The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2513 page)

Tooth Relic Temple
.

More accurately known as Dalada Maligawa, the shrine in
ri Lank
in which the relic of the Buddha's tooth is kept. It is now in Kandy, but there were several earlier shrines after the tooth was brought to
ri Lank
in the 4th cent. CE. It is an object of constantly maintained devotion, and it is brought out in procession once each year.

 
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(Heb., ‘teaching’). The teachings of the Jewish religion. In the
Pentateuch
, the term ‘Torah’ can mean all the laws on a particular subject (e.g. Leviticus 7. 2) or the summation of all laws (e.g. Deuteronomy 4. 44). It is also used to refer to the Pentateuch in contrast to the
Prophets
and
Hagiography
(as in
Tanach
), and later a distinction was made between the
written
and the
oral law
. The purpose of Torah is to make
Israel
‘a kingdom of
priests
, a holy nation’ (Deuteronomy 33. 4). In a famous exchange
Hillel
summarized Torah in the maxim, ‘What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow’ (
B. Shab.
31a), and Akiva maintained that its overriding principle was ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus 19. 18).
Maimonides
laid down in his
thirteen principles of the Jewish faith
that Torah is immutable and that it was given in its entirety to Moses. The belief in the divine origin of both the written and oral Torah remains the touchstone of
Orthodox Judaism
. The
Karaites
accepted the written, but not the oral law, while the
Progressive
movements tend to distinguish between the moral and ritual law.

 
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Torah, reading of
.

The practice of reading the Jewish
Torah
publicly. The Babylonian
Talmud
refers to a fixed cycle of readings (
B. Meg
. 29a), with the entire
Pentateuch
being read over the course of three years. By the 12th cent., it became the universal practice to read it over an annual cycle. Before and after the reading the Torah scroll is carried in procession around the synagogue. The readers recite particular
benedictions
before and after their reading which is normally chanted (see
CANTILLATION
).

 
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Torah ornaments
.

The coverings of the Jewish
Torah
Scrolls. The scrolls are rolled on two staves known as
azei
ayyim
(‘trees of life’). On the top of the staves are two finials, the
rimmonim
, and these are covered with an open crown (
keter
). The
Sephardim
encase the scrolls in a double-hinged wooden box decorated with leather or metal. The
Ashkenazim
cover their scrolls with a decorative mantle, often richly embroidered, on which a breastplate is suspended. The breastplate is reminiscent of the costume of the
high priest
. In order to avoid touching the parchment of the scroll, a pointer, the
yad
(‘hand’), is used.