Or is it a square table in a round Sukkah[3]? It's been a while.
[3] Tabernacle[4]
[4] Is Tabernacle an actually useful definition for anyone nowadays? It's like calling Tefillin Phylacteries. Um, hello, not helpful, IMHO. A Sukkah is a temporary shack, originally used as shelter during the harvest, and in this context used durring the religious holiday of Sukkot.