Chumash (alsoḤumash;Hebrew:חומש,pronounced[χuˈmaʃ] orpronounced[ħuˈmaʃ] orYiddish:pronounced[ˈχʊməʃ]; pluralḤumashim) is a copy of theTorah (the Five Books of Moses that begin the Hebrew bible), printed and bound in the form of a book (i.e. acodex) for convenience when studying. In comparison, aTorah scroll is handwritten, with rigorous production standards, on a special type ofparchment and sewn together as a single scroll for use in thesynagogue.
The word 'Chumash' comes from the Hebrew word for five,ḥamesh (חמש). A more formal term isḤamishah Ḥumshei Torah, "five fifths of Torah". It is also known by the Latinised Greek termPentateuch in common printed editions.[1]
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The wordḥumesh has the standardAshkenazi Hebrewvowel shift ofḥomesh, meaning "one-fifth", alluding to any one of the five books; bysynecdoche, it came to mean the five fifths of the Torah. TheModern Hebrew pronunciationḥumash is an erroneous reconstruction based on the assumption that the Ashkenazic accent, which is almost uniformly penultimately stressed, had also changed the stress of the word.ḥumesh preserves the original stress pattern and both pronunciations contain a shifted first vowel.
In early scribal practice, there was a distinction between a Torah scroll containing the entire Pentateuch on aparchment scroll, and a copy of one of the five books on its own, which was generally bound incodex form, like a modern book, and had a lesser degree of sanctity. The termḥomesh strictly applies to one of the latter. Thus,ḥomesh B'reshit strictly means "the Genesis fifth", but was misread asḥumash, B'reshit and interpreted as meaning "The Pentateuch: Genesis", as ifḥumash was the name of the book andBereshit the name of one of its parts. Compare the misunderstanding of "Tur" to mean the entirety of theArba'ah Turim.[citation needed]
In the legal codes, such asMaimonides'Mishneh Torah, it is laid down that any copy of the Pentateuch which does not comply with the strict rules for a Sefer Torah, for example, because it is not a parchment scroll or containsvowel signs, has only the same sanctity as a copy of an individual book (ḥomesh). In this way, the wordḥomesh (orḥumash) came to have the extended sense of any copy of the Pentateuch other than a Sefer Torah.[2]
The wordḥumash generally only refers to "book" bound editions of the Pentateuch, whereas the "scroll" form is called asefer Torah ("book [of the] Torah").
In modern Jewish practice:
