Catching Up With Israel

We are out of sync with Israel…when it comes to Torah readings. Here is an interesting phenomenon: Normally, of course, the whole world reads the same Torah portion on any given Shabbat. However, in Israel, Shavuot is a one day holiday and everywhere else in the world it is celebrated for two. This year, we celebrated the festival last Friday and Shabbat. In Israel, however, they only celebrated on Friday. Shabbat was no longer Shavuot.

Shavuot has its own Torah readings, which talk about the giving of the Torah. On Shavuot (and other holidays) the regular Torah reading cycle is interrupted, put on hold as it were until the next “regular” Shabbat. Well, last Saturday was already a "regular" Shabbat in Israel, so they read the portion Beha’alotecha, while we were still doing Shavuot. This Shabbat we’ll get to Beha’alotecha, but they’ll be already moving up a week in trhe Torah portions.

We won’t catch up to them until July 8th, my second Shabbat in Israel with my Beth El trip this summer. They will read the portion Chukkat on July 1st and then Balak on July 8th . We will combine Chukkat and Balak on July 8th and thereby even it all up. In the meantime, it means that a person coming from Israel to the States would hear the same Torah portion two weeks in a row.

I’m glad that this doesn’t happen too often… Not only is it somewhat difficult to explain, but, in some small way I find even harder to explain, it undermines the idea of One Jewish World/One Torah that gives me such a sense of Jewish unity. It’s comforting to (usually) know that when we are sitting in shul in Cherry Hill, Jews ½ way around the world are reading the same stories, and thinking about the same topics we are. It makes the Jewish world that much smaller and tighter, and I love that feeling of being part of a global Jewish community centered around one sacred text and one awesome living Gd.