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    Giving a Book its name – D’varim

    Though the fifth Book of the Torah is generally called D’varim, which means “words” or “matters”, Jewish tradition uses the Hebrew name Mishneh Torah, a “repeated” Torah (equivalent to the Greek Deuteronomy), because it is Moses’ summing up and reiteration of the teaching contained in the previous four Books.

    The phrase Mishneh Torah comes from Deut. 17:18 and Joshua 8:32. Nathan Marcus Adler in his commentary on Targum Onkelos surmises that when the scribe wrote each word of the Torah he uttered or repeated the word to make sure that everything was included and there were no mistakes.

    From this we can learn that when studying the Torah text it is not enough to skim-read the words. One must go slowly and carefully, making every word at least minimally audible.

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