Triennial cycle - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Triennial cycle of Torah reading

Torah reading

Torah reading is a Jewish religious ritual that involves the public reading of a set of passages from a Torah scroll. The term often refers to the entire ceremony of removing the Torah scroll from the ark, chanting the appropriate excerpt with special cantillation, and returning the scroll to...

may refer to the historical practice in ancient Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

by which the entire Torah was read in serial fashion over a three year period, or to the practice adopted by many Reform

Reform Judaism

Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...

, Conservative

Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...

, Reconstructionist

Reconstructionist Judaism

Reconstructionist Judaism is a modern American-based Jewish movement based on the ideas of Mordecai Kaplan . The movement views Judaism as a progressively evolving civilization. It originated as a branch of Conservative Judaism, before it splintered...

and Renewal

Jewish Renewal

Jewish Renewal , is a recent movement in Judaism which endeavors to reinvigorate modern Judaism with mystical, Hasidic, musical and meditative practices...

congregations starting in the 19th and 20th Century, in which the traditional weekly Torah portions were divided into thirds, and in which one third of each weekly "parashah" of the annual system is read during the appropriate week of the calendar.

There are 54 parashot in the annual cycle, and 141, 154, or 167 parashot in the triennial cycle as practiced in ancient Israel, as evidenced by scriptural references and fragments of recovered text. By the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, the annual reading cycle was predominant, although the triennial cycle was still extant at the time, as noted by Jewish figures of the period, such as Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 12th century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years...

and Maimonides

Maimonides

Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...

. Dating from Maimonides' codification of the parashot in his work Mishneh Torah
Mishneh Torah
The Mishneh Torah subtitled Sefer Yad ha-Hazaka is a code of Jewish religious law authored by Maimonides , one of history's foremost rabbis...

in the 12th Century CE through the 19th Century, the majority of Jewish communities adhered to the annual cycle.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, many synagogues in the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Renewal Jewish movements adopted a triennial system in order to shorten the weekly services and allow additional time for sermons.

Background: Torah reading

The introduction of public reading of the Torah by Ezra

Ezra

Ezra , also called Ezra the Scribe and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem...

the Scribe after the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian Captivity

Babylonian captivity

The Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....

is described in Nehemiah

Book of Nehemiah

The Book of Nehemiah is a book of the Hebrew Bible. Told largely in the form of a first-person memoir, it concerns the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court, and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws...

Chapter 8. Prior to Ezra, the mitzvah of Torah reading was based on the Biblical commandment of Hakhel (Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy

The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...

31:10–13), by which once every 7 years the entire people was to be gathered, "men, women and children," and hear much of Deuteronomy, the final volume of the Pentateuch, read to them (see the closing chapters of the Talmudic Tractate Sotah). Traditionally, the mitzvah of gathering the people and reading them the Torah under Hakhel was to be performed by the King. Under Ezra, Torah reading became more frequent and the congregation themselves substituted for the King's role. Ezra is traditionally credited with initiating the modern custom of reading thrice weekly in the synagogue. This reading is an obligation incumbent on the congregation, not an individual, and did not replace the Hakhel reading by the king. The reading of the Law in the synagogue can be traced to at least about the second century B.C., when the grandson of Sirach

Sirach

The Book of the All-Virtuous Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira , commonly called the Wisdom of Sirach or simply Sirach, and also known as Ecclesiasticus or Siracides , is a work from the early 2nd century B.C. written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach of Jerusalem...

refers to it in his preface as an Egyptian practise; it must, therefore, have existed even earlier in Judea.

However, the annual reading cycle as practiced by the Jewish exile community in Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...

was known by them to be different from the custom of the remaining Jews of Syria Palaestina

Syria Palaestina

Syria Palæstina was a Roman province between 135CE and 390CE. It had been established by the merge of Roman Syria and Roman Judaea, following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE. In 193 Syria-Coele was split to form a separate provincial locality...

. The Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 29b) "makes only one oblique reference to the triennial cycle: 'The people of the west (ie the Jews of eretz yisrael) who complete [the reading] (sic.) of the Torah in three years.'"

Ancient triennial cycle

In a systematic review of the history and religious basis of the ancient and modern triennial cycles undertaken on behalf of the Conservative movement, Lionel E. Moses cites Maimonides

Maimonides

, who in Mishneh Torah
Mishneh Torah
The Mishneh Torah subtitled Sefer Yad ha-Hazaka is a code of Jewish religious law authored by Maimonides , one of history's foremost rabbis...

observes "The widespread practice in all of Israel is to complete the Torah in one year. There are some who complete the Torah in three years, but this is not a widespread practice."

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia

Jewish Encyclopedia

The Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...

, the triennial cycle "was the practise in Palestine, whereas in Babylonia the entire Pentateuch was read in the synagogue in the course of a single year," As late as 1170 Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 12th century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years...

mentioned Egyptian congregations that took three years to read the Torah

In 1517 a Christian Daniel Bomberg

Daniel Bomberg

Daniel Bomberg was an early printer of Hebrew language books. A Christian, born in Antwerp, he was primarily active in Venice between 1516 and 1549....

published the first Bible with rabbinic commentary, divided into 154 sedarim.

Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs was a folklorist, literary critic and historian. His works included contributions to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, translations of European works, and critical editions of early English literature...

notes the transition from the triennial to the annual reading of the Law and the transference of the beginning of the cycle to the month of Tishri are attributed by Adolph Büchler to the influence of Abba Arika

Abba Arika

Abba Arika was a Jewish Talmudist who lived in Babylonia, known as an amora of the 3rd century who established at Sura the systematic study of the rabbinic traditions, which, using the Mishnah as text, led to the compilation of the Talmud...

, also known as "Rab," or "Rav," (175–247 CE), a Jewish Talmudist who lived in Babylonia, and who established at Sura

Sura

A sura is a division of the Qur'an, often referred to as a chapter. The term chapter is sometimes avoided, as the suras are of unequal length; the shortest sura has only three ayat while the longest contains 286 ayat...

the systematic study of the rabbinic traditions, which, using the Mishnah as text, led to the compilation of the Talmud: "This may have been due to the smallness of the sedarim under the old system, and to the fact that people were thus reminded of the chief festivals only once in three years. It was then arranged that Deut. xxviii. should fall before the New-Year, and that the beginning of the cycle should come immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles. This arrangement has been retained by the Karaites and by modern congregations."

Modern developments

At the time of the Jewish Encyclopedia's publication (1901–1906), the author noted there were only "slight traces of the triennial cycle in the four special Sabbaths and in some of the passages read upon the festivals, which are frequently sections of the triennial cycle, and not of the annual one," however, throughout the 19th and 20th century, many Conservative, Reform, and other more recent Jewish movements like Reconstructionist and Renewal, adopted a triennial cycle distinct from the historical practice of ancient Israel, by dividing the annual sedarim into thirds and reading a third of each during the appropriate week of the year. (The ancient practice was to read each seder in serial order regardless of the week of the year, completing the entire Torah in three years in a linear fashion.) The current practice in Orthodox synagogues follows the annual/Babylonian cycle.

It has been suggested that the reading of the Law was due to a desire to controvert the views of the Samaritans with regard to the various festivals, for which reason arrangements were made to have the passages of the Pentateuch relating to those festivals read and expounded on the feast-days themselves.

The current Roman Catholic lectionary also completes the Bible in three years.

Background: Torah reading

Ancient triennial cycle

Modern developments

Further reading