This article is about the divisions of the Torah into weekly readings. For this week's Torah portion, see Torah portion.
A Torah scroll and silver pointer (yad) used in reading.
The weekly Torah portion (Hebrew: פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ Parashat ha-Shavua, popularly just parashah or parshah[pronunciation?] or parsha and also known as a Sidra or Sedra[pronunciation?]) is a section of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) read in Jewish prayer services, mainly on Shabbat (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath) and on Monday and Thursday morning services, part of the wider weekly practice. In Judaism, the Torah is read publicly over the course of a year, with one major portion read each week in the Shabbat morning service, except when a holiday coincides with Shabbat. The Torah is traditionally divided into 54 parshiyot or parshas (plural).
Each weekly Torah portion adopts its name from one of the first unique words in the Hebrew text. Dating back to the time of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE),[citation needed] 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 lunisolarHebrew calendar, which contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between leap years and regular years.[1]
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 each weekly parashah is read in a given year; the parashot read are still consistent with the annual cycle but the entire Torah is completed over three years.
Due to different lengths of holidays in Israel and the Diaspora, the portion that is read on a particular week will sometimes not be the same inside and outside Israel.
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.
^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.
^Though initially doubted by Umberto Cassuto, this has become the established position in modern scholarship. (See the Aleppo Codex article for more information.)
