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Esnoga Bet Emunah 1101 Surrey Trace SE, Tumwater, WA 98501 United
States of America © 2012 E-Mail: gkilli@aol.com |
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Esnoga Bet El 102
Broken Arrow Dr. Paris
TN 38242 United
States of America © 2012 E-Mail: waltoakley@charter.net |
Triennial Cycle (Triennial Torah Cycle) /
Septennial Cycle (Septennial Torah Cycle)
|
Three and
1/2 year Lectionary Readings |
Fourth Year of the Reading
Cycle |
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Sivan 06/07, 5772 – May 26/28, 2012 |
Fourth Year of the Shmita
Cycle |
Chag Shabuoth 5771
Festival of Pentecost 2010
We wish all of
our students and friends and their loved ones, together with all of our most
noble and beloved Jewish brothers and sisters and their Torah Scholars a most
joyful and happy Chag Sameach Shabuoth!
For more information
on this festival
Please read the
following studies:
http://www.betemunah.org/shavuot.html; & http://www.betemunah.org/freedom.html
Order of Service:
Morning Service – May the 27th,
2012
Torah
Reading: Exodus 19:1 – 20:26
& Numbers
28:26-31
Reader 1: Exodus 19:1-6
Reader 2: Exodus 19:7-13
Reader 3: Exodus 19:14-19
Reader 4: Exodus 19:20 – 20:14
Reader 5: Exodus 20:15-23
Maftir: Numbers 28:26-31
Ashlamatah:
Ezekiel 1:1-28; 3:12
Afternoon Service – May the 27th,
2012
Ruth
1:1 – 3:7
Azharoth:
The Positive Commandments
Evening Meditation – May the 27th,
2012
2
Lukas (Acts) 2:1-47 & Revelation 2:12-15
Morning Service – May the 28th,
2012
Torah
Reading: Deuteronomy 15:19-16:17 & Numbers 28:26-31
Reader 1: Deuteronomy 15:19-23
Reader 2: Deuteronomy 16:1-3
Reader 3: Deuteronomy 16:4-8
Reader 4: Deuteronomy 16:9-12
Reader 5: Deuteronomy 16:13-17
Maftir: Numbers 28:26-31
Ashlamatah:
Habakkuk 2:20-3:19
Afternoon Service – May the 28th,
2012
Ruth
3:8 – 4:22
Azharoth:
The Negative Commandments
Evening Meditation – May the 28th,
2012
1 Corinthians 12:1 – 13:13 &
Revelation 2:12-15
THE AZHAROTH FOR SHABUOTH
An Introduction
BY THE REVEREND DR. DAVID DE SOLA POOL
The Azharoth (Admonitions) enumerate the basic commandments of the
Torah. These are traditionally 613 in number, equivalent to the numerical value
of the letters of the Hebrew word Torah (611), with the addition of the first
two commandments in which at Mount Sinai God himself spoke to Israel in the
first person. Of these, 365 are reckoned as prohibitions and 248 as affirmative
precepts. The rabbis of old point out that this should be suggestive of the
constant validity of all of them on everyone of the 365 days in the year for
the whole body of man with its 248 parts.
On Shabuoth, the festival celebrating the giving of the whole Torah to
the children of Israel, these 613 commandments are recalled. The 248 positive
commandments are customarily read before afternoon service on the first day and
the 365 prohibitions on the second day.
The version of the Azharoth traditionally read among Sephardim is by
Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-69), with an introduction by David ben Eleazar
Bekuda, a poet of the twelfth century. Ibn Gabirol's version maintains one
rhyme throughout in the last word of every one of its 255 quatrains, while
within each quatrain the first three lines are also rhymed. The difficulties
imposed by this extraordinary prosody and the fetters of meter and rhyme, as
well as the difficulty of expressing each commandment concisely with allusive
reminiscences of the Bible text, have compelled even so incomparable a master
of classic Hebrew poetry as ibn Gabirol to put the commandments together
without logical sequence, often with repetitions, and sometimes with words or
phrases added solely to fill out the rhyme and the meter. In literal
translation the subtle feeling of the poet's stylistic embellishments is
inevitably lost.
The following paragraphs make no attempt at literal translation of Ibn
Gabirol's version of the Azharoth. Instead they present in some ordered
sequence the 613 commandments of the Torah which the poet has included in his
masterly compilation.
= = = = = = = / = = = = = = =
The Positive Commandments
RELATIONS WITH GOD
Love God and serve him; cleave
to him, walk in his paths and sanctify him. Fear his anger. Acknowledge his
justice, pursue his righteousness, keep his religious law, and carry out his
commandments. Be perfect with him, be meek before him, and be holy. Write his
words on your door-posts and on your gates.
PRAYER
Proclaim his unity morning and
evening. Lay the tefillin on arm and head. Utter a hundred blessings a day and
give thanks to God for your food.
PERSONAL ETHICS
Swear without falsehood and
only in his name. Fulfill vows and keep the word that you have given. Give back
that which has been wrongfully acquired. Free the mother bird when you take
the eggs from the nest. Wear fringes of religious reminder on the border of
your garment.
FAMILY RELATIONS
Honour father and mother and
revere them. Be fruitful and multiply. Circumcise all male children. Redeem the
first-born son, and give to him a double portion in inheritance. Free the
bridegroom from going forth to war in the first year of his married life. Marry
the childless widow of your deceased brother or give her release through halitsah.
Take in honourable marriage the woman captive of war who pleases you. Test
by ordeal the wife suspected of unfaithfulness. Punish the man who slanders his
wife. Cut off the hand of the publicly immodest woman.
JUSTICE
Be diligent in seeing that
justice is done in all matters of human rights, property, and damages. Put to
death false witnesses. Pay damages for injury done. Restore to its rightful
owner property that has been found or dishonestly obtained. Have true balances,
weights, and measures, and release all debts in the seventh year. Let the
community sacrifice a heifer in atonement for an untraced murder.
LABOUR RELATIONS
Pay the labourer his hire on the
day of his work. Proclaim freedom for bondservants at the jubilee, and at the
jubilee or on his master's death free the Hebrew bond servant who has been sold
for theft. Free the Hebrew bondwoman at the seventh year or at the jubilee, and
the handmaid when she attains years of puberty. Respect the rights of the
betrothed heathen bondwoman, and when you send your bondman tree send him away
well laden. A slave you may make of the Canaanite
RELATIONS WITH THE POOR
Show pity to the poor; be
happy to help him, give to him generously and proportionately to your ability.
Support the poor before he falls Clothe the naked. For the poor leave in the
field the forgotten sheaf, the gleanings, the corner of the field, that which
is dropped, and that which grows of itself in the fields in the seventh year.
Comfort the poor with words. Lend to him, and return his pledge and keep it not
overnight.
RELATIONS WITH YOUR FELLOW MAN
Love your neighbour as
yourself. Love the alien. Cheer the sick, bury the dead, and comfort the
mourner. Respect the aged and rise up before him. Rebuke your neighbour for
wrong done by him. Be happy in supporting your fellow man, and help to raise
his burdened animal Redeem those sold into bondage. Build a parapet on your
roof that none may fall from the house-top.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
Set a king over you, and he will
write for his guidance a copy of the Torah. Appoint judges and officers.
Designate six cities of refuge in your land for the accidental manslayer.
Assemble the people by trumpet call. Put to death the false prophet and the one
who entices to idolatry, and burn away idols and idolatrous groves. Proclaim on
Mt. Ebal the blessings: and on Mt. Gerizim the curses, and erect a national
altar of plastered stones. Set out the Holy Land in its prescribed borders.
Observe the law governing the sale of houses in walled cities and in open
cities.
WAR
Impose the redemption tax of
half a shekel in a census for war, and levy tribute on those who go out to war.
Appoint a priest to guide you in war. Blot out Amalek. Spare the enemy city
that surrenders. Destroy a city that lapses into idolatry, and raze the
captured city.
RITUAL PURITY
Segregate unclean persons,
animals, liquids, and utensils. Bury excrement outside the camp. Cleanse by
sprinkling him who has a running issue, and the leper, and cleanse the one who
is contaminated by contact with the dead. The unclean from contact, from
intercourse, from emission, must cleanse themselves by bathing at the statutory
time. Avoid pollution and cleanse yourself if you have become polluted. The menstruous must cleanse herself by bathing, as must the
mother of a new-born child. The priest must determine the cleanness or uncleanness
of infected garments and houses.
DIETARY REGULATIONS
The fruit harvest of the first
three years leave uneaten; that of the fourth year eat in the Temple, while
that of the fifth and the following years may be
freely eaten. Cover with dust the blood of a bird or wild animal slaughtered
for food. The flesh of an animal that dies of itself may be eaten only by one who is not a Jew.
THE RELIGIOUS CALENDAR
Fix the calendar and the
months of the year. Keep the Sabbath and make your Sabbath rest joyous.
Sanctify your Sabbath over wine of rejoicing and
kindle the lights of the Sabbath. Give Sabbath rest for your servants and your
animals.
Celebrate the three festivals
of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and bring their required festival offerings and make
your pilgrimage festival joyous. Chant on the
festivals the Hallel psalms of praise. On your festivals rejoice the widow, the
orphan, the Levite, and the alien. Observe the month of Nisan and
the Passover in that month. Annul all leaven on the Passover, and sanctify its
first and seventh days. On the eve of the festival eat the paschal lamb roasted on the fire, together with unleavened bread
and bitter herbs, your loins girt and shoes on your feet. Offer the Orner sheaf
of barley and count the days of the Omer for seven
weeks from the Passover. Let those who are unclean on the Passover bring their
paschal offering on the second Passover one month
later.
Observe the Shabuoth festival
of the weeks and offer your first-fruits with words of thanksgiving.
Keep holy the first day of the
Succoth festival of booths, and the eighth day, observing the Eighth Day
Closing Festival. Build your festival booth and
wave the lulab (palm branch) cluster of four growths. Pour water on the altar
on the festival of the booths.
Observe the New Year with the
blowing of the Shofar, and the Day of Atonement as a solemn fast day. Bring on
it the people's atonement sacrifice.
Light the lights of Hanukah,
and celebrate the happy holiday of Purim.
THE TEMPLE RITUAL OF SACRIFICE
Build God's House of worship
according to the form he commanded. Revere the Temple. Dedicate it and its
altar.
The priest must offer up the
sacrifices to be burned, salt the sacrifice pinch off the neck of the dove,
slay the bull or the ram, receive the blood, sprinkle
it, and wave the offering and the breast. He must burn the red heifer for
purification, and send away the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. He must mix and crumble the grain-offering and take a
handful of it. The priest is entitled to twenty-four gifts, his portion of the
thanksgiving offering, his portion of the dough
which you bring as a wave-offering, the first shearing, the shoulder and the
breast sacrifices, that which is devoted, the estimated
value of your vows, and a tithe of the Levite's tithe.
Twenty additional sacrificial
offerings are to be brought to the altar There is the bullock for the
sin-offering of the people, the offering that should be commensurate
with the means of the one who brings it, and the sacrifice which varies with
doubtful or certain guilt. There is the sacrifice by which he who
was unclean marks his cleansing, the required fifth, the tithe of cattle, the
first-born of cattle (though the first-born of the ass must be redeemed), and the tenth of an ephah of fine flour brought with each
lamb. Sacrifices must be eaten in the Temple. That which is left over of the
sacrifices must be burned, as must that which has
become unfit.
The tithe of corn and of
cattle must be taken up to Jerusalem. The tithe for the poor must also be
brought, and the second tithe after the Levitical tithe must
be eaten in the Temple. Confession must be made when giving the third-year
tithe.
Let the priest provide the oil
for anointing and for the lamps, pour out the oil of the sacrifices, prepare
and provide the incense and offer it, set out the shew-bread
in twin rows of six, and the two loaves of the new corn on Shabuoth,
The High Priest must marry
only a virgin. He must lift his hands blessing over the people. The priest must
wear special garments for Temple service, as must
the High Priest for service within the Temple veil. He must conduct atonement
for the people and bless the people.
THE TORAH
Revere the learned and honour
the disciple of the learned. Learn and teach the Torah. The Torah must be read
to all the people every three years. Teach it
joyously and diligently to your children and disciples.
Write a Sefer Torah, and make
God's words the healing of your heart and lips.
The Prohibitions
RELATIONS WITH GOD
You will have no other gods
before God. You will make no idolatrous images nor set them up. Build no
idolatrous pillar or stone image, and plant no Asherah. Bring no idol into your
dwelling; covet not the silver of other gods and take not their names on your
lips. Deal not with God as other people do with their idols.
Take not God's name in vain,
profane not his name, and blaspheme and curse Him not. Do not try God. Resort
not to spiritualism, witchcraft, enchantments or charmers, and let no witch be
allowed to live, nor harlot nor sodomite. Forget not God, and stray not after
your heart and your eyes.
PERSONAL ETHICS
Believe not in falsehood. Be not
stiff-necked. Take no false oaths, break no vows, and delay not to pay your
vows. Do not muzzle the threshing-ox nor harness an ox and an ass together to the
plough. Do not take from the nest the mother bird with the young. A woman may
not wear man's clothing nor may a man wear woman's clothing. Let there be no bestiality
nor sodomy among you. Nor may you hybridize your fields with seeds of diverse
kinds.
FAMILY RELATIONS
Neither curse nor strike parents.
The gluttonous drunken son will not be allowed to live.
The sexually injured may not
marry. You will not commit adultery.
Spread no evil reports about your
wife, and you can never divorce a wife whom you have falsely accused. You may
not take again your divorced wife who has remarried. A childless widow may
not be married to another man so long as her brother-in-law may marry her.
While his wife is living a man may not marry her sister. You will not commit
adultery or incest, and the one born of incest may not enter the community of
Israel.
Forbidden in sex relations are
one's wife during her uncleanness, one's mother, step-mother, mother-in-law,
and mother of one's mother-in-law or of one's father-in-law; aunt; sister,
step-sister, or sister-in-law; daughter, step-daughter, granddaughter, or
daughter-in-law; a woman and her daughter, or a woman and her granddaughter.
Nor may one have sex relations with a
betrothed maiden or with an idolatress. Nor may one allow one's daughter to be
a harlot.
JUSTICE
In matters of justice fear no
individual, respect no person, and show no favour to great or small. Neither
show favour to the poor nor pervert the cause of the poor, the orphan,
the widow, and the alien. Revile not the judges. Do not refuse to accept the judgment.
Parents will not be put to death for children,
nor children for parents. You may not stand idly by the blood of your fellow
man. The malicious false witness will not live. Put not the innocent to death. None
may be put to death on the word of but one witness. Have no fellowship with
evildoers as witnesses. Take no bribe, and accept no ransom for murder.
Let not corporal punishment be more than forty lashes.
BUSINESS
Do not defraud. Have no
undersized weights, or weights and measures of diverse standards. Do not make
dishonest measurements of land.
Do not exact usury, nor give food
at interest. And do not exact payment of debt from your fellow Jew in the year
of release.
LABOUR RELATIONS
Do not overburden your bondman
with work, nor deal harshly with a freeborn Jew. It is forbidden to steal a Jew
into slavery, nor may a Jew be sold into servitude. Let it not be hard for you to give
freedom to your Jewish bondman at the end of his term of service; withhold not
that which is due to him, and send him
away well laden. A hired labourer may not be oppressed, nor must his pay be
held back overnight. Hand not back to his master a runaway bondman.
The Jewish bondwoman may not be
sold, and for personal injury she is indemnified but not automatically freed.
If her master will not marry her, he must let her be redeemed at her true value; he
may not sell her into bondage. And if he marry another, he may not lessen the
allowance of food and clothing and the
conjugal rights of his espoused bondwoman.
RELATIONS WITH THE POOR
Harden not your heart against the
poor and shut not your hand against him. Do not gather for yourself the
gleanings of your vineyard, or the droppings or single grapes of your vintage, the last
olives from your trees, the forgotten sheaf or gleanings of your harvest, and
that which grows in the corner of your field. All these must be left for the
poor. Take it not hard when you give
to the poor; charge him no interest, and be not as a money-lender to him.
Oppress not the orphan. Do not take in pledge the upper or the nether millstone
or the widow's garment, or charge interest on food, and judge not unjustly when
a pledge is involved.
The Levites may not sell their
allotted lands.
RELATIONS WITH YOUR FELLOW MAN
Hate not and harbour no hates.
Bear no grudge and take no vengeance.
Do not loathe even the Edomite or
the Egyptian who comes as a proselyte. Do not oppress the alien or any fellow
man. Forsake not the Levite. Steal not and steal no
fellow man. Do not deal falsely. Be not dishonest with one another. Covet not,
nor covet that which is stolen, and do not remove the landmark set of old.
Take up no false report or slander, nor bear false witness against your
neighbour. Curse not the deaf. Place no stumbling-block before the blind,
and lay no snare for anyone. Hide not yourself from helping the fallen animal
of your neighbour or from restoring his animal
that is straying. Do not defile your land by bloodshed. You will not murder,
nor incur blood-guilt through leaving your roof unguarded by a parapet.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
Your king may not be one who is
not an Israelite. Let his heart not be uplifted; let him not multiply wives, or
horses and chariots, nor let him take his people back to Egypt. Curse not a ruler of your
people.
Do not hearken to a false prophet
or seducing leaders, nor allow those to live who teach apostasy to idolatry,
and let not the land sink into lewdness.
Do not walk in the ways of the
idolatrous heathen nor do as they do.
You will not allow them to live
in your land, nor will you marry with them. Do not allow the Ammonite and the
Moabite to enter the community of Israel, and return
not to the land of Egypt.
WAR
Make no peace with the seven
corrupt peoples of Canaan or with their gods. Spare them not but wipe them out.
Seek no peace with Ammon or Moab. Spare not the
religiously apostate city, take for yourself none of its spoil, and never let
it be rebuilt. When laying siege to a city cut not down its fruit trees. Do
not disregard the proclamation of the officer of war and the priest anointed
for war.
RITUAL PURITY
Those who are polluted and
unclean will not remain within the camp, nor may they come to the Temple.
The Nazirite will not partake of
wine or of any produce of the grape.
Nor will he cut his hair or
defile himself with the dead body of his kin.
DIETARY REGULATIONS
Animals and fish that have not
the specified characteristics may not be eaten, nor may the prohibited birds.
You will eat no blood nor designated fat, nor the flesh of an animal that has died of
itself or was torn, nor the flesh of a goring ox that was stoned, nor of an animal
sacrificed to an idol. You will not eat the
hindquarter sinew, nor a kid seethed in its mother's milk, nor will you defile
yourself by eating loathsome living things. Nor will you kill the dam and her
young on the one day.
You will not eat the fruit
brought forth in the first three years, nor before you have brought the
sheaf-offering (Omer) of the first of the harvest shall you eat of the new corn,
whether as ears, parched corn, or bread. You will not eat of the second tithe
when in mourning, or when you or it may be unclean, nor will you eat of the sacrifices
when you are ritually unclean, nor will you eat of that which has not been
tithed.
CEREMONIAL
You will not shave the corner of
your beard, nor cut the corners of the hair of your head as do idolatrous
priests. In mourning make no baldness on your head nor gash your flesh. Tattoo not your
flesh. Wear no garment of mixed wool and linen.
THE RELIGIOUS CALENDAR
Do no work on the Sabbath, nor on
the holy days of Passover, the Festival of Weeks, the New Year, the Day of
Atonement, and the Festival of Booths. On the Sabbath
kindle no fire, and do not go beyond the limits of a Sabbath day's journey.
Profane not the Sabbath under the penalty of death.
On the festivals do not appear
empty before God. On the Passover eat nothing that is leavened, and allow no
leaven to remain or be seen in your habitations during the Passover week. Let there be
no leaven with the Passover sacrifice. Do not offer the Passover sacrifice
half-cooked or boiled, and break no bone of
it. Let it not be slain in any of your places except the Holy City. Let none of
it be taken outside or left over until the next day, and let no stranger or
uncircumcised or sojourning alien or hired worker partake of it.
On the Day of Atonement neither
eat nor work.
In the seventh and jubilee years
do no sowing or other field work, and in the jubilee year do not harvest that
which grows by itself.
THE TEMPLE RITUAL OF SACRIFICE
The altar may not be built of
hewn stones. Offer no sacrifices to idols, nor pass your son through the fire
to Molech, and give not of the tithe as an offering to the dead. Offer no
sacrifice outside of the Temple in Jerusalem. Let there not be eaten within
your home gates the first-born of cattle, your heave-offering of
first-fruits, that which you have vowed, and the tithe of your wine, your corn,
and your oil.
Do not work with first-born
animals or shear the first-born lamb, since they have to be devoted to God.
Delay not to bring your offering of the tithe of your fruit and your wine.
Bring not the blind or the maimed as burnt-offerings, and let no defective
sacrifice be accepted from one who is not of Israel. Eat not before the
daily continual-offering has been brought, and do not leave beyond their due
time the fat of the sacrifices and the peace-offerings and
festival-offerings. Consume not as a sacrifice any flesh contaminated by
unclean contact. The hire of a prostitute or harlot may not be brought as a
sacrifice. No animal may be substituted for one that has been designated for
sacrifice. Rejected flesh must be burned on the altar; it may not be eaten.
You may not eat that which is left over of the sacrifice, nor of a
grain-offering baked in the oven, nor that which is dressed in the stewing-pan and on
the griddle. Neither the ritually unclean nor the stranger may eat of the
heave-offering. There may be no frankincense in the barley-offering of purgation of
jealousy, nor may date-honey or leaven be brought as an offering on the altar,
nor bread nor wine on the inner
altar before the Ark.
THE PRIESTHOOD
No priest with physical defects
may serve in the Temple. The priest may not officiate except in all sobriety
after he has washed himself with the water of the laver, is ritually clean, and has
covered his head. He may not marry a divorced woman, an immoral woman, or one
profaned, and in addition the high
priest may not marry a widow. The High Priest may not profane his seed and the
sanctuary by a prohibited marriage. He may not allow himself to become
ritually unclean, nor may he go out of the Temple to defile himself. He may not
defile himself by contact with the dead, even for a parent, except for a Jew who has
none else to bury him. In bereavement he may not let his hair loose nor rend
his garments.
When in a condition of ritual
impurity he may not minister nor remove the tithe.
The priest may not offer as
sacrifice an animal with a blemish. He may not make the incense for other uses,
nor make anything resembling the incense. Nor may he use for others the priests' oil
of anointing. The priest may not go up the altar on steps, nor minister after
taking intoxicating drink.
He may not eat of the sin-offering,
the blood of which has to be sprinkled within the Temple, nor may he eat the
grain-offering which has to be burned. Nor may he
completely pinch off the head of a dove offered for sacrifice. He may not
remove the ephod from the breast-plate, nor let the fire go out on the altar.
Non-priests may not exercise
priestly functions, nor eat of the portions consecrated to the priests, nor may
the hired man or guest of the priest. Nor may the priest's daughter so long
as she is married to one who is not a priest. And the priest may not defile
himself by contact with the dead. No non-priest or one who is unclean may be present when
the holy things are covered.
The Levite may no more officiate
after he has reached the age of retirement from service.
THE TORAH
Forget not the Torah that has
been revealed to you. Add not to it nor diminish from it, and let not its words
depart from your heart.
Chag Shabuoth Sameach!
Hakham Dr. Yosef ben Haggai
Rosh Paqid Adon Hillel ben David
Paqid Dr. Adon
Eliyahu ben Abraham