Long Aliyot

[Art Roth]

While leining Va'etxanan last Shabbat, I noticed the length of sheini (almost two full columns) and wondered whether any other aliyot in the Torah were longer.  I immediately thought of one candidate --- sheini in Ki Tisa --- but it turned out that there were two others that I hadn't thought of.

In any case, here's what I did.  I went through an entire tiqun looking for long aliyot and wrote down the length of each one in columns and lines.  Note that most sifrei Torah today have 42 lines in each column, so the maximum "lines" count in an aliya is 41 before it becomes a full column.  The process took me about 80 minutes, most of it making sure that I was counting lines and columns accurately.  A word about the counting process.

      There was a small amount of subjectivity in deciding what to do with partial lines at the beginning and/or end of an aliya.  I tried to decide whether the partial lines (combined at the beginning and end if there were partial lines on both ends) represented less than half a line (which I counted as zero), between 0.5 and 1.5 lines (which I counted as 1), or more than 1.5 lines (which I counted as 2).  Note that I took partial lines into account ONLY at the two ends of an aliya --- I ignored p"tuxot and s"tumot in the middle of a given aliya and gave the aliya "credit" for a full line despite these blank spaces.

       My original intention was to define a "long" aliya as at least 1-1/2 columns (i.e., 1 column and 21 lines) --- but I actually found two cases that were just 1 or 2 lines short of that cutoff (i.e., 1:20 and 1:19), so I made note of them when I compiled the results.

       I also wasn't sure how to treat aliyot in a double parsha, which usually combine several "regular" aliyot.  Including them in the same list as the others would be like comparing apples to oranges, and I eventually decided to put them in a completely separate list.

       See the attached spreadsheet for the results.  Note the following.

(1) The aliya in Va'etchanan that motivated this endeavor turned out to be the fourth longest.  In addition to the three longer "regular" aliyot, there are also two longer "double parsha" aliyot.  

(2) Two sidrot (כי תשא and נשא) each contain two of the long aliyot.

(3) The great majority of the "long" aliyot are just a few lines longer than the 1-1/2 column cutoff.  Only 5 aliyot in the Torah exceed this cutoff by more than 10 lines.  So a slightly more stringent definition of "long" could have made this list much more exclusive.  In fact, there are only 3 aliyot that exceed 2 columns (one of which is almost 3 columns).

        Enjoy! Comments are welcome.

Art

[RA Alpert]

Wow! I'd just note that KAJ doesn't do the long Ki-Sisa aliyos at all, and I'm betting neither KAJ, nor that parasha, is alone in variant aliyos.

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[Art Roth]

Ki Tisa is the only parsha for which (to my knowledge) there's a specific reason for the long aliyot.  They wanted the Levi to have מעשה העגל since the Leviim didn't commit that sin.  In fact, if there's a Levi and no Kohein, some shuls go to the extreme of combining the two long aliyot into one super long aliyah (and making another stop later on).  So I'm really surprised that some shuls don't do those specific long aliyot.

In general, there are a small number of variations between chumashim regarding where to stop.  One that comes to mind off the top of my head is in Parshat Breishit between ואחות תובל קין נעמה and אז הוחל לקרא בשם ה.  But the variations are few and far between.  For the most part, the stops have become pretty standardized today --- which wasn't necessarily the case 500 years ago.

Shabbat Shalom,

Art

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[MP]

Yes, Art, that indeed is the rationale; but what I remember most about leining P'Ki Sisa at KAJ as a Bar Mitzva was all the stops my teacher a'h' had me make for the various olim (family and all that :)) -- 17 aliyos in all!  I enjoy (and prefer) leining it as two marathon aliyos followed by [mostly] the Shabbos Chol haMoeid leining.

The subject of variant stops could be (and likely in the past has been) a thread onto itself, but I have to note that

(a) the bal qorei at today's JEC of Elizabeth (NJ) Hashkama minyan took a look at my Roedelheim-print chumash prior to Chamishi and said to me (standing next to him at the bimah), "We're not stopping there" (referring to what my chumash marked as Shishi, Deu 11:1); and where he ended up stopping resulted in repeating the entirety of Shvi'i for Maftir, a situation that it seems to me Minhag Frankfurt (followed, inter alia, by KAJ) tries to avoid.

(b) I've posted the leining-related (including variant stops...) minhag hamaqom of JEC of Elizabeth at https://jecelmorashul.com/avodah/leining%20info.pdf .

All the best from

Michael Poppers * Elizabeth, NJ, USA

[RA Alpert]

KAJ has a number of variant aliyos-stops. Not a ton, but a fair number....

We even swap out one of the הזי׳׳ו ל׳׳ך stops, for an alternate with same letter!

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[RA Alpert]

I would indeed assume that the avoidance of shevii-same-as-maftir is behind some of KAJ/FfM's alternate aliyos.

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[Art Roth]

Shavua tov, and thanks for the interesting response.  Wow --- 17 aliyot --- I can hardly imagine such a thing.

Today's most commonly used chumashim (Artscroll, Simanim, Koren) repeat all of sh"vi`i for maftir in Parshat Eikev --- but not for any other parsha in the entire Torah (curious).  Is there some theoretical reason why this is undesirable?  In Israel on weekdays during Chol Hamoeid Sukkot, all four olim read exactly the same thing! 

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[Chaim Gordimer]

Agreed that repeating an Aliya as Maftir is something KAJ tries to avoid.

A few weeks ago in our KAJ style minyan in Lakewood, the Baal Keriah wanted to add a Hosofo at Maftir. I told him we don’t do that, and showed him Parshas Eikev to prove my point.

PS: Until recently, the only list of “acceptable” stops was in the form of handwritten notes in some of the Chumashim in KAJ. Fortunately, they’ve since been added to the KAJ website (https://www.kajinc.org/about/nusach)
and Levi Winsbacher’s Tikkun (https://leviwinsbacher.com/products/tanach).

On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 9:59 PM MP <the6...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Mike Stein]

On a related subject (the division into weekly readings) see the comprehensive article by Rachamim Sar-Shalom.

On the subject at hand, see the attached article by Elana Katzenellenbogen from Sinai v. 119.

Regards,

Mike Stein

[RA Alpert]

And then there are the stops that depend on how you understand the pessukim!

For example, one old German minhag was to stop at אז הוחל לקרוא בשם in Bereishis. 

If you understand it as Rashi does--that it's a reference to the start of idolatry, then it's not a likely place to stop.

but if you understand as others have, then it's positive, and a perfectly decent stop....

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[RA Alpert]

@Chaim Gordimer--is that list up on KAJ really comprehensive/exhaustive?

[Chaim Gordimer]

Sure seems like it. 

Especially when it specifically *excludes* other rites’ stops. 

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