Kept in Weekly Use by the Haftarah

This division is read publicly every week. Alongside the Torah portion, a passage from the Prophets is read in the synagogue, chosen to connect with it by a shared phrase, a shared theme or a shared occasion, and the connection is often the interesting part: the pairing is an interpretation, proposing that this prophetic passage is what that Torah passage is about. The practice is old and its origin is not documented. Explanations offered include a period when reading the Torah publicly was prohibited and prophetic passages were substituted, an account that circulates widely without solid evidence behind it.

What can be established is that the custom was long established by the rabbinic period and that the selections were not uniform, since different communities settled on different passages for the same portions, and those differences persist. The consequence is that the Prophets remain in circulation in a way the Writings do not. A person who attends regularly hears a passage from this division every week of the year, which keeps books that are otherwise difficult, long and historically remote in continuous public use. It has also shaped which parts of them are widely known: the passages selected as haftarot are familiar to many people who have never read the books they come from, and the surrounding material, often the majority of a prophetic book, is not.