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Reading Schedules

Reading Schedules

This is an archive of schedules for a cycle of liturgical readings over a given period of time, performed publicly as part of a synagogue service or privately at one's personal leisure.

Resources filtered by TAG: “Torah Reading” (clear filter)

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Schedule for a semiannual Torah reading cycle as recorded by ‘Anan ben David (ca. 8th c. CE)

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.

Categories:

Reading Schedules

Tags:

46th century A.M., 8th century C.E., הפטרות haftarot, Nusaḥ haKaraim, לוח lu'aḥ, תהלים Psalms, semiannual Torah reading cycle, Torah Reading

Contributor(s):

Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (translation) and Anan ben David

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/index.php?cat=3220

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The Ḥatan Torah (groom of Torah) celebrates the holiday of Simḥat Torah by leading the Torah scroll in procession seven times around the synagogue, by Bernard Picart (1673–1733)

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