Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio

Let’s think about how many Shabbatot there are in a year. A Jewish leap year has exactly 55 weeks. But it always happens that at least one Shabbat falls on Sukkot and at least one falls on Pesah, and then we read special Torah readings instead of the regular parashah. So that gets us down to 53 Shabbatot. Perfect! There are 54 parashiyot in the Torah, and the last one, Vezot Haberakhah, is read on Simhat Torah, which never falls on Shabbat. So, if we read one parashah a week, it all comes out even.

But sometimes, more holidays fall on Shabbat. This year, outside Eretz Yisrael, the first and eighth days of Pesah were on Shabbat, which knocks us down to 52 Shabbatot for regular Torah readings. So, we need to combine two parashiyot, and the first combination is always Mattot and Masei.

We often have to double up even more parashiyot, according to this schedule:

1) Vayakhel-Pekudei

2) Tazria-Metzora

3) Aharei Mot-Kedoshim

4) Behar-Behukotai

This very old tradition tells us that we are supposed to read the harsh curses in Parashat Behukotai before Shavuot. We get the “bad news” out of the way before starting a new part of our year with the new tree fruits that begin to emerge on Shavuot. The tradition became to make sure there was one parashah separating Behukotai and Shavuot, so we almost always read Bemidbar on the Shabbat before the holiday.

In a leap year, if you doubled any of those four sets of parshiyot above, that would push Behukotai too early, and too far away from Shavuot. (Some Yemenite communities don’t wait that long, and they actually double up Hukkat and Balak first, before turning to Mattot and Masei.)

In some years, this can create a weird gap between Israel and the rest of the world. If you have been reading Devash in Israel, you may have noticed that the parashah has been one week off for months! That’s because there is no eighth day of Pesah in Israel, so this year they read Aharei Mot there on Shabbat while the rest of the Jewish world was reading a special Pesah Torah reading. And then the rest of the world never caught up until this week!

You can see that keeping Behukotai within two weeks of Shavuot is more important than keeping the whole Jewish world on the same Torah reading. It’s a reminder about how our cycle of parashiyot is also an opportunity to create certain rhythms and moods.

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