What is "va'eira"

Va'eira, Va'era, or Vaera ( — Hebrew for "and I appeared" the first word that God speaks in the parashah, in ) is the fourteenth weekly Torah portion (, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the second in the Book of Exodus. It constitutes . The parashah tells of the first seven Plagues of Egypt.

It is made up of 6,701 Hebrew letters, 1,748 Hebrew words, and 121 verses, and can occupy about 222 lines in a Torah Scroll (, Sefer Torah). Jews read it the fourteenth Sabbath (, Shabbat) after Simchat Torah, generally in January, or rarely, in late December.