📜 Weekly Torah Portion
No weekly portion on:
- 1 Tishrei 5787 • September 12, 2026 — Rosh Hashana 5787
a festival reading is read instead
This Week's Torah Portion
Ha'azinu
8 Tishrei 5787 • September 19, 2026
Moses speaks his final words not in prose but in poetry, a song that spans all of history, from creation to the end of days. "Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop like rain, my speech flow like dew." The song recounts God's faithfulness and Israel's waywardness, the blessings of the land and the consequences of forgetting. It is painfully honest: "They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had never known." But it does not end in despair. God declares: "See now that I, I am He, and there is no god beside Me. I kill and I give life, I wound and I heal." After singing, God tells Moses: "Go up to Mount Nebo and see the land I give to the Israelites, you will see it, but you will not go there." The song is Moses's masterwork: not a law, not a speech, but music. The deepest truths live in poetry because they cannot be contained in logic alone. Israel's relationship with God is not a contract but a song, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant, but always continuing.
Parasha schedule & data provided courtesy of Hebcal.com · Candle lighting times courtesy of Chabad.org
Parasha summaries written originally for Jewish Path
Quick answer
Parashat HaShavua is the weekly Torah portion read in synagogue every Shabbat. The Torah is divided into 54 portions, read in a fixed annual cycle that begins and ends on Simchat Torah. Each week's portion is read publicly from a Torah scroll and followed by a Haftarah reading from the Prophets.
What is the weekly Torah portion?
The weekly portion, called Parashat HaShavua in Hebrew, is a fixed section of the Five Books of Moses assigned to each Shabbat of the year. On Shabbat morning the portion is divided into seven aliyot, seven consecutive readings, and a member of the congregation is called up for each one.
Shorter passages from the coming week's portion are also read on Monday and Thursday mornings, so the text is heard three times before Shabbat arrives.
How does the annual Torah reading cycle work?
The cycle starts with Bereishit on the Shabbat after Simchat Torah and finishes a year later with the closing verses of Devarim. Because a Jewish year has between 50 and 55 Shabbatot, certain portions are joined together in shorter years and read separately in longer ones. When a festival falls on Shabbat, a festival reading replaces the regular portion, and the calendar realigns in the following weeks.
This is why the portion read in Israel can differ from the diaspora for a few weeks after Pesach: the last day of the festival falls on Shabbat in the diaspora only, and the two calendars merge again shortly afterwards.
How should a conversion candidate study the weekly portion?
Reading the portion each week is one of the most practical study habits before a Beit Din. It builds familiarity with the narrative of the Torah, the names of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and the commandments in their original context.
A workable weekly routine: read a summary early in the week, read the Hebrew text with a translation mid-week, and note one lesson or question to bring to your rabbi. Over a full cycle you will have covered the entire Torah once.
What is the Haftarah?
After the Torah reading, a passage from the Prophets is read. It is called the Haftarah and is chosen to echo a theme, an image, or an event from the portion. On most Shabbatot the connection is thematic; on special Shabbatot before fasts and festivals the Haftarah follows its own fixed sequence.
The five books and their portions
The 54 portions are distributed across the Five Books of Moses as follows.
- Bereishit (Genesis)12 portions
- Shemot (Exodus)11 portions
- Vayikra (Leviticus)10 portions
- Bamidbar (Numbers)10 portions
- Devarim (Deuteronomy)11 portions