Skip to main content

Jewish synagogue services on the Sabbath/Shabbat, including Scriptural readings

I have only ever visited synagogues outside of service times. I have never been able to attend a "live" synagogue service. So all I know about the synagogue service comes from excursions, and speaking to Jews who have told me second hand.

The Jewish sabbath begins on sundown on Friday and runs until sundown on Saturday. The main weekly service, Shacharit Shabbat, is held on Saturday morning, for example at 9.30am.

The synagogue services begins with opening prayers: the morning blessings, and various verses from the psalms and other books of the Tanakh (Old Testament). The latter is known as "P’sukei D’Zimra".

Then comes the reciting of the "Shema" - "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, the Lord alone." 

This is followed by blessings, and the Amidah prayer ("18 blessings"). 

The central moment during the service is the reading of the Torah portion for the day. The cycle of Torah readings runs from September to September, and for this purpose the five books of Moses are divided into weekly Torah portions (singular "parsha"). Each such portion amounts to several chapters, e.g. the reading for this sabbath (8 November 2025) is Genesis 18:1-22:24 (known as Parashat Vayera)

For the purpose of reading out the relevant Torah portion, the Torah scroll is ceremonially removed from the "Tabernacle" (aron hakodesh) at the front of the synagogue, and solemnly taken to the reading desk ("bimah"), where it is then opened at the relevant point and the Torah portion for that Sabbath read out passage-by-passage by 7-8 readers.

The reading of the Torah portion is followed by the reading from the "prophets", which means Joshua-2 Kings, as well as Isaiah-Malachi. This reading is called "Haftarah". The Haftarah reading for this sabbath (8 November 2025) is 2 Kings 4. 

(I have it on good authority that someone might arrive late for synagogue, but the main thing is to be there for the reading of the Torah portion.) 

The reading of the Torah and Haftarah is followed by the "drasha" which is the equivalent of the sermon or homily in a Christian church, and is delivered by the rabbi. 

The Torah scroll is returned to the "Tabernacle" either before or after the "drasha".

The next item is called "Mussaf" and is a time of collective prayer facing Jerusalem, based on the Amidah (or 18 blessings). 

The service closes with a prayer/hymn called the "Aleinu". 

The main morning Sabbath synagogue service would typically last between an hour and a half, and three hours.   

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bury, Greater Manchester - Timeline of churches

979?      First Church on the site of the present Parish Church (the picture below is an artist's impression of Bury parish church in 1485). This was the only church in the town of Bury until 1719 (see below).  1585      Parish church (re)built in the gothic style . 1650     During the Commonwealth, Henry Pendlebury was ordained for  Holcombe Chapelry.  1662     Having been ejected from the Church of England,  Henry Pendlebury of Holcombe   (1626-1695) held services at a Chapel on Bass Lane by Richard Kay, and others ejected from the C of E (replaced in 1712 by Dundee Chapel, Holcombe) 1669      The vicar of Bury parish reported to the Bishop of Chester that he heard several conventicles were "constantly kept at private houses of Independents, Presbyterians, Dippers and other such like jointly, of the bset rank of the yeomanry and other inferiors." 1689      ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ebenezer Baptist Church in Bury (now, Bury Baptist Church)

The beginnings of what became Ebenezer Baptist Church in Bury go back to Andrew Nuttall (1784-1846) from Haslingden who came to live in Bury and started the "cause" as a branch of West Street Church in Rochdale, and later taken on by the "County Home Mission". In 1844, the Home Mission appointed Joseph Harvey as its missioner, and this led to the church being constituted in 1845 with fifteen members including Joseph Harvey (the founding pastor) and Andrew Nuttall.  During Harvey's pastorate, in 1853, the church moved into a permanent building on Knowsley Street (on the site of the present Art Picture House opposite the travel interchange). There may have been another Baptist church building on Spring Street completed in 1852.  Sometime around 1853, Joseph Harvey would baptise as a believer Franklin Howorth (d.1882), former minister of Bank Street Unitarian Chapel in Bury. Howorth amicably resigned the ministry at Bank Street and in 1854 started the "Free Ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

William Tyndale & the translation of the Bible into English

This year (2025) marks the 500 anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English by William Tyndale.  There were translations of the Bible from Hebrew/Greek into other languages from the earliest centuries of the Christian church. The first languages to "get" translations were Syriac (the area stretching eastwards from Antioch), Latin (Rome and western Europe) and Coptic (Egypt). Later, in the centuries from the 300s to 500s, translations were also made into Gothic, Armenian, Georgian and Ge'ez (Ethiopia) languages.   There had been translations of the Bible into English before Tyndale. The Venerable Bede, a leading monk living at Jarrow from the late 600s, undertook a translation of John's gospel into English. Also, King Alfred (849-899) translated the first five books of the Old Testament into English. Later, in 1384, Reformer John Wycliffe and his followers completed a translation into English from the Latin (Vulgate). However, the institutional church durin...
Post a Comment
Read more