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The word "Torah" is a tricky one, because it can mean different things in different contexts. In its most limited sense, "Torah" refers to the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word "torah" can also be used to refer to the entire Jewish bible (the body of scripture known to non-Jews as the Old Testament and to Jews as the Tanakh or Written Torah), or in its broadest sense, to the whole body of Jewish law and teachings.
To Jews, there is no "Old Testament." The books that Christians call the New Testament are not part of Jewish scripture. The so-called Old Testament is known to us as Written Torah.
This is a list of the books of Written Torah, in the order in which they appear in Jewish translations, with the Hebrew name of the book, a translation of the Hebrew name (where it is not the same as the English name), and English names of the books (where it is not the same as the Hebrew name). The Hebrew names of the first five books are derived from the first few words of the book. The text of each book is more or less the same in Jewish translations as what you see in Christian bibles, although there are some occasional, slight differences in the numbering of verses and there are a few significant differences in the translations.
TORAH (The Law):
NEVI'IM (The Prophets):
KETHUVIM (The Writings):
Written Torah is often referred to as the Tanakh, which is an acrostic of Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim.
Each week in synagogue, we read (or, more accurately, chant, because it is sung) a passage from the Torah. This passage is referred to as a parshah. The first parshah, for example, is Parshat Bereshit, which covers from the beginning of Genesis to the story of Noah. There are 54 parshahs, one for each week of a leap year, so that in the course of a year, we read the entire Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) in our services (during non-leap years, there are 50 weeks, so some of the shorter portions are doubled up). We reach the last portion of the Torah around a holiday called Simkhat Torah (Rejoicing in the Law), which occurs in October, a few weeks after the Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year). On Simkhat Torah, we read the last portion of the Torah, and proceed immediately to the first paragraph of Genesis, showing that the Torah is a circle, and never ends.
In the synagogue service, the weekly parshah is followed by a passage from the prophets, which is referred to as a haftarah. Contrary to common misconception, "haftarah" does not mean "half-Torah." The word comes from a Hebrew word meaning end or conclusion. Usually, haftarah portion is no longer than one chapter, and has some relation to the Torah portion of the week.
Jewish scriptures are sometimes bound in a form that corresponds to this division into weekly portions. Scriptures bound in this way are referred to as a chumash. The word "chumash" comes from the Hebrew word meaning five, and refers to the five books of the Torah. A chumash contains the entire first five books, divided up by the weekly parshahs, with the haftarah portion inserted after each week's parshah.
For more information about services, see Jewish Liturgy.
The scriptures that we use in services are written on parchment scrolls.
They are always hand-written, usually in attractive Hebrew calligraphy with "crowns"
(crows-foot-like marks coming up from the upper points) on many of the letters. You are not
supposed to touch the parchment on these scrolls; some say because they are too holy;
some say because the parchment, made from animal skins, is a source of ritual defilement;
others say because your fingers' sweat has acids that will damage the parchment over
time. Instead, you follow the text with a pointer, called a Yad. "Yad"
means "hand" in Hebrew, and the pointer usually is in the shape of a hand
with a pointing index finger (I always find this incredibly amusing). The scrolls
are kept covered with fabric, and often ornamented with silver crowns on the handles
of the scrolls and a silver breastplate on the front.
The scrolls are kept in a cabinet in the synagogue called an "ark," as in Ark
of the Covenant, not as in Noah's Ark. The words are different and unrelated in Hebrew.
The former is an acrostic of "aron kodesh," meaning "holy cabinet,"
while the latter is an English translation of the Hebrew word "teyvat"
meaning "ship".
The Torah scrolls that we read from in synagogue are unpointed text, with no vowels or musical notes, so the ability to read a passage from a scroll is a valuable skill, and usually requires substantial advance preparation (reviewing the passage in a text with points). See Hebrew Alphabet for more on pointed and unpointed texts.
In addition to the written scriptures we have an "Oral Torah," a tradition explaining what the above scriptures mean and how to interpret them and apply the Laws. Orthodox Jews believe G-d taught the Oral Torah to Moses, and he taught it to others, down to the to the present day. This tradition was maintained in oral form only until about the 2d century C.E., when the oral law was compiled and written down in a document called the Mishnah.
Over the next few centuries, additional commentaries elaborating on the Mishnah were written down in Jerusalem and Babylon. These additional commentaries are known as the Gemara. The Gemara and the Mishnah together are known as the Talmud. This was completed in the 5th century C.E.
There are actually two Talmuds: the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian one is more comprehensive, and is the one most people mean when they refer to The Talmud. There have been additional commentaries on the Talmud by such noted Jewish scholars as Rashi and Maimonides. Adin Steinsalz is currently preparing a new edition of the Talmud, with his own commentary supplementing the Mishnah, Gemara, and Rashi commentaries.
In addition to these works, we have midrashim, which are basically stories expanding on incidents in the Bible to derive principles or Jewish law or to teach moral lessons. For example, there is a midrash about why Moses wasn't a good speaker (he put coals in his mouth as a child basically as a way of proving that he wasn't greedy), and another one about Abram discovering monotheism and rejecting his father's idolatry (that's a nifty one: basically, he smashes up all his father's idols except the big one, then blames the mess on the big one, as a way of showing his father that the idols don't really have any power). Some of them fill in gaps in the narrative. For example, in Gen. 22:2, why does G-d say, "thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac." Wouldn't the name alone be enough? One story says that the narrative is skipping out Abraham's responses. "Take thy son." "Which one?" "Thine only son." "But I have two!" "Whom thou lovest." "I love them both!" "Even Isaac." (I'm not sure this is a traditional one -- I got it from a questionable source -- but I like it).
We also have a mystical tradition, known as Kabbalah. The primary written work in the Kabbalistic tradition is the Zohar. Traditionally, rabbis discouraged teaching this material to anyone under the age of 40, because it is too likely to be misinterpreted by anyone without sufficient grounding in the basics.
