Question #2: Why are most of the “Double Parshiyos” clustered together in and around Sefer Vayikra?

Question #3: Why are the Torah’s parshiyos of such disparate length? Some parshiyos are very long — the longest being this week’s Parsha, Naso, which contains 176 pesukim. Yet at the end of the Torah we have four parshiyos that are extremely short – all of them between 30 and 52 pesukim. Why aren’t the parshiyos of similar length?

In the Yeshiva where I teach, one of my students came to me rather incredulously- “I heard that the Tenth of Teiveis falls on a Friday this year—but I thought that we cannot have fast days on a Friday? I don’t remember a fast ever falling on Friday!”

Click to see a pdf of the Rav’s article in Mishpacha: The Longest Year: The Secrets of the Jewish Calendar