A new introductory piyyut-meturgeman serving as a reshut for the targum of the haftarah. This genre used to be very popular, especially among the old French paytanim, but nowadays the only one still recited is Yetsiv Pitgam, said in some communities on the second day of Shavuot — although the targum is no longer. I think that’s a shame, so I wrote a new one. I’m probably one of the first people to write one of these since the expulsion of 1394. So of course, it’s meta as all get-out, being a reshut not just for the targum of the haftarah but for the custom of reading the targum of the haftarah with a reshut at all.

In all modern communities, the standard practice is that on the three Shabbatot before the Ninth of Av and the seven after it the standard haftarah is replaced. Before the Ninth of Av they are replaced with haftarot of rebuke, from Jeremiah and the opening of Isaiah, and after they are replaced with haftarot of consolation from the later parts of Isaiah. Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, though, preserves a very different custom, one where each one of those Torah portions has an associated haftarah, related not to the calendar but to the parashah itself. Here the editor has compiled a list of these haftarah readings, along with brief notes to explain their connection with the parashah.

The ancient Land of Israel rite was most well-known for its three-and-a-half-year Torah-reading cycle, but until recently very little was known about the haftarot recited alongside this cycle. Through studies of piyyuṭim and midrashim lists of opening verses to the hafṭarot were reconstructed, but an opening verse does not a full hafṭara make. All that changed when the St. Petersburg Manuscript, MS. EVR II B 42, was rediscovered by Prof. Ezra Shevat and publicized in this blog post. This manuscript, which had been lumped in as just another of the many codices haphazardly gathered by Abraham Firkovich, actually records what may be our most complete record of the hafṭarot of the ancient Land of Israel rite, at least as kept in one community.

The ancient Land of Israel rite was most well-known for its three-and-a-half-year Torah-reading cycle, but it had its own unique aspects for festivals and special Sabbaths as well. Recorded in this manuscript is what may be our most complete record of the hafṭarot of the ancient Land of Israel rite, at least in one community. Some, but not all, of the hafṭarot for festivals and special Sabbaths are the same as those found in the Babylonian practice, but all of them are substantially shorter, with some as short as three verses. It seems the Babylonian prohibition on hafṭarot shorter than twenty-one verses was not taken into account in the West!