Parashat Terumah fullkriyah: aliyah 2 ends at Exodus 25:40, but Sefaria + printed Chumashim use 25:30 — source for the default?

[meirpro]

Thanks for @hebcal/leyning — we use it for the weekly aliyot in a daily Torah-study app.

For Parashat Terumah, getLeyningForParshaHaShavua(...).fullkriyah returns:

• Aliyah 2 (Levi): Exodus 25:17–40
• Aliyah 3 (Shlishi): 26:1–14

i.e. the menorah passage (25:31–40) is read as part of the 2nd aliyah. Every other source we checked instead ends the 2nd aliyah at 25:30, putting the menorah at the start of the 3rd aliyah (25:31–26:14):

Source	Aliyah 2	Aliyah 3
@hebcal/leyning	25:17–40	26:1–26:14
Sefaria (calendars API)	25:17–30	25:31–26:14
Chabad.org	25:17–30	25:31–26:14
Torah Temimah / common printed Chumash (Tikkun Yissachar)	25:17–30	25:31–26:14

Notably, hebcal.com's own Terumah sedra page already footnotes this: aliyah 2 shows "some sources use 25:17-30" and aliyah 3 "some sources use 25:31-26:14".

This is the only parsha where fullkriyah's aliyot diverge from Sefaria's for us. Two questions:

1. Is there a source/authority for the 25:40 default? We'd love to be able to cite it — the sedra page footnotes the alternative but doesn't attribute either division.
2. Given Sefaria, the common printed Chumashim, and your own footnote all use 25:30, would you consider making 25:30 the default (or documenting where 25:40 comes from)?

Happy to share the full per-parsha diff. Thanks!

[meirpro]

https://hayom.app

[mjradwin]

Thanks for your message. Our primary source is Koren Publishing. It looks like we changed Parshat Terumah in commit a813470 in February 2025 so it agress with Koren, Etz Hayyim, and the USCJ Luach.

The "some sources use" is also available in the API:

> const {lookupParsha} = await import('@hebcal/leyning');
undefined
> lookupParsha('Terumah')
{
  num: 19,
  book: 2,
  haft: { k: 'I Kings', b: '5:26', e: '6:13' },
  fullkriyah: {
    '1': [ '25:1', '25:16' ],
    '2': [ '25:17', '25:40', 'some sources use 25:17-30' ],
    '3': [ '26:1', '26:14', 'some sources use 25:31-26:14' ],
    '4': [ '26:15', '26:30' ],
    '5': [ '26:31', '26:37' ],
    '6': [ '27:1', '27:8' ],
    '7': [ '27:9', '27:19' ],
    M: [ '27:17', '27:19' ]
  },
  weekday: {
    '1': [ '25:1', '25:5' ],
    '2': [ '25:6', '25:9' ],
    '3': [ '25:10', '25:16' ]
  },
  hebrew: 'תְּרוּמָה'
}
> 

There is no “correct” answer here. One can argue about which is preferred, but one is not “better” (i.e. more halakhic or more traditional) than the other. There are similarly multiple traditions about where to divide the aliyot for the Shabbat reading of Parashat Bereshit.

We'd be open to adding more detail to the API regarding sources for those two divergent aliyot division traditions (and open to your suggestions about how you'd like to consume it).

[meirpro]

Thank you — that fully answers it, and the Koren / Etz Hayyim / USCJ provenance is exactly what we needed.

In case it's useful for adding source detail to the API: the alternative (25:17–30) division — aliyah 2 ending after the Shulchan, before the menorah — is the one printed in the Chumash Torah Temimah and the common Tikkun Yissachar printed division, and it's what Sefaria and Chabad.org (daily Chitas) use. So the two traditions are:

• 25:17–40 / 26:1–14 → Koren, Etz Hayyim, USCJ Luach
• 25:17–30 / 25:31–26:14 → Torah Temimah, Tikkun Yissachar, Sefaria, Chabad

Naming both in the note (rather than the generic "some sources") would let downstream apps attribute each side. Happy to open a PR if that'd be useful — and thanks again for the quick, thorough reply.

[meirpro]

One more thing that may be useful for the same source-detail effort: beyond Terumah, we track 4 other parshiot where the Chabad / Torah-Temimah (Russian-Jewry) aliyah division differs from your fullkriyah (which in these cases matches Sefaria and the common printed division). These currently carry no "some sources" note. The Chabad boundaries below are from chabad.org's daily Chitas; outer aliyot are identical and the divergence re-converges within each parsha. (Listed in reading order.)

Vayigash (Genesis) — aliyot 3–5

Aliyah	fullkriyah	Chabad / Torah Temimah
3	45:8–18	45:8–27
4	45:19–27	45:28–46:7
5	45:28–46:27	46:8–27

Nasso (Numbers) — aliyot 1–2 & 6–7

Aliyah	fullkriyah	Chabad
1	4:21–37	4:21–28
2	4:38–49	4:29–49
6	7:42–71	7:42–83
7	7:72–89	7:84–89

Masei (Numbers) — aliyot 1–3

Aliyah	fullkriyah	Chabad
1	33:1–10	33:1–49
2	33:11–49	33:50–53
3	33:50–34:15	33:54–34:15

Devarim (Deuteronomy) — aliyot 1–2

Aliyah	fullkriyah	Chabad
1	1:1–10	1:1–11
2	1:11–21	1:12–21

These are the Chabad minhag specifically — distinct from the Terumah case above (where Chabad/Torah-Temimah aligns with Sefaria, and it's the Koren tradition that differs). Happy to fold all of this — Terumah's both-side attribution and these four — into a single PR if you'd like.

[mjradwin]

thank you for all of that! This is valuable data, and thanks for taking the time to consolidate and organize it so well.

We need to think a bit about how to enhance the API to serve these alternate breakdowns in an intuitive way, and the best way to represent multiple traditions in aliyot.json. for example there is already a special chabad field in LeyningShabbatHoliday but it's for Haftarah, not for aliyot

https://hebcal.github.io/api/leyning/types/LeyningShabbatHoliday.html

We could use the alt field but maybe we need multiple alt fields indexed by some sort of tradition or source enumeration