Weekly Torah portion

Each Torah portion consists of two to six chapters to be read during the week. There are 54 weekly portions or parashot. Torah reading mostly follows an annual cycle beginning and ending on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, with the divisions corresponding to the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, which contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between leap years and regular years. One week is always Passover and another is always Sukkot, and the final parashah, V'Zot HaBerachah, is always read on Simchat Torah. Apart from the "immovable" final portion, there can be up to 53 weeks available for the other 53 portions. In years with fewer than 53 available weeks, some readings are combined to achieve the needed number of weekly readings.

The annual completion of the Torah readings on Simchat Torah, translating to "Rejoicing in the Law", is marked by Jewish communities around the world.

Each weekly Torah portion takes its name from the first distinctive word in the Hebrew text of the portion in question, often from the first verse.

The appropriate parashah is chanted publicly. In most communities, it is read by a designated reader (ba'al koreh) in Jewish prayer services, starting with a partial reading on the afternoon of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, i.e. Saturday afternoon, again during the Monday and Thursday morning services, and ending with a full reading during the following Shabbat morning services (Saturday morning). The weekly reading is pre-empted by a special reading on major religious holidays. Each Saturday morning and holiday reading is followed by an often similarly themed reading (Haftarah) from the Book of Prophets (Nevi'im).

The custom dates to the time of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE). The origin of the first public Torah readings is found in the Book of Nehemiah, where Ezra the scribe writes about wanting to find a way to ensure the Israelites would not go astray again. This led to the creation of a weekly system to read the portions of the Torah at synagogues.[1]

While the Parshyot divisions are fairly standardized, there are various communities with differing parsha divisions. For example, many Yemenites combine Korach with the first half of Chukat and the second half of Chukat ("Vayis'u mi-kadesh") with Balak instead of combining Matot and Masei,[2] and some Syrian communities combine Korach and Chukat instead of Matot and Masei.[3] In Provence and Tunisia, Mishpatim and Im Kesef Talveh were occasionally divided so that Matot and Masei would always be read together.[4]

The division of parashiot found in the modern-day Torah scrolls of all Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Yemenite communities is based upon the systematic list provided by Maimonides in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and Torah Scrolls, Chapter 8. Maimonides based his division of the parashot for the Torah on the Masoretic text of the Aleppo Codex.[5]

In the table, a portion that may be combined with the following portion to compensate for the changing number of weeks in the lunisolar year, is marked with an asterisk. The following chart will show the weekly readings.

• Chumash
• Haftarah
• Hebrew cantillation
• Lectionary
• Sefer Torah
• Shnayim mikra ve-echad targum
• Tanakh
• Tikkun (book)
• Torah reading
• Weekly Maqam

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Audio files of cantillation.

• Description of each weekly Torah portion. Aleph Beta.
• Links to the Hebrew text for weekly Torah portions. Hebcal Jewish Calendar.
• Weekly Torah portion videos Archived 2015-03-15 at the Wayback Machine
• The weekly parshah in Hebrew
• The weekly parsha in many languages and by famous rabbis