A Redemptive Reconciliation

An alternative approach to understand an oddity in the Jewish calendar.

There is an interesting oddity that occurs every couple years with regard to the Jewish calendar. If you look back a few millennia, we find that the Jews of Eretz Yisrael had a three year Torah reading cycle and the Jews outside of Israel had a one year cycle.

Somewhere along the way this changed to a universal one year cycle. For the most part we are on the same page in this cycle. However, when Israel celebrates a chag on Friday, the next day, Shabbos, is a regular weekly Torah reading. However, outside of Israel, chagim are celebrated for two days, therefore they only read the regular weekly Torah reading the next Shabbos. When this happens, we end up on two different tracks with the Torah reading cycle, until an opportunity arises to reconcile and get on the same page.

This oddity is cause for confusion and some halachic debate in regard to travelers as to what parashah they must read. In fact, Preside…