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Each Torah portion consists of two to six chapters to be read during the week. There are 54 weekly portions or parashot.Torah reading mostly follows an annual cycle beginning and ending on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, with the divisions corresponding to the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, which contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between leap years and regular years.
On the Hebrew calendar, the seven-day holiday of Sukkot in the autumn (late mid-September to late mid-October) is immediately followed by the holiday of Shemini Atzeret.In Orthodox and Conservative communities outside Israel, Shemini Atzeret is a two-day holiday, and the Simchat Torah festivities are observed on the second day.
Simchat Torah, Hebrew for “Rejoicing of the Torah” is a Jewish religious holiday that commemorates the completion of the yearly cycle of Torah reading.. The Torah is a central part of Judaism ...
(In the diaspora, Simchat Torah never occurs on Saturday.) In communities where the Torah is read at Maariv on Simchat Torah, this is the only occurrence of the Torah being read during Maariv, Shacharit and Mincha on the same day. This is also the only instance in which Bereshit is read during the Torah reading of Saturday afternoon.
On Simchat Torah night in the Synagogue, after a procession with the Torahs, two Torahs are placed on the lectern. We then read from the very end of one scroll and the very beginning of another.
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Note also that the date given for Simchat Torah is for outside of Israel. [1] On holidays marked "*", Jews are not permitted to work . Because the Hebrew calendar no longer relies on observation but is now governed by precise mathematical rules, it is possible to provide, for the future, the Gregorian calendar date on which a holiday will fall.
The Simchat Torah celebration is now the most distinctive feature of this festival—so much so that in the Land of Israel, where Shemini Atzeret lasts only one day, it is more common to refer to the day as "Simchat Torah" than as "Shemini Atzeret". [32] In the 20th century, Simchat Torah came to symbolize the public assertion of Jewish ...