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Do we literally read the entire Torah in one year, starting on Simchat Torah?

Answered by

Rabbi Victor S. Appell

We read the entire Torah over a year, beginning the cycle on the same week as Simchat Torah. The Torah is divided into 54 portions – or parashiyot – and, generally, one portion is read each week on Shabbat.

Empty plate on a table with fork and knife on either side

Meditation Before Yom Kippur for One Who Cannot Fast

Jewish tradition recognizes that fasting is not a safe practice for all Jews. For this reason, children under the age of 13 and individuals who are pregnant or ill are not required to fast in Yom Kippur. For those who fall into this category, the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services provides a special meditation to recite instead, written by Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub.

I am the Walrus

There are 35,000 walruses stranded right now on the beaches of northwest Alaska. Walruses, which rely on sea ice to rest periodically, are having a harder and harder time finding it in the Bering Sea due to ice sheets melting from rising global temperatures. Scientists, including those at the Walrus Research Center in Anchorage Alaska, have serious concerns over whether walruses will be able to adapt to shrinking sea ice levels. They may very well become one of the wide array of species that we can expect to go extinct as climate disruption ravages our planet.

The Music of Avinu Malkeinu

Cantor Hayley Kobilinsky

In the game “Truth-or-Dare,” I choose “truth” nearly every time. I’m not much of a dare-taker. Thus, if you and I were playing “Special Edition Truth-or-Dare: High Holy Days,” I would confess that the prayer Avinu Malkeinu provides me with both my second-favorite liturgical moment and my second-greatest pet peeve of the year’s liturgy. (Note: Even though I may have to repent for it, I will leave you in suspense about my favorite liturgical moment and my greatest liturgical pet peeve. Also, “Special Edition Truth-or-Dare: High Holy Days” is fictional, although I hereby declare copyright in the event Mattel or Hasbro comes knocking at my door.)

A Nice Place to Visit, But…

Rabbi Marc J. Rosenstein

There are people with hearts of stone; there are stones with human hearts.

-The Wall, by Yossi Gamzu

Holding My Father's Prayer Book

Guila Franklin Siegel

Guila remembers holding the prayer book for her father, who had cerebral palsy, every Yom Kippur. "What many might imagine to have been a dreary religious obligation was, for me, a highly emotional, touching experience."

This Yom Kippur, Try a Little Tenderness

Anat Hoffman

Thirty years ago, Rabbi Motti Rotem, the first sabra (Israeli-born Jew) to be ordained as a Reform rabbi in Israel, addressed his congregation from the pulpit before Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur: Getting Back on the Right Path

Rabbi Richard N. Levy

Our Mortality

Confession: A Poem for the Vidui

Stacey Zisook Robinson, z"l

Although we may not think of Judaism as a religion of confession, we often are called to profess our sins – privately, between oneself and God.

On Simchat Torah, We Turn and Turn Again

Stacey Zisook Robinson, z"l

I like the symmetry of the concept of return.

I like the idea that, no matter how linear we think we are, or time is, or God is, we tend to find a way back. Even God recognizes this view: Why else create t’shuvah (repentance) before ever creating the heavens and the earth?