In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Bechukotai ('In My Statutes', Leviticus 26:3-27:34) sets out the blessings for keeping the covenant and the severe tochacha, the rebuke of curses for abandoning it, then the laws of vows and dedications. As the close of Leviticus it is read with the cry of chazak, and in ordinary years is paired with Behar.
The tochacha, the extended sequence of curses threatened for abandoning the covenant (Leviticus 26:14-39), is read in the synagogue in a lowered voice and at a faster than usual pace, a custom explained by commentators as expressing communal discomfort with dwelling on the passage's severity even while its recitation is not omitted, in contrast to the preceding blessings for covenant faithfulness (Leviticus 26:3-13), read at ordinary volume. Rabbinic and later Jewish historical commentary has repeatedly connected specific elements of the tochacha, exile, scattering among the nations, the land itself resting to make up for sabbatical years it was denied, to the actual experience of destruction and dispersion following the Babylonian conquest and, centuries later, the Roman destruction of the Second Temple.