Weekly Torah portion

"This article is about the divisions of the Torah into weekly readings. For this week's Torah portion, see " morning service.

Each weekly Torah portion adopts its name from one of the first unique word or words in the Hebrew text. Dating back to the time of the Babylonian captivity (6th Century BCE),Fact|date=March 2008 public Torah reading mostly followed an annual cycle beginning and ending on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, with the Torah divided into 54 weekly portions to correspond 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. Therefore, there are in practice up to 53 available weeks for 53 portions. In years with fewer than 53 available weeks, some readings are combined to achieve the needed number of weekly readings.]

There was also an ancient triennial cycle of readings practiced in some parts of the world. In the 19th and 20th Centuries, many congregations in the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements have implemented an alternative triennial cycle in which only one-third of the weekly parasha is read in a given year; the parashot read is still consistent with the annual cycle but the entire Torah is completed over three years.

Division into weekly parashot

The division of "parashot" 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", " [http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/2300n.htm Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and Torah Scrolls] ", [http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/2308n.htm Chapter 8] . Maimonides based his division of the "parashot" for the Torah on the Masoretic text of the Aleppo Codex. [Though initially doubted by Umberto Cassuto, this has become the established position in modern scholarship. (See the Aleppo Codex article for more information.)]

Table of Weekly readings

In the table, a portion which may be combined with the following portion, to compensate for the changing number of weeks in the lunisolar year, are marked with an asterisk.

References

ee also

*Cantillation
*Haftarah
*Chumash
*Tanakh
*Tikkun (book)
*Torah reading
*Sefer Torah
*The Weekly Maqam
*

External links

Texts and translation
* [http://www.tachash.org/chumash/pardate.html Metsudah translation on tachash.org]
* [http://www.chabad.org/parshah/rashi/ Judaica Press translation on chabad.org]
* [http://bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp Torah readings online] made available by World ORT.

Summaries
* [http://www.ou.org/torah/tt/aliyaharchive.htm ou.org]
* [http://bible.ort.org/books/divreid2.asp?action=displaypage&book=1&portion=1 bible.ort.org]
* [http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2181/jewish/Behaalotecha.htm chabad.org]
* [http://www.torah.org/learning/parsha/summary/ torah.org]
* [http://www.weeklyaliyot.org/weekly/w9.htm weeklyaliyot.org]

Aliyot
* [http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/ Division of each Parsha into seven aliyot - Hebcal]

Parsha web portals
* [http://torah.org/learning/torahportion.php3 torah.org]
* [http://www.chabad.org/article.html?AID=46091 chabad.org]
* [http://ohr.edu/yhiy/ ohr.edu]
* [http://www.aish.com/torahportion/ aish.com]
* [http://www.weeklyaliyot.org weeklyaliyot.org]
* [http://www.shiur.com/index.php?id=C0_16_6&spar=16&s_id=16/ shiur.com]
* [http://www.idaven.com/parsha.html idaven.com]

Individual classes and shiurim
* [http://www.desiretoshare.com/journey.htm Hacham Joseph Melamed's classes on the Weekly Parsha according to the Kabbalah]
* [http://www.lidrosh.com/Default.aspx?tabid=28 Free MP3 Streaming of Weekly Parshah Review from Lidrosh.com]
* [http://www.parshaparts.com ParshaParts] - Weekly Parsha commentaries in English
* [http://www.teach613.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=3&id=7&Itemid=26 Essays on the Parsha (Weekly Torah Portion) at Teach613.org]
* [http://www.bogrim.org/classes.php Classes on the weekly torah portion at the Ein Prat Midrasha]
* [http://www.ravkaplan.dafyomireview.com/ MP3 Parsha Shiurim by Rav Nissan Kaplan]