Prayer and Religious Articles: Prayer and Blessings: Reading the Torah in Three Years:
Was there a custom to read the Torah once every
three years?
The Talmud (Megillah 29b) says that in the Land of
Israel it was customary to read through the Torah
every three years. There are traditional subdivisions
of the Torah into 153, 155, or 167 parts, called
Sedarim; 153 or 155 corresponds to a three-year
cycle, but 167 is too few for a 3.5-year cycle. Good
editions of the Torah indicate where the Sedarim
begin, but opinions differ as to whether the three-year
cycle began in Nisan or in Tishrei. Scholars have tried
to reconstruct the readings from the Prophets that were
associated with the Sedarim. A major work on this topic
is J.Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old
Synagogue, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940 and 1966 (the second
volume was coauthored by I.Sonne), which covers the
first 106 Sedarim.
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