Haftarah
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of Haftarah. alt-of, alternative
- 2 A selection from the books of Nevi'im and Ketuvim of the Tanach, usually corresponding to the week's parashah, publicly read in synagogue following the parashah. Judaism
"Recent scholars, on the other hand, without much show of reason, as it would appear, variously hold the Haftarah to have sprung from the sermon or homiletic exercise which accompanied the reading in the Pentateuch, and took its exordium (as Haftarah, by an extraordinary linguistic passage, adapted in a manner to the Mosaic text under consideration; or, again, they imagine the Haftarah to have taken its rise spontaneously during the exile itself, and that Ezra retained and enforced it in Palestine."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Recent scholars, on the other hand, without much show of reason, as it would appear, variously hold the Haftarah to have sprung from the sermon or homiletic exercise which accompanied the reading in the Pentateuch, and took its exordium (as Haftarah, by an extraordinary linguistic passage, adapted in a manner to the Mosaic text under consideration; or, again, they imagine the Haftarah to have taken its rise spontaneously during the exile itself, and that Ezra retained and enforced it in Palestine."
Etymology
From Hebrew הַפְטָרָה (haftará), also through Yiddish הפֿטרה (haftore). The alternative spellings with -or- and pronunciations with /ɔːɹ/ – which may appear even outside of Ashkenazi pronunciation traditions – may possibly be strengthened due to influence from Torah or reanalysis to half + Torah, as the haftarah follows the reading of the Torah and is of secondary importance.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.