The Tocheichah or Tochacha, meaning admonition or reproof, is the section in chapter 26 of Leviticus which highlights the consequence of a failure by the people of Israel to follow God's laws and keep his commandments. [1] It forms part of the parashah Bechukotai, the final portion of Leviticus. It is distinguished from the preceding section, [2] which relates to God's blessings which will be bestowed if the people of Israel do walk in God's ways and keep his commandments.
The Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Torah and of the Old Testament. Most of its chapters consist of God's speeches to Moses, which God commands Moses to repeat to the Israelites. This takes place within the story of the Israelites' Exodus after they escaped Egypt and reached Mt. Sinai. The Book of Exodus narrates how Moses led the Israelites in building the Tabernacle with God's instructions. Then in Leviticus, God tells the Israelites and their priests how to make offerings in the Tabernacle and how to conduct themselves while camped around the holy tent sanctuary. Leviticus takes place during the month or month-and-a-half between the completion of the Tabernacle and the Israelites' departure from Sinai.
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition.
The term parashah formally means a section of a biblical book in the Masoretic Text of the Tanakh. In the Masoretic Text, parashah sections are designated by various types of spacing between them, as found in Torah scrolls, scrolls of the books of Nevi'im or Ketuvim, masoretic codices from the Middle Ages and printed editions of the masoretic text.
Deuteronomy 28:15-68 has a similar series of curses proclaimed by Moses as the consequence of a failure by his people to follow God's laws and keep his commandments.
Moses was a prophet according to the teachings of the Abrahamic religions. Unlike other religious figures such as Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, whose historical existences are well documented; scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person.
Because of the distressing nature of the admonitions - terror, disease, warfare, famine and desolation - this section is traditionally read in a low voice in synagogue readings (but loud enough to be audible to the congregation) [3] The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch of Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried prescribed that the Tocheichah must always be read without a break, and that three verses before the admonitions and three verses after the admonitions, read in a normal, fully audible voice, must always be included in the reading. [4] Thus the admonitions would always be accompanied by the message that God would remember his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
A synagogue, is a Jewish or Samaritan house of worship.
The Shulchan Aruch, sometimes dubbed in English as the Code of Jewish Law, is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Judaism. It was authored in Safed by Joseph Karo in 1563 and published in Venice two years later. Together with its commentaries, it is the most widely accepted compilation of Jewish law ever written.
Shlomo Ganzfried was an Orthodox rabbi and posek best known as the author of the work of Halakha, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, by which title he is also known.
