[Avodah] The takana of krias hatorah on Monday and Thursday

Marty Bluke via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Sun Aug 28 22:14:41 PDT 2016


On Monday, August 29, 2016, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> But in any case, Ezra didn't make the taqanah then. The taqanah waiting
> for Ezra implies that it was /his/ generation that had too many men
> going three days without learning. Why would this imply anything about
> previous generations and how much /they/ learned?

> If anything, it raises questions about why the Sanhedrin didn't feel
> a need during Menashe's rule. Maybe they thought it would be pointles.
> Maybe in those days, enough people did indeed say Qeri'as Shema to not
> need another enactment. Maybe the whole point of the taqanah was to
> get peer pressure pushing people to open a seifer Torah for at least
> 3 pesuqim.

The Gemara states that Moshe made the original Takana of 3 pesukim and
Ezra expanded it. So this Takana already existed at the time of Menashe
that they would read the Torah on Mondays and Thursday's. In fact it
existed in the midbar because Moshe made it.



On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 2:10 AM, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> Well, not Torah sheBikhsav. Until Arvos Moreh Moshe at most had megillos
> of what would someday be combined (appended together? redacted?) into
> the Torah, and some tannaim hold we didn't get /any/ Torah until then. So
> there wasn't a seifer Torah to read from yet.

While your point sounds good, the Gemara states (see the Rambam hilchos
tefila 12:1) that Moshe Rabenu (or very early Neviim) was mesaken krias
hatorah on Mondays and Thursdays.

This reminds me of something I saw about tefillin in the midbar. I had
always assumed that after the Jews got the Torah of course they started
wearing tefillin, after all it is one of the 613 mitzvos. However, it is
not so simple.

Tefillin have to have the 4 parshiyos from the Torah placed within them.
The Malbim makes the following fascinating point. There is a dispute
between R' Yochanan and Resh Lakish whether the Torah was given Megilla
Megilla or chasuma nitna. Rashi explains that megilla, megilla means that
as soon as an event happened Moshe would write it down and after 40 years
in the Midbar he put them all together and made a sefer torah. Resh Lakish
holds that the Torah was only written down after 40 years in the midbar
when it was finished.  The Malbim says that according to Resh Lakish who
holds that Torah chasuma nitna they didn't put on tefillin all 40 years
because they didn't have the parshiyos yet while according to R' Yochanan
they did once the 4 parshiyos were written. However, the Chavatzelet
Hasharon points out that there is an explicit medrash in Shir Hashirim that
states that the Jews wore tefillin in the midbar and he discusses
additional sources relating to this question.

This is very similar to the point that you are making. Certainly according
to Resh Lakish who holds that Torah chasuma nitna, how could Moshe Rabenu
have been misaken krias hatorah on Mondays and Thursdays, what did they
read? And even according to R' Yochanan that megila megila what did they
read from, there was no complete sefer torah yet?



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