Q&A: The Five Books of the Torah
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
The Five Books of the Torah
Question
Is the division of the five books into weekly portions (Genesis, Noah, etc.) and into verses from Sinai? Are there any implications to these divisions?
Answer
I don’t know. I don’t even know which parts of the text are from Sinai.
With God’s help, eve of the Sabbath, Vayera 5781
To Rabbi Michael Abraham — greetings,
The division into verses is accepted as coming from Moses our Teacher, as the Talmud says: “Any verse that Moses our Teacher, peace be upon him, did not divide, we do not divide.” Likewise, the division into sections, in the sense of an “open section” and a “closed section,” is accepted in the tradition, and a Torah scroll is not kosher if its section breaks are not punctuated according to the tradition.
By contrast, the division into the weekly Torah portions is a custom instituted in the days of the Sages in order to complete the reading in a yearly cycle, as was practiced in Babylonia. In the Land of Israel, where they completed the Torah reading in three years (or three and a half years), there was a division into “sedarim,” lists of which were preserved in the Cairo Geniza, and some of the midrashim are also divided according to these “sedarim.”
Best regards, Y. B. Levi