The Hebrew Bible
תּוֹרָה
The five books
One scroll in five parts. Read straight through, law and narrative never leave each other alone.
The Torah is read in the synagogue on a fixed annual cycle, divided into fifty four weekly portions so the whole scroll is finished and begun again each year. That cycle is why the text is so often discussed portion by portion rather than chapter by chapter.
Reading it as a single scroll changes what you notice. Laws arrive in the middle of stories, and stories break off to make room for laws, and the join between them is usually the point.
The weekly portion
Nitzavim–Vayelech
Read on Shabbat 5 September 2026 · Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20 and Deuteronomy 31:1–30
Everyone is standing here — including people not yet born — and the choice is put in the plainest words in the Bible.
How the year works
The scroll is divided into 54 portions. One is read each week, in order, so the whole Torah is finished and begun again every autumn. You do not need to start at the beginning — join wherever the year happens to be, and in twelve months you will have read all of it.
Each portion here gives you the text itself, what happens in it, the thing most people walk past, one verse worth carrying, and one question with no tidy answer.
The five
Hebrew names come from the opening words of each book, not from its subject.
- בְּרֵאשִׁית50 ch
Genesis
Bereshit, in the beginning
The world, then one family. The book narrows from everything to a household.
Open the book
- שְׁמוֹת40 ch
Exodus
Shemot, names
Slavery, a departure, a mountain, and then a very long building project.
Open the book
- וַיִּקְרָא27 ch
Leviticus
Vayikra, and he called
The book most readers abandon, and the one that repays vocabulary most.
Open the book
- בְּמִדְבַּר36 ch
Numbers
Bamidbar, in the wilderness
A generation that leaves does not arrive, and the book is honest about why.
Open the book
- דְּבָרִים34 ch
Deuteronomy
Devarim, words
One long speech on the far side of the river, by a man who will not cross it.
Open the book