Pekudei, Pekude, Pekudey, P’kude, or P’qude (פְקוּדֵי—Hebrew for “amounts of,” the second word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 23rd weekly Torah portion ( פָּרָשָׁה, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It is the 11th and last in the Book of Exodus
You’ve probably heard news about the Houthis in Yemen having entered the war between Israel and Hamas. After threatening to join the fight on Hamas’ side, they have since fired ballistic missiles at Israel and attacked and threatened ships near the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping narrows. (In the image below, the red arrow points to the strait.) More recently, a U.S.-led coalition of 12 nations has brought naval military resources to the area in order to protect commercial vessels seeking to traverse the strait, and there have already been clashes involving Houthi soldiers and U.S. forces.
Published at the end of the second century CE, the is an edited record of the complex body of material known as oral that was transmitted in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, also known as Rabbi Judah the Prince and Yehudah HaNasi, undertook to collect and edit a study edition of these halachot (laws) in order that the learning not vanish.
Although the Temple had been destroyed 130 years prior to its publication, in the world described by the Mishnah the Temple still exists and the laws that governed it are expressed in the present tense. While the Talmud (the compendium of the Mishnah and the Gemara, which interprets and comments on the Mishnah) refers to the Bar Kochba rebellion and the defeat by the Romans, the Mishnah itself ignores the events of the Roman occupation of the land of Israel. In this way, the Mishnah is a document that describes a life of sanctification, in which the rituals of the Temple are adapted for communal participation in a world that has no Temple, which escapes the ups and downs of history.
How long must a haftarah be?
Megillah 23a reports a baraita that requires 21 verses in the haftarah, parallel to the
minimum of seven aliyot of three verses in the Torah reading. That ruling is represented as the
halakhah by Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 284:1. But a careful reading of the Talmud text
suggests that the matter may be less clear.
The baraita is not reported by the Talmud as a matter of law. It is used by the Talmud,
there, to attempt to bring a proof about the number of aliyot that there are. But Rava sees it as a
”עולותיכם ספו“ ruling and challenges it on factual grounds, citing the haftarah
, the haftarah of
parashat Tsav, which he points out is less than 21 verses. Several other haftarot today are
likewise less than 21 verses (the haftarah of Ki Tetze, “רני עקרה,” Isaiah 54:1-10, 10 verses; the
haftarah of Vayak-hel “ויעש חירום,” I Kings 7:40-50, 11 verses, to name a few). The talmud’s
anonymous response to Rava’s challenge is: “That is different, because the issue comes to an end
Baraita, also spelled Baraitha (Hebrew: “Outside Teaching,” or “Exclusion”), plural Baraitot, Baraitoth, orBaraithoth, any of the ancient oral traditions of Jewish religious law that were not included in the Mishna (the first authoritative codification of such laws).
The Book of Psalms is an ancient anthology of poetic prayers originally written in Hebrew.
It is the first book of the third and final section of the Hebrew Bible, known as Ketuvim (Writings).
The English term title derives from the Greek psalmos, meaning “song accompanied by a stringed instrument.”
In Hebrew, the book is known as Tehillim (tehillah in the singular) or “songs of praise,”
a title that emerged as the preferred Jewish name for the collection during the first centuries of the Common Era (CE).
The title of the national anthem, HATIKVA, means “The Hope.” It was written by Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909), who moved to Palestine in 1882 from Galicia. The melody was arranged by Samuel Cohen, an immigrant from Moldavia, from a musical theme in Smetana’s “Moldau” that is partly based on a Scandinavian folk song.
Hatikva expresses the hope of the Jewish people, that they would someday return to the land of their forefathers as prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish people were exiled from Israel in 70 C.E. by the Roman army led by Titus who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. During the two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people said special daily prayers for return to Israel while facing the East in the direction of Jerusalem. They celebrated the holidays according to Hebrew seasons and calendar. Zion is synonymous with Israel and Jerusalem.
