Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: The Torah Reading Cycle: Change Upon Change
What‘s the holiday of Shavuot (Pentecost) all about? There’s no clear answer because its “meaning” has changed over time. The Israelites received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and we commemorate this on Shavuot based on counting the days from Passover (the Omer). However, in practice Shavuot started out as an agricultural holiday – Chag Ha’Bikkurim, the holiday of reaping from the field’s bounty (which is why we read the Book of Ruth with its agricultural setting). Only at some later point in Jewish history was the emphasis placed on the spiritual element of “receiving the Torah.”
The previous sentence is also problematic because at Mount Sinai the Israelites received only the Ten Commandments; they obviously could not have received the rest of the Torah (certainly not from the Book of Numbers onwards) because that history was still in their future! The question, then is this: when did they start hearing the full Torah (“5 Books of Moses”)? An even more relevant question: how did they hear it? Was it in one long hearing in one shot? Or over the course of a year? Or some other cycle?
Through all of biblical history there is no evidence that the majority of the Jews knew how to read or write. First, in Deuteronomy each new King was ordered to write a new Sefer Torah by himself (Deuteronomy 18: 17), but there is no mention whatsoever of any non-Levite or King reading anything, let alone the common Jew. Indeed, we are all aware of the Torah’s injunction read every day in the Shma Yisrael prayer – “thou shall teach your children [the commandments]” – but there is not one example in all the 24 books of the Torah where a father actually teaches his child anything; certainly not to read, write, or learn the Torah!
So, we’re back to the question: who read the Torah, to whom, and when? Here’s the relevant section from Deuteronomy (31: 9-12): 9 And Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, that bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel. 10 And Moses commanded them, saying: ‘At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, 11 when all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and the stranger that is within your gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.
Several points should be noted here. First, these verses are in the fifth book of the Bible, before Moses dies. So, at the very least, the Israelites did not have the Torah for 40 years in the desert. Second, almost certainly at least this fifth book (Deuteronomy) was not written by Moses but rather about 800 years later, by King Josiah in Jerusalem. What’s the evidence for this? In the 2nd Book of Kings (chapter 22), King Josiah is astounded to hear of a book that his High Priest “discovered” during the First Temple renovations: Deuteronomy! There’s no hint in all the books preceding 2 Kings that anyone knew about, or read this book (or for that matter, any of the four earlier Torah books). It is inconceivable that if the Torah existed during all those centuries, there would not have been some mention of it in Judges, Samuel, Kings etc.
Third, let’s note when Moses commanded the Torah to be read: ONCE every seven years!! In other words, the first readings of the Torah were not done in any “cycle,” but rather at the end of the “Shmitta” (agricultural Sabbatical) year, on Sukkot (Tabernacles) when all the Israelites were in Jerusalem.
The conclusion: the entire practice of reading the Torah on a weekly basis is not found anywhere in the whole Bible; rather, it’s something that evolved much later on. Therefore: No change in the Torah reading cycle can be attacked for going against the Torah’s instructions – because the only instruction found there is once every seven years – which no one did or does since the Temple was destroyed.
Much later, we do read about an actual Gathering of Everyone (“Hak’hel”) in the book of Nehemiah (chapter 8) – well after the destruction of the First Temple. All of Israel come to Jerusalem to hear the Torah (Deuteronomy) read out loud by Ezra and explained by the Levites. And then verse 9 informs us that “all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law.” Why weep? Because they had never heard this before!!
If so, when does the tradition start to read one “parsha” (biblical portion) each week? The answer: only after the once-every-seven-years custom of Hak’hel could no longer take place after the Second Temple was destroyed. In other words, the practice of consecutively reading a different Torah section every week starts less than 2000 years ago. During their first 1200 years, the Jewish People had nothing that even came close to that.
However, even that wasn’t the end of the story because subsequently a bifurcation occurred regarding the reading cycle in two Jewish centers. In Babylonia, the Torah (5 Books of Moses) was read all the way through over the course of one year; in Israel, though, it took a bit over three years! The rationale there: continuing the Hak’hel custom of stopping every often to explain or comment on what was just read.
It is only around the 9th-10th century CE when the Land of Israel tri-annual custom died out. Thus, it in only over the last thousand years or so that all Jews have followed the Babylonian custom – ending the Torah reading cycle each Simkhat Torah, the same time when Hak’hel took place over 2500 years ago.
Perhaps today, in the spirit of Hak’hel, we should go back to the three-year Torah cycle – to explain and comment on it. There are two rationales for this. First, many sections of the Torah are abstruse or hard to comprehend; explanations and interpretations would go a long way to making the Torah more cognitively “accessible” (just as in the days of Ezra). Second, such a customary practice would not be at all “revolutionary”; quite the opposite – with most Jews once again living in the Land of Israel, the triannual Torah cycle is as “traditional” as they come.
If there is anything consistent about the Torah reading cycle throughout Jewish history it’s constant change: what was read, how much, and when. It might be high time to revert back to the public Torah-reading custom of yesteryear: shorter passages each week, but with explanations and commentary.
