The weekly Torah portion popularly called parashah or parsha is a section of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) read in prayer services, mainly on Shabbat – Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The Torah is read publicly over the course of a year, with one major portion read each week in the Shabbat morning service, except when a holiday coincides with Shabbat. The Torah is traditionally divided into 54 parashot or parshas (plural).
Each weekly Torah portion adopts its name from one of the first unique words in the Hebrew text. The first Parshat, for example, is Parshat Bereishit (Genesis), which covers from the beginning of Genesis to the story of Noah.
Dating back to the time of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE) public Torah reading mostly followed an annual cycle beginning and ending on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, with the Torah divided into 54 weekly portions to correspond to the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, which contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between leap years and regular years. In the course of a year, the entire Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) is read in Sabbath services. During non-leap years, there are 50 weeks, so some of the shorter portions are doubled up.
The last portion of the Torah is read right before a holiday called Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in the Law), which occurs in October, a few weeks after the Feast of Trumpets. On Simchat Torah, the last portion of the Torah is read, and proceed immediately to the first paragraph of Genesis, showing that the Torah is a circle, and never ends.
In the service, the weekly parashah is followed by a passage from the prophets, which is referred to as a haftarah. Contrary to common misconception, “haftarah” does not mean “half-Torah.” The word comes from the Hebrew word meaning “Concluding Portion”. Usually, haftarah portion is no longer than one chapter, and has some relation to the Torah portion of the week and is taken from the Prophetic writings, not the Torah.
We also have the B’rit Hadashah (or Chadashah) . B’rit means “Covenant” and Hadashah means “New”, that is the New Covenant.
Like the Tanakh, it can be divided into 3 main parts:
- Gospels/Acts (corresponding to the Torah, also 5 books)
- Letters (corresponding to Ketuvim), and
- Revelation (corresponding to Nevi’im)
These refer to scriptures that have been fulfilled by Yeshua in His life time and in the time to come.
Some useful resources for studying the weekly Torah portions:
