Halachot and Customs
Number of weekly Torah portions during the year
Question
A question about the weekly Torah portions: There are 60 portions in the Five Books of the Torah, and by a simple calculation of 4 portions a month, one gets 15 months. How does this work when there are only 12 months in a year...
Answer
Hello and blessings
It should be calculated according to days.
There are 354 days in a regular Hebrew year, so we have 50/51 Shabbatot. In a leap year we have 383 days, 54/55 Shabbatot. Of these, at least twice we do not read the weekly portion, on Pesach and on Sukkot.
There are 53 portions in the Torah. The portion of Vezot HaBerachah is not read on Shabbat but on Simchat Torah. Therefore, there are combined portions, when two portions are read together, such as Behar-Bechukotai and the like. Each year, the readings are arranged according to the order of the year.
With blessings,
Binyamin Shmueli
