Question:

Give me the handle on this Sinai thing. As I got it from Hebrew school, Moses went up the mountain, sat down at his desk and took dictation for forty days and forty nights. G‑dsaid, “In the beginning…” and that’s just what Moses wrote… until he got all the way to the end. Right?

Or did I get it all wrong? Because if I’m right, then I’ve got a lot of questions. And if I got it wrong, then you’re going to have to fill it in, ’cause otherwise, I’m going to sound like a real heretic…

Answer:

The story you got in Hebrew school is basically true, but it’s also missing lots of the details. So it ends up coming across as a simplistic Hebrew-School story that only the most gullible believer would swallow. Let’s take a closer look at the classical sources (Midrash, Talmud, et al) that describe how Torah got to us.

The Story, According to Us

Before Moses, there were traditions. There were rituals, there were stories, there were ideas. There were writings, as well.1 When did people start writing phonetically? I don’t know. There is no way to tell. And some etchings that have managed to endure on the walls of caves in the Sinai are not going to put together a whole history for me.2 But the stories of the patriarchs are obviously very ancient and attest to the linear thinking of a phonetically literate mind. 3Most likely, Moses had a few scrolls in his possession from more ancient times.

According to Rashi (Exodus 24:4), before Moses went up that mountain, he presented the Jewish people with an official version of the Book of Genesis, as well as part of Exodus–up to the event at which he was standing. I expect he relied heavily on some of those earlier manuscripts for his work, and that he tried to be consistent in style with his additions. That doesn’t make this any less a divine work. G‑d can work with editors just as well as He can with authors. (Ask my editor, he’ll tell you G‑d actually preferseditors.)

The Ten Commandments scene was a very mystical experience. I haven’t read of any vaguely similar experience in any other people’s tradition. What happened? A mass of people shared in Moses’ experience. They hadn’t worked themselves up to Moses’ spiritual height, so it wasn’t able to last too long. But that was basically the idea: This revelation that G‑d has things He wants us to do and not do, that He cares about what’s going on with these little critters down here and here are the basic items–in a few moments, all this became just as real to the people as it was to Moses.

Which makes Moses pretty unique, because he’s the only prophet that does such a thing. Others just tell the people, “G‑d says such and such. Trust me.” Moses, the populist prophet, says, “Let me tune you in for a minute on what I’m hearing from G‑d.” Moses is cool.

Moses then disappears up the mountain for forty days. While there, forty-nine gates of wisdom are open to him, granting him the secrets of all existence. Moses then writes down the experience of Mount Sinai along with a set of rules for a new society, which eventually becomes Parshat Mishpatim–the section written in the Exodus story dealing principally with civil law.

Is everything in Parshat Mishpatim new? I doubt it. Just as I doubt there was anything at all new in the Ten Commandments. The novelty was not the content. It was this idea that the same G‑d who transcends all nature and is responsible for the very ground of existence is really wrapped up in how we live down here. That was revolutionary. It was totally out of synch with so-called enlightened thinking of the times. People thought only little gods could get involved in this kind of thing–and they were easy to bribe. In Egypt, they called that “mata”–something like “karma” to the Hindus. They knew of some essential oneness at the core level of reality–but they thought it preposterous to consider that this G‑d could be engaged in anyone’s daily life. Never mind in the daily lives of the masses. Which gave all the more justification to the hierarchy of power and oppression that Moses had stood up against.

Moses the Revolutionary

So Moses was bringing G‑d down to earth. He was demolishing the pyramid of spiritual knowledge that he knew so well from Egypt–and so much despised. He was saying, “This G‑d is so great, He can care about everybody and everything!” Moses was making a revolution.

Why was he making a revolution? Because G‑d was telling him to. To explain that, I would need a long conversation with you about what is G‑d and how G‑d talks to people and why. Maimonidesalready deals with that quite sufficiently in his Book of Knowledge. Then there is Shaar Ruach HaKodesh of Rabbi Chaim Vital, where he explains that the prophet hears G‑d speaking in his own voice and his own words, (or in the voice of his teacher–as was the case with Samuel). That explains a lot.

I will only supplement by pointing out that when you or I are completely immersed in a subject of Torah and come up with a novel explanation or idea, that is also Torah. Meaning that someone else would not be permitted to study that idea before having said the morning blessing to G‑d for having “given us His Torah.” Get that: Giving us His Torah! Even though you or I came up with this idea–and it didn’t feel like it landed in our heads from Andromeda 5. Yet it is G‑d’s Torah. That’s called being one with G‑d. Read chapter five of Tanya.

My point is that really prophecy is not so foreign to human experience as you might think. We all have ideas that pop into our minds from who-knows-where. Just that most people feel they thought of them on their own. A prophet, it seems (I haven’t really been there to tell) is one who hears things clearly that others may only pick up with much distortion. He is in tune with that unknowable place from which the Unknown speaks. So he hears it speaking to him with clarity.

Moses was the prophet who got in tune with the very core of reality and heard that speaking to him. That’s why he writes in third person, like a passive observer–even of his own life: “And G‑d spoke to Moses saying…” Because, as Nachmanides explains, Moses saw the raw essence as it is, stripped of the filter of his own ego. Other prophets heard the truth as it spoke to them. Moses saw truth as truth knows itself.

Yet he shared that experience with all of us. Which is why Maimonides counts as one of the 13 axioms of Judaism that no other prophet can contradict Moses–because no other prophet has the testimony of the entire Jewish people that, yup, we experienced G‑d talking to him alright.

The Prophecy Thing

Okay, I’ll say something else about prophecy–because, after all, this is one of the big stumbling blocks for a lot of people. Especially those who have gotten used to thinking of G‑d in philosopher terms, or maybe Taoist terms as just “that which is.” So talking with “that which is” is kind of strange to these people.

The Torah, however, describes the entire reality as nothing more than G‑d speaking. G‑d says, “Let there be photons” and the whole mess starts. Same with everything that exists in our world–all of it is nothing more than a manifestation of G‑d holding a dialog with Himself. That’s why, in Biblical Hebrew, there are no words for “thing”, “object”, “stuff” or even “physical”. Everything is called a davar which means simply “word.”

Words are crystallizations of thoughts. And that’s what holds the world together.

Think about it: Here are all these particles–electrons, protons, negative-charged particles, positive-charged particles, matter, anti-matter, quarks, bosons, blips, bloops, kukaratches, stuff… And what makes them into a world that we can observe and experience? A bunch of rules. Without those rules, those particles can’t work together. And without working together, none of them can exist. Turns out that the rules keep them in existence.

And what are the rules? An extremely limited manifestation of G‑d’s mind. That’s what we call “G‑d speaking.”

Next time you wonder why G‑d never speaks to you, look at the world around you. That’s all it is: G‑d speaking to you. Just that the signal is so stepped-down and encrypted you can’t necessarily tell what He’s saying.

So, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great Kabbalist, explains: all the prophet needs to do is catch those words of G‑d as they are a little less condensed and crystallized, up in a higher world. There things are a lot clearer–less static, more signal. And from there those prophets get an idea of what’s coming down–before it actually gets here.4

In Shaarei Kedusha, Rabbi Isaac Luria‘s protégé, the above-mentioned Rabbi Chaim Vital, goes even further: He claims that prophecy is really the natural state of any human being. You see, when G‑d went about making the first human being, He said, “Let us make Adam.”5 The us refers to the entire universe that G‑d had just completed6. The soul of everything from every creature in every world of the entire order of worlds was invested into this being: angels, animals, trees, plants, rocks–the works. The rationale? Adam was to be the conduit of life-giving and existence-sustaining energy traveling from the highest world to the lowest. According to how he leads his life, so will the entire world receive life.

If so, what is the wonder, Rabbi Vital asks, if a human being manages to read some of the data as it travels through him?

Prophecy, it turns out, is just a matter of tuning in to the process of constant creation. Moses’ prophecy was a matter of getting to the very core of that process. And so, writes Nachmanides,7 every secret of the universe is contained in the Torah, sometimes in a nuance of a phrase, sometimes in a pattern of letters, sometimes in one of those tiny crowns that is placed above certain letters according to the tradition.8

Forty Years in the Writing

Back to the order of things: So Moses writes down the laws and rules he learns atop the mountain. Short break for the Golden Calfaffair. Next thing, Moses is back up the mountain getting some rehabilitative laws, including the details for a portable, people’s tabernacle. Over the period of the next thirty-nine years,9 Moses writes at intervals. The writing is done in various ways. Sometimes he writes and then speaks. Sometimes he makes his oratory and then transcribes it. Sometimes he collects together the accounts from a census and organizes it. (This may account for the varied styles we may find in these sections.)

According to another opinion in the Talmud, everything is oral until the last days. According to all opinions, it’s not until those last days that Moses gathers everything together and distributes copies to each of the tribes.10 His final instructions: Everyone must write their own. Moses, the ultimate populist.

Convincing Julius

If the whole thing is so plausible, you say, why is it so many of those Biblical criticism dudes won’t accept the story? The real question is like this: What would it take to convince those academics? To convince them that:

a) There is a G‑d, responsible for the very ground of existence.

b) This G‑d cares about what’s happening in that existence.

c) This G‑d can communicate, and actually does communicate, to human beings all that He would like us to be doing down here.

I propose that all the evidence in the world wouldn’t be able to budge those guys one nanometer. Because we are not talking about logic here–we are talking about axioms. And to those academics, it is a foregone conclusion, an axiom, that if not a, then certainly b and c are preposterous.

I don’t believe for a moment that any scholar examined the matter objectively, saying, “Let’s see, there are two possibilities here: Moses did this because G‑d spoke within him, or people made this up as history went along. Let’s examine both and determine which is the more elegant explanation.”

Never. When Spinoza began his critique, it was a foregone conclusion that G‑d did not communicate to humankind. G‑d, to Spinoza, is not a being that can care and have concern for His world. Spinoza’s G‑d is an object, a passive state of just being. Since Spinoza was the father of biblical criticism, the children could only descend from there.

Julius Wellhausen was fascinated by the idea of history–like every other scholar of his century. History in his day meant Hegel. That’s the way everything happened and had to happen: Progressively, through a conflict of social dynamics, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, moving closer and closer to the enlightened modern man. That’s the mold of every 19th century thinker, and Torah had to fit into that mold. Tell me that Wellhausen could have accepted anything otherwise.

(Postscript on 5/23/10: Since writing, K.A. Kitchen, one of the foremost scholars of antiquity, published his “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” in which he mercilessly demolishes Wellhausen and his school of biblical critics by presenting the evidence that has since been discovered.)

The fact is, this idea of Moses is so wild, so counter-intuitive, I don’t believe anyone could arrive at it through philosophy or logic. Why do we believe it? Because we believe in the Jewish people. That’s called Judaism: Belief in Jews. Since we believe in the Jews, we believe in the experience of the Jews, which means we believe in Torah and since we believe in Torah, we believe in G‑d and that G‑d cares. (See How Do We Know We Heard G‑d at Sinai for more on this.)

The Utilitarian Proof

That said, let me point out something that’s rarely cited as a proof of Moses’ idea, but in my mind wins hands down: It works.

Modern society is grounded lock and barrel on Moses’ idea: The idea that all people are created by a single G‑d who cares about each one of them. That is the basis of modern democracy and all civil rights. Because to lay a claim to human rights or equality before the law is ludicrous under any other system. The horrors of the twentieth century proved this better than any textbook could and authors such as George Orwell made it lucidly clear to us: There is no rational basis for human rights or justice for all men.

Yet without these things today, society is simply not sustainable–and neither is life on the planet. If G‑d just is and life just is and everything is therefore without innate meaning or value–then dog-eat-dog with the weapons of modern technology is as ugly–and sure–as can be.

So Moses wins in the end. And if Moses is right that G‑d cares, then what is so impossible that G‑d might wish to communicate exactly what He cares about and that it actually happened at a certain point in time at a certain place to a certain mass of people?

Which is just what I believe.

(Another postscript from 5/23/10: To illustrate what I am talking about in this last section, see Joshua Berman’s fascinating article Is the Bible Egalitarian? Better: read his book, Created Equal:: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2008).)

Historia real del 11 de septiembre

David Miller [nombre ficticio], una persona observante de los preceptos religiosos judíos, estaba en el aeropuerto Logan en Boston, alistándose para abordar su vuelo. Se dirigía a Los Ángeles en un importante viaje de negocios y estaba obligado a tomar este temprano vuelo ya que muchos de sus asuntos de negocios dependían de ello.

Abordó el avión, observó que las puertas se cerraban, y tomó asiento. De repente, recordó que había dejado sus tefilín o filacterias (las cajas rituales con correas usadas por los hombres judíos en sus oraciones) en la sala de abordaje del terminal.

De manera cortés, preguntó a la azafata si podía regresar y recuperar sus tefilín, que se hallaban en un asiento a pocos pasos de la puerta. Ella le dijo que una vez que las puertas del avión se cerraban, nadie se podía bajar. No conforme con la respuesta, preguntó si podría hablar con el piloto para que le diera un permiso especial. Seguramente él comprendería, sin embargo el comandante de la nave no accedió, simplemente le confirmó la política de la aerolínea.

David no estaba dispuesto a dejar de cumplir su preciada mitzvá(precepto), ni permitir que sus valiosos y sagrados tefilín se perdieran tan fácilmente, por lo cual, sin saber qué más podía hacer, empezó a gritar con toda la fuerza de sus pulmones: “¡No quiero perder mis tefilín!”..

La tripulación le pidió que se calmara, pero él se rehusó y siguió con el escándalo creando un verdadero disturbio.

Finalmente, era tal el alboroto que la tripulación del avión le dijo que podía descender de la nave.

De hecho, aunque sólo le hubiera tomado alrededor de 90 segundos salir del avión, tomar sus tefilín y correr de regreso, le advirtieron que no esperarían por él , pero no le importó David no pensaba perder sus tefilín, incluso si ello le causaba grandes inconvenientes o le acarreaba pérdidas en sus negocios.

Así, David salió del avión, para nunca volver a abordarlo.

Este vuelo era el United 175 el segundo avión que se impactó contra el World Trade Center de Nueva York el 11 de septiembre del 2001.

La devoción de David por esta mitzvá salvó su vida Pero las consecuencias de las acciones de David no terminaron ahí. Al principio, los terroristas querían chocar contra ambas torres al mismo tiempo, para maximizar la explosiva matanza. Después se supo que, debido al alboroto que David causó, el avión retrasó su despegue, provocando la diferencia de 18 minutos entre cada impacto de los aviones contra las dos torres gemelas.

Este retraso permitió que miles de personas escaparan con vida de los dos edificios. Literalmente millares de vidas se salvaron debido a que un judío no abandonó sus amados tefilín.

Esta historia está documentada en “Even in the Darkest Moments”, por Zeev Breier.

Según tomado de, http://es.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1187447/jewish/Cunto-valen-unos-Tefiln.htm  el 7 de octubre de 2017

En el himno al shabat del siglo XVI “Lejá dodí” (“Ven, mi amada…”), le damos la bienvenida al shabat como a una novia y como a una reina.

Este concepto se remonta al Talmud, donde leemos que rabí Janina solía llevar sus prendas especiales en la víspera de shabat y decía: “Ven, y saldremos a saludar al shabat, la reina”. Otro sabio, rabí Ianai, vestía sus prendas en la víspera de shabat y decía: “Entra, oh, novia. Entra, oh, novia”.1

Entonces, ¿Qué es el shabat? ¿Una novia o una reina? ¿Y quién es su esposo?

1. Casada con Israel

Rabí Shmuel Eidels, conocido como el Maharsha (1555-1631), explica que esto se basa en la enseñanza midráshica2 de que cuando Di-s creó el mundo, el shabat le rogó a Di-s y le dijo: “Todos los demás tienen una pareja (por ejemplo, el domingo tiene al lunes como pareja, el martes tiene al miércoles, etc.), pero ¡yo no tengo a nadie!”. Di-s respondió: “La comunidad de Israel será tu pareja”.

Años más tarde, cuando Israel estuvo de pie frente al Sinaí, Di-s dijo: “Recuerda que le he dicho al shabat que la comunidad de Israel es su pareja. Esto es lo que significa el versículo ‘Acuérdate del shabat para santificarlo’”.3 La palabra hebrea para “santificar” también denota el concepto de matrimonio. Entonces, es como si Di-s dijera: “Acuérdate de mi promesa al shabat, y asegúrate de casarte con ella”.

Luego explica que el momento en el que se consuma este matrimonio es cuando el sol se pone en la tarde del viernes. Como el pueblo judío es considerado “hijo de la realeza”,4 al shabat se le llama reina, por ser la novia de un rey.5

2. La novia de Di-s

El versículo de Bereshit dice: “Y en el séptimo día completó Di-s la obra que había hecho, y reposó en el día séptimo de toda la obra que había hecho”.6 El Midrash señala que este versículo parece contradictorio. ¿Di-s terminó su trabajo en el séptimo día? ¿O ya descansaba, luego de haber terminado su trabajo antes del comienzo del séptimo día?

El Midrash explica que el shabat, el día de descanso, fue en sí mismo la creación del séptimo día. En palabras del Midrash: “Esto es comparable con un rey que ya ha preparado la cámara nupcial pero al que le falta una novia. De manera similar, al mundo le faltaba el shabat”.7

Una explicación para este Midrash es que el propósito de celebrar shabat es recordar siempre que Di-s, el Rey, es el Creador del mundo. Él creó el mundo en seis días y descansó durante el séptimo. Al celebrar shabat, recordamos que Di-s es el Creador.

3. Nos convertimos en la novia

Rabí Iehuda Loewe, conocido como el Maharal de Praga (1525-1609), explica que los tres términos, “shabat”, “novia” y “reina”, representan tres maneras diferentes de honrar el shabat:

● Descansamos del trabajo. La palabra shabat significa “descanso”.

● Con prendas especiales, así como una novia se viste de gala para la boda.

● Permisivos respecto de delicias especiales y actividades placenteras, como la realeza.8

Según esta explicación, parece como si nosotros mismos nos convirtiéramos en la novia durante el shabat.

4. La reina cabalística

Los cabalistas explican que los siete días de la semana corresponden a los siete atributos de Di-s: jesed (la bondad), guevurá (la severidad), tiferet (la armonía), nétzaj (la perseverancia) hod (la humildad), iesod (el fundamento) y maljut(la realeza). Entonces, al shabat le corresponde el último atributo: la realeza.

Así como usamos los seis días de la semana para prepararnos para el shabat, la maljut recibe su energía de las seis sefirotanteriores.

Piensa durante un momento en la realeza. Es cierto, son beneficiarios, por haber recibido de sus súbditos el mandato de gobernar (y la riqueza). Pero también deben dar: conducir, guiar e inspirar a su pueblo.

Se puede decir lo mismo del shabat. Pasamos seis días de preparativos para el shabat, pero él luego nos da la vitalidad para sobrevivir y prosperar durante la semana siguiente.

El atributo de maljut también se conoce como la shejiná, el aspecto femenino de Di-s, lo que puede explicar por qué el shabat es una reina y no un rey.9

Nuestros sabios nos dicen que si todos nosotros cumplimos al menos con un shabat, mereceremos la redención definitiva, una era a la que se hace referencia como el shabat eterno. ¡Que suceda pronto, en nuestros días!

The Torah is split into 54 Torah portions (Parshiyot), and we usually read one Torah portion each Shabbat. However, there are 14 Parshiyot that, depending on the year, can potentially be paired together, so two Torah portions would be read on that Shabbat.

The seven pairs are as follows:

1. Vayakhel-Pekudei
2. Tazria-Metzora
3. Acharei-Kedoshim
4. Behar-Bechukotai
5. Chukat-Balak (only outside of Israel)
6. Matot-Massei
7. Nitzavim-Vayelech

[It should be noted that technically there are really only 53 Parshiyot, with one portion (according to many, Nitzavim-Vayelech) being split into two.1 However, that is beyond the scope of this article, which is focused on how the Torah is currently divided and read. Hence, we will refer to them as 54 separate Torah portions.]

There are a number of reasons why Parshiyot are doubled up, and some reasons specifically apply to certain pairings. Bear with me, because this explanation will get a bit technical.

Not Enough Weeks

The basic issue is that although we split the Torah into 54 portions (or Parshiyot), a regular Jewish year has 353–355 days. That leaves us with 50–51 Shabbats on which to read the Torah portion. Additionally, when a Jewish holiday coincides with Shabbat, we read the special holiday reading instead of the weekly Torah portion. This leaves us with a maximum of 48 (but often fewer) weeks in a regular year in which to read the 54 Torah portions.

[Technically we only need 53 Shabbats, since the last portion, Vezot Hab’rachah, is traditionally read on Simchat Torah, which generally (and outside Israel, always) occurs on a weekday.]

In order to reconcile the weekly cycle of Parshiyot with the number of Shabbats available, we need to double up some of the Parshiyot.

In a Jewish leap year, we add an extra month consisting of 30 days, which includes four more Shabbats (or five, depending on the day of the week the new month starts—we will get to this later). Thus, in a leap year we have a lot fewer double Torah portions.

The first four possible pairings are made only in regular years. Since a leap year is four weeks longer, by reading these portions separately we have an extra month’s worth of readings.

The Regular-Year-Only Couplings:

1. Vayakhel-Pekudei2
2. Tazria-Metzora
3. Acharei-Kedoshim
4. Behar-Bechukotai

Matot-Massei are always read together, even in a leap year, unless it is a leap year and one of the following two scenarios apply:

1. Rosh Hashanah of the leap year falls out on Thursday, which means the extra month of the leap year will have five Shabbats instead of the usual four. (Since the new month has 30 days, it can include five Shabbats.)
2. If Acharon Shel Pesach (the eighth day of Passover) falls out on Shabbat, then in Israel we would read Matot and Masseion two separate Shabbats, while outside of Israel we would still combine the two. In such a year the Torah readings in Israel and the Diaspora will be out of sync for three months, from Passover until when Matot-Massei are read during the Three Weeks.

Although the main reason why we double up Torah portions has to do with leap years, there are additional reasons for pairing them up as well.

Extra Day of Yom Tov

Outside of Israel we add an extra day to the holidays of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot/Shemini Atzeret. If the extra day of Passover or Shavuot3 falls out on a Shabbat, then outside of Israel the special holiday reading is read, while in Israel, since it is a regular Shabbat, the weekly Torah portion is read.

In order to to get the Torah readings of the Diaspora back in sync with those of Israel, if Acharon Shel Pesach falls out on Shabbat, then in a regular (non-leap) year, outside of Israel we double up Behar and Bechukotai, while in Israel they are read separately. (In a leap year, we do this instead with the portions of Matot and Massei, as described above.)

If the second day of Shavuot falls out on Shabbat, then in the Diaspora we double up the portions of Chukat and Balak. Thus, Chukat and Balak are only ever paired up outside the land of Israel.

[It should be noted that although we have explained this reason as “synchronizing the reading of the Diaspora with that of Israel,” in truth it is clear, from the very fact that we sometimes wait three months to synchronize the two, that this disparity isn’t really a concern. The real issue is that the Diaspora ends up having one less Shabbat than Israel to read the Torah, and we need to make it up. However, for simplicity’s sake, it is presented as a disparity between Israel and the Diaspora.]

Shabbats Between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot (Nitzavim-Vayelech)

As a rule, the Torah portion of Nitzavim needs to be read on the Shabbat preceding Rosh Hashanah (we will get to the reason for this rule soon). This means that there are only three Torah portions left in the weekly cycle. As mentioned, the Parshah of Vezot Hab’rachah is read on Simchat Torah, leaving the Parshah of Haazinu to be read on a regular Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. If there is more than one non-holiday Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, then, and only then, are the Torah portions of Nitzavim and Vayelech separated.4

Why the Lopsided Pairing?

If you’ve been following the schedule of the pairings up until now, you may have noticed a number of interesting anomalies. For instance, in some years we would combine the portions of Matot and Massei, creating the longest Torah reading—a whopping 244 verses!—and yet at the same time we would separate the two shortest portions, Nitzavim and Vayelech—a total of only 70 combined!

Another anomaly is that in leap years when Acharon Shel Pesach falls out on Shabbat, instead of synchronizing the readings of the Diaspora and Israel at the first available opportunity, at Behar and Bechukotai, we wait over three months to synchronize at Matot-Massei.

While this isn’t the place to elaborate on all the intricate rules, we will touch on some of them to help give us an understanding of why the Torah portions are paired up in this specific way.

Before getting to the rules, it is important to point out that the Torah portions aren’t just haphazardly combined. The portions that are chosen to be combined together generally share a theme, although some are more closely related than others.

General Rules

• In a regular year, we always read the Torah portion of Tzav on the Shabbat before Passover.
• In a leap year, we read the portion of Metzora before Passover—unless Rosh Hashanah was on Thursday (and Simchat Torah, Friday), in which case we read the portion of Acharei Mot on the Shabbat before Passover.
• The portion of Bamidbar is always read before Shavuot (usually the week before, but some years it is read two weeks prior).
• The portion of Va’etchanan is always read the Shabbat after the 9th of Av.5
• The portion of Nitzavim is always read before Rosh Hashanah.

Additionally, we usually double up Torah portions close to benchmarks on the Jewish calendar (e.g., Passover, Shavuot, etc.).

What are the reasons for these rules? Let’s explore.

Rebuke Before the New Year

The Talmud records that Ezra the Scribe enacted that the “rebuke in Leviticus” (the portion of Bechukotai) should be read before Shavuot, and the “rebuke in Deuteronomy” (the portion of Ki Tavo) should be read before Rosh Hashanah.6

The Talmud goes on to explain that this is “in order to end the year together with its curses,” because “Shavuot is the beginning of a new year.” As the Mishnah explains, “The world is judged on Shavuot for fruit.”

Tosafot explains that although we read the curses before the new year, we nevertheless don’t want to go straight from curses into the new year, so we have a buffer. As a rule, we always read Nitzavim before Rosh Hashanah, and the portion of Bamidbar is always read before Shavuot.7

Based on this, we can understand that simply combining the two smallest portions of Nitzavim and Vayelech is not always an option, as it can cause Nitzavim to be read after Rosh Hashanah.

While this answers why we can’t always just combine the two shortest Torah portions of Nitzavim and Vayelech, we are still left with the question why in some years we wait a whole three months to get the Diaspora in sync with Israel. The question is compounded by the fact that we actually skip some possible opportunities of reconciling the two (such as combining the portions of Chukat and Balak, as we sometimes do) and instead wait until Matot-Massei.

Hope in the Saddest of Times

To answer this, we need to explain one more rule: we always read the Torah portion of Va’etchanan on the Shabbat following the fast of the 9th of Av.8

Based on this, on a simple level, some explain that since the two portions that are the most commonly read together are Matot and Massei, if we are faced with a choice of combining two portions, we just pick these two most common ones. Indeed, these two portions fit together better than many of the other pairs, since both talk about dividing and inheriting the land of Israel.9

Others explain that there is a much deeper reason for this.

Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dinov explains that we try to read the Torah portions dealing with dividing the land of Israel during the Three Weeks, when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple(from the 17th of Tammuz until the 9th of Av). Thus, the portions of Matot and Massei, which include this theme, are always read during the Three Weeks. The portion of Pinchas also discusses dividing the land of Israel. Therefore, although there are (rare) times that we need to separate Matot and Massei, and read Pinchas before the Three Weeks (namely, in a leap year when there aren’t enough portions to go around), when possible, preference is given to combining Matot and Massei (over other Torah portions such as Chukat and Balak) so that Pinchas too is read during the Three Weeks.

Reading these three Torah portions at the time we mourn the destruction of the Temple and the exile from the land of Israel gives us hope that we will ultimately return and redivide the land with the ingathering of the exiles and the coming of Moshiach.10 May it be speedily in our days!