{"id":404,"date":"2023-06-29T12:15:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T20:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2023-06-29T12:20:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T20:20:49","slug":"on-the-frequency-of-parasha-doublings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/?p=404","title":{"rendered":"On the Frequency of Parasha Doublings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The number of Shabbatot in a Hebrew year can be 50 or 51 in a regular year or 55 in a leap year, and every year one or more <em>\u1e25aggim<\/em> also fall on Shabbat. Since the Torah is divided into 54 parashot for the weekly reading, almost every year there are some Shabbatot where two parashot are combined into a single reading. The procedures for which parashot are combined and when seem to be similar in almost all Jewish communities today (I believe there are exceptions, but have not yet been able to collect information on them). I do not know when these procedures were established or by whom (Saadia Gaon in his <em>Siddur<\/em> and Maimonides in the <em>Mishne Tora<\/em> refer to them, but do not state every detail of the practice as we know it today), but part of the reason behind the procedures is to maintain certain constraints on when specific parashot are to be read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The <em>tokha\u1e25a<\/em> in <em>Parashat Be\u1e25ukkotai<\/em> to be read two or three weeks before <em>Shabu\u02bfot<\/em><\/li><li>The <em>tokha\u1e25a<\/em> in <em>Parashat Ki Tabo<\/em> to be read two weeks before <em>Rosh Hashana<\/em><\/li><li><em>Parashat Debarim<\/em> to be read the Shabbat before <em>Tish\u02bfa Be\u02beAv<\/em><\/li><li>And of course, though this may be stating the obvious, to begin with <em>Parashat Bereshit<\/em> the Shabbat after <em>Sim\u1e25at Torah<\/em> and reach <em>Ha&#8217;azinu<\/em> the Shabbat before the next <em>Sukkot<\/em> so as to finish with <em>Vezot Haberakha<\/em> on <em>Sim\u1e25at Torah<\/em>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The procedures also vary between Israel and the Diaspora, for the obvious reason that the second days of festivals observed in the Diaspora add more instances when a festival falls on Shabbat and its reading replaces the weekly <em>Parasha<\/em>. Let us examine the occurences of each pairing and their frequencies.<\/p>\n\n<dl>\n<dt><em>Vayakhel&ndash;Pekudei<\/em><\/dt><dd>\n  The first example is the last two <em>parashot<\/em> in Exodus. These are combined in every non-leap year, except when Rosh Hashana is on Thursday in a &quot;full&quot; year when <em>Mar\u1e25eshvan<\/em> has 30 days. This happens on average about 3 times in 5 years (59.82%)<\/dd>\n\n<dt><em>Tazria&ndash;Me\u1e63ora<\/em>\n  <br><em>A\u1e25arei Mot&ndash;Kedoshim<\/em>\n  <br><em>Behar&ndash;Be\u1e25ukkotai<\/em><\/dt><dd>\n  The three pairs of <em>parashot<\/em> in Leviticus are all combined every non-leap year and separated every leap year, so they are each combined in 12 years out of every 19 (63.16%). There is one exception: in a non-leap year in Israel when the first day of <em>Pesa\u1e25<\/em> is on Shabbat, <em>Behar<\/em> and <em>Be\u1e25ukkotai<\/em> are read separately. This means that they are paired in Israel only about 9 times in 20 years (45.11%).<\/dd>\n\n<dt><em>\u1e24ukkat&ndash;Balak<\/em><\/dt><dd>\n  <em>\u1e24ukkat<\/em> and <em>Balak<\/em> are only paired in the Diaspora, and only when the second day of <em>Shabu\u02bfot<\/em> is on Shabbat. This happens on average twice in seven years (28.57%)<\/dd>\n\n<dt><em>Mattot&ndash;Mas\u02bfei<\/em><\/dt><dd>\n  <em>Mattot<\/em> and <em>Mas\u02bfei<\/em> are paired in every year, except in leap years where <em>Rosh Hashana<\/em> is on a Thursday, and in Israel also except in leap years when the first day of <em>Pesa\u1e24<\/em> is on a Shabbat. In the Diaspora this happens almost 9 times in 10 years (89.91%), in Israel almost 8 times in 10 years (79.49%).<\/dd>\n\n<dt><em>Ni\u1e63abim&ndash;Vayyelekh<\/em><\/dt><dd>\n  <em>Ni\u1e63abim<\/em> and <em>Vayyelekh<\/em> are read together when either of <em>Rosh Hashana<\/em> or <em>Yom Kippur<\/em> in the upcoming year is on Shabbat. On average this happens about 3 times in 5 years (60.46%).\n  <br>Note: precisians will tell you that I should have put this differently &mdash; \n  <em>Parashat Ni\u1e63abim<\/em> is split into two separate readings when neither <em>Rosh Hashana<\/em> nor <em>Yom Kippur<\/em> is on Shabbat, and therefore there is an extra Shabbat before Sukkot; also I should have begun by saying that there are 53 <em>parashot<\/em> in the Torah, not 54 &mdash; but this is a rabbit hole we will not be going down in the current discussion.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>So how often does it happen that no <em>parasha<\/em> is paired with another throughout the whole year? In the Diaspora this is a rare event: it only happens in leap years in which <em>Rosh Hashana<\/em> is on Thursday and the first day of <em>Pesa\u1e25<\/em> not on Tuesday (which would make the following <em>Yom Kippur<\/em> on Shabbat) \u2014 a combination which only occurs about once in 26 years (3.87%). This occurred twice at the beginning of this century, in 5765 (2004\u20135) and 5768 (2007\u20138), but the next time will not be until 5812 (2051\u20132). In Israel it also happens in leap years where the first day of <em>Pesa\u1e25<\/em> is a Shabbat, altogether nearly once every seven years (13.86%). The last time was last year, 5782 (2021\u20132) and the next will be 5803 (2042\u20133).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The number of Shabbatot in a Hebrew year can be 50 or 51 in a regular year or 55 in a leap year, and every year one or more \u1e25aggim also fall on Shabbat. Since the Torah is divided into 54 parashot for the weekly reading, almost every year there are some Shabbatot where two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}