Rabbi Howard Morrison

This past week, a number of us helped to change all the Torah mantles to white in preparation for the High Holy Days. Already, we have begun to roll some of the Torahs to their proper places for reading on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and the like. It seems like almost every day for the upcoming month, we will be reading from the Torah.

This was not always the case. In fact, if we observed the Torah literally without any interpretation or historical development, our services would be much shorter. In our double portion today, we learn that every seventh year during Sukkot did Moses read the Torah before all of Israel. This public reading was called "Hakhel," an all-out gathering for men, women, and children. It is not clear what was actually read in those Biblical times. Suffice to say, if the Torah were read only once every seven years, would it have any staying power upon us?

When the Jews returned to Israel from Babylonia after the first exile and prepared for the second Temple period, Ezra the scribe, the forerunner of the ancient rabbis, legislated that the Torah would be read on Shabbat,  Monday and Thursday. Thus, the Torah would be read three times a week. Why Monday and Thursday? Those were public market days in the period of Ezra. In later Talmudic history, the Sages compared the Torah to water, both being sources of life. Just as the Israelites never went more than three days in the desert without water, so too, we should never go more than three days without a formal reading of Torah. Do the math Monday/Thursday/Shabbat; we never go more than three days without Torah, and that is without intervening holidays.

During the early Talmudic period, Babylonian practice was to read the entire Parsha every Shabbat. In ancient Israel, the Torah was read over a three-year period. It would take three weeks to read a single Parsha. Contemporary liberal synagogues which read on a triennial basis do not adhere to the ancient practice in Israel. A modern system was devised for such congregations. When the Parsha was read in antiquity before the era of books in the pews, a Gabbai on the side of the Torah reader was called a "Meturgeman." He translated and interpreted the Biblical Hebrew into Aramaic, the language that Babylonian Jews knew as their vernacular. Thus, the Torah was not meant to be read robotically, but to be studied, understood, and analyzed. These days, we are blessed with various books containing all sorts of commentaries from the past to the present. We should perpetually be challenged and inspired to find new insights in our age-old words and passages.

Years ago, I attended a discussion on how to abbreviate a service if necessary. I remember one colleague quoting a teacher who said - If the words of the prayers are our words to God, and the words of the Torah are God's words to us, where would you abbreviate if necessary? I have always been a proponent of reading the whole parsha each and every Shabbat.

Over the next few weeks, we will conclude the final portions in the Five books of the Torah. We will also insert thematic selections for the Yom Tov season. Soon enough, on Simchat Torah, which will mark the anniversary of October 7th, we will begin to read the Torah anew. It has been quite a year since we concluded and began anew the Torah last Fall. Our hope and prayer, as we enter the new year and a new cycle of holy days, is that the next Torah reading cycle will be filled with peace and well-being for all of Israel and Jews around the world. May we follow the weekly portions more devoutly in the coming year and glean new insights to refine the purpose of our lives.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Howard Morrison