Most communities these days with the practice of reading Torah on Simḥat Torah night read either the first three or the first five ‘aliyot from V-Zot haBerakha, the morning Torah reading from Deuteronomy. However this was not always the case. In many communities throughout eastern Europe, Simḥat Torah night was a time to auction off and read verses of blessing from throughout the entire Torah — called “nedarim” or “vows” in honor of the fact people would pledge money to read them as an aliyah. Many different lists of these verses have come down to us over the years, from as few as three to as many as twenty different readings. Here’s a compilation of ten different lists of “vows,” nine of which were sourced from R. Avraham Yaari’s renowned work “Toldot Ḥag Simḥat Torah” and the tenth of which was submitted by Michael Y. Kopinsky to the “Life in the Fast Lein” Facebook group. Also included are images of the original sources for the ten lists, as well as an original translation of R. Yaari’s passage explaining the custom of the “vows.”

An English-language adaptation of the Roman rite psalm system for all days when Torà is read, to be recited while the Torà is being taken from the bimà. All Hebrew words are transcribed in accordance with the traditional Italian Hebrew phonological system, in a slightly modified Italian orthography.

A schedule for the reading of psalms for special Shabbatot and holidays, according to HUC Ms. 453, fol. 15r, a Seder Hazkarot Neshamot copied by Shabetai Sheftel ben Zalman Auerbach from 1730.

A schedule for hafṯaroṯ for the weekly portions and festivals, as well as psalms for the weekly portions, according to a Damascus Karaite siddur from approximately 1700. According to the work of Jacob Mann’s The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue (1940), the Ḳaraite hafṭaroṯ schedule was probably adapted from the practice of the Byzantine Romaniotes, whose practice was in many ways much closer to the one attested here than to rabbinic norms practiced today. Both ultimately derive from the old Western Rite hafṭaroṯ, albeit adapted to the annual cycle originating from the east.

All Jews around the world today follow some variant of the annual cycle of Torah readings, developed in the Babylonian diaspora in the talmudic era. In this cycle, the entire Torah is read once a year. (Some Reform communities recite a selection from each parasha, while many Conservative communities follow an ersatz triennial system where a third of each parashah is read every week, but the parashiyot still follow the annual cycle.) The old Erets Yisrael rite had a triennial, or technically semiseptennial, cycle, going through the entire Torah once every three and a half years. But there is a third cycle that has otherwise been completely forgotten about: the semiannual cycle. This cycle was developed by ‘Anan ben David, the legendary founder (or if you ask the Ḳaraites, reviver) of the Ḳaraite movement, in his (only fragmentarily preserved) Sefer ha-Mitsvot. In it, the entire Torah is read twice a year, concluding on the intermediate sabbath of both Pesaḥ and Sukkot before starting anew the next week. This idea did not catch on, even among the Ḳaraites, who to this day use an adaptation of the rabbinic annual cycle instead. But it has largely been preserved. Here it is restored and reconstructed for those whose main complaint with the Torah reading is it isn’t long enough.