And He Went: The Writing of the Torah

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. Vayelech ('And He Went', Deuteronomy 31:1-30) narrates Moses' final acts: encouraging Joshua and Israel, the writing down of the Torah and its placement beside the Ark, the command of the septennial public reading (hakhel), and the warning song to come. In ordinary years it is joined to Nitzavim.

Vayelech's account of Moses writing the Torah down 'and delivering it to the priests' (31:9) is a text long central to debates over the book's own claims about its origin, and rabbinic tradition read it as evidence that Moses personally completed the Torah before his death, an understanding critical scholarship's Documentary Hypothesis has generally set aside in favour of a much later, composite process of formation. The septennial public reading Vayelech commands, hakhel, held in the sabbatical year at the Jerusalem Temple (31:10-13), lapsed with the Temple's destruction but has been symbolically revived in modern Israel, with public hakhel gatherings held at the Western Wall in sabbatical years since the twentieth century.