One Who Errs in the Torah Reading - Rabbi Eyal Peled shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lemaan Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to all our dear viewers. Continuing our discussion of the laws of Torah reading, we’re going to talk about situations where mistakes are made during the reading. As we said, a baal korei prepares for the Torah reading. The custom is that he should go over the reading four times and know it well—at the very least, the correct vowels and pronunciation, the wording, and the cantillation too. So what happens when a mistake is made during the Torah reading? First of all, there is a definite difference between the reading on Mondays and Thursdays, and to some extent the readings on festivals, and the reading on Shabbos and Yom Tov. The Monday and Thursday reading is less stringent. After all, we read those passages again on Shabbos, so even if we made a mistake in them, we’ll read them on Shabbos. That’s why we’re less strict about them. What this means is that if, on a Monday or Thursday, the baal korei makes any kind of mistake—say he skips a verse, a word, or a letter, or reads something incorrectly—then, generally speaking, as long as we read ten verses in total and each person called up had three verses read for him, we do not invalidate the reading. We don’t have to repeat it, even if verses were skipped or other mistakes were made. As long as we read ten verses in total, with at least three verses for each person called up, we accept the reading. We don’t go back and read it again. Of course, if we haven’t finished the Torah reading yet, we correct the mistake. But if we’ve already finished, the third person called up has already said the concluding blessing, and we suddenly notice that we skipped something or made mistakes—

02:24 Speaker 2 or something like that—we move on. We’ve fulfilled our obligation. After all, the main reason we read on Mondays and Thursdays is so that three days should not pass without Torah, and three days have not passed without Torah. In fact, based on this reasoning, some halachic authorities go further. They write that even if we read a different parsha altogether—which can happen—and didn’t read the parsha we were supposed to, we still don’t need to repeat the reading once it’s finished. That’s what most of the later halachic authorities write. Although the Mishnah Berurah cites the Pischei Teshuvah as saying there are differing opinions on this, most authorities write that even reading a different parsha counts; it’s acceptable. The only situation that requires us to repeat a reading is if one of the three people called up did not have three verses read for him. If only two verses were read for one of them, that matters, and we’ll need to go back. How do we do that? First, if only two verses were read for him and he has already said the concluding blessing, I call him back. In other words, I don’t have him leave the bimah; I keep that same person there, and we read again. We read those same two verses plus another verse, with the blessings, of course. The Taz disagrees somewhat, but the halacha is to read those same two verses plus another verse, with a blessing before and after. So even if he finished his reading and said the concluding blessing, we keep him there and call him to the Torah again.

04:23 Speaker 2 Apparently, he doesn’t need to say “Borchu,” but he does say the opening and concluding blessings. We read those two verses and one more for him, so that he has three verses, and then we continue. The question is: What happens if we notice the mistake only after someone else has already been called up and said the blessing over the Torah? The next person has come up and said the blessing, and then we realize that only two verses were read for the previous person. In that case, for the new person we read those same two verses plus one more verse, or plus the three verses that were supposed to be read for him. So we read either one more verse or three more verses for him, and afterward the first person comes up again. That’s the person we set aside because only two verses were read for him. We left him aside for the moment, while the next person had already said the blessing over the Torah reading. So for this new person, we read those same two verses that were read for the previous person, and add either one verse, to make three, or another three verses. Once he finishes his reading—the second reading, so to speak—we bring the first person back, because his original reading doesn’t count. We read three verses for him with a blessing before and after, and then we call up a third person, so that we have three people called up. Now, the reason we specifically bring back the first person is so people won’t think it’s permissible to call up more than three people. If you call up someone new, a person watching from the side sees that, in practice, four people have come up for the Torah reading. That’s confusing. So we keep the first person, the one whose reading had the mistake, and call him up for the next reading.

06:17 Speaker 2 So, once again: If only two verses were read for someone, he already said the concluding blessing, and a new person has already come up and said the opening blessing over the Torah, we read those same two verses for the new person, plus either one more verse or three more verses. He says the concluding blessing, and then we bring back the first person, whose reading had the mistake. Three more verses are read for him, with a blessing before and after, and then we call up a third person. The Igros Moshe has an interesting discussion of this situation. He says that if the mistake occurred in a long verse—sometimes one of the two verses read is a long one—then he would not call up the person whose reading had the mistake again. Instead, he would specifically call up someone else. Why? He makes a very interesting point. He says that the way we divide our verses is not actually accurate, because according to the Gemara in Kiddushin, a Sefer Torah should have 5,888 verses. But if we count the verses in our Sifrei Torah, we have only 5,845. So there must be verses that are really two verses, but that we read as one long verse. He says this issue is found mainly after the Torah’s midpoint, because according to the tradition, the midpoint of the Torah is at the words “and he shall shave” in Parshas Tazria. But when we look at the Torah as we have it, we see that the midpoint by verse count is actually in Parshas Tzav, at the verse containing the words “and he fastened it on him with it.”

08:35 Speaker 2 That’s a parsha, the parsha after—after the parsha, after Parshas Tazria. Ah, Parshas Tzav. Or before it. So what do we see from this? We see that from the halfway point of the Torah onward, there are apparently long verses where two verses were combined into one long verse. Therefore, in a case like this, the Igros Moshe argues that we should not call up again the person for whom we read two verses, because I’m concerned that perhaps those two verses aren’t really two verses. Perhaps they’re actually three verses, and if he has already read three verses, it’s a problem to call him up again. I don’t call up the same person twice. So he argues that we should call up someone else. You know, this is on Shabbos, when I can call up more than three people—even more than seven, according to the letter of the law. So I’ll call up someone else to correct this mistake of reading two verses. The person for whom I read two verses is treated as though he doesn’t count at all toward the number of people called up. All of this is when we haven’t yet finished the Torah reading. But if we realize the mistake after we’ve finished the Torah reading, and suddenly catch ourselves having read only two verses for one person, then, since the Torah reading is already over, we call someone up and read those two verses with one additional verse, but without a blessing. That’s what the Shaarei Efraim writes: when we remember this after the Torah reading, we call someone up and read those two verses together with one more verse, without a blessing before or after. That’s how the Shaarei Efraim rules, and that’s what we should do. Regarding the Monday and Thursday readings, we mentioned that mistakes there are not as consequential as

10:39 Speaker 2 we discussed at length. But now we’re going to talk about mistakes in the Shabbos reading, at Shabbos Shacharis. With the Shabbos reading, the situation is much more serious. The reading has to be exact and precise, and there’s an obligation to complete the parshiyos—to read the entire Torah over the course of the year. Therefore, in the reading on Shabbos, even if there’s an error in just one letter, if that letter changes the meaning—meaning that the baal korei read a word and missed one letter, changing the meaning of the word—we have to repeat the reading. We can’t just continue. We’ll see later how we repeat the reading, but this is essential. Even for one letter, if the meaning changed, we have to repeat the reading. This halachah is also brought in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, section 142, I believe, where he addresses it as well. Now, when we talk about repeating the reading, usually we repeat it with a blessing, of course, with the blessings over the Torah and so on. But there are certain mistakes where we repeat the reading, but not with a blessing. For example, if the baal korei added—added letters, added words, yes, added words—or made a mistake in the vowels, even if that changed the meaning. Since he didn’t omit anything, but added something or made a mistake in the vowels without omitting any letter, then even if the meaning changed, we have to repeat the reading. We have to correct the mistake, but we don’t do it with a blessing. In other words, if we’ve already finished the Torah reading and now want to correct the, the

12:48 Speaker 2 verse in which the baal korei added a word or changed the vowels, we don’t do that reading with a blessing. We correct the mistake, but without a blessing. That is indeed written by some of the poskim. The Biur Halachah brings it in the name of the Chayei Adam and rules that way. But it’s worth knowing that Halichos Shlomo, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, qualifies this. He says that we refrain from repeating the reading with a blessing only if the mistake changed the meaning of that particular word. But if changing the vowels or adding a word changed the meaning of the entire matter, the whole sentence, so to speak—for example, suppose that instead of reading “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk,” he read “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s fat,” “in its mother’s fat.” That doesn’t just change that specific word, from milk to fat. It changes the whole meaning. So in such a case, we do repeat the reading to correct that mistake, with a blessing. We repeat it after the Torah reading. If we remember, we go back and correct the mistake with a blessing before and after. Again, as we said, we read that verse together with two additional verses. Yes, even if we remember after Musaf. This halachah also applies when we remember after Musaf that there was a mistake and the reading was incorrect. So as we said, if the mistake involved adding a word or a letter, or a mistake in the vowels, even if it changes the meaning, we repeat that verse with two additional verses, without a blessing. But we accept what Halichos Shlomo wrote: if the mistake changed

14:58 Speaker 2 the meaning of the entire matter, not just the meaning of that word, we do read that verse with two additional verses, with a blessing before and after. But if—of course, with any other kind of mistake where something was changed or missed, omitted—mistakes involving omissions, such as omitting a word or a letter, in cases where letters or words were omitted, we do repeat the reading with a blessing. The question is how we make the correction: when do we go back, when do we correct the mistake that happened? That depends on when we remember, when we notice the mistake. If we notice it between one person called up and the next—between the third and fourth, between the fourth and fifth, and so on—then with the next person called up, we simply start from the verse where the mistake was made. We read from that verse through the end of the new person’s aliyah. So if, for example, it’s the sixth aliyah, we don’t start his reading at the beginning of his aliyah. We take him back to the verse where the mistake was made. We read with him from that verse through the end of the sixth aliyah, and then continue. That’s if we remember between aliyos, up to the seventh. But if we notice the mistake after the seventh aliyah, or if it happened during the seventh aliyah and we notice it before maftir, then we read it with the maftir. We simply call up the maftir and read with him from the verse where the mistake was made onward. So as we said, we call up the maftir and read with him from the verse where we made the mistake. If it was in the seventh aliyah, or in—in—then we read it with him. If the mistake was in the seventh person’s aliyah, we call up the maftir and read with him from the mistake through the end of the parsha. All of this is when the mistake

17:20 Speaker 2 It happened during the seventh aliyah, and we noticed it before maftir. But if the mistake was in one of the six aliyos before that, and we noticed it after the seventh aliyah but before maftir, then in that case we simply call up maftir and read the maftir portion with him. Again, we do not go back to the verse where the mistake was made. We call up maftir and read the final verses of the parsha with him as usual. After maftir, we call up another person and read with him the verse where the mistake was made, together with two more verses, with blessings before and after. That is what the halachic authorities write, relying on Tosafos Rid, who says that someone who reads the Torah out of sequence has fulfilled the obligation. It is not like the Megillah, where reading out of sequence does not fulfill the obligation. In a Torah reading, it is possible to read out of sequence. That is essentially what is happening here. Again, if after the seventh aliyah, before maftir, we remember that the baal korei read a verse incorrectly, and that verse was in one of the six earlier aliyos, not the seventh, then we call up maftir and finish the parsha with him. Afterward, we call up another person and read with him the verse where the mistake was made, along with two more verses, with blessings before and after. There is no problem with the fact that we are, so to speak, reading from the end back toward the beginning: we have read the parsha and are now returning to a particular verse. Tosafos Rid says that in this case, reading out of sequence fulfills the obligation. After that, we read the haftarah as usual. Once we have corrected the mistake, we read the haftarah. And of course, it follows that if we noticed the mistake after maftir had already been called up, had made the blessing, and we had read his portion, the procedure will also be

19:35 Speaker 2 the same. We call up another person, read with him the verse where the mistake was made along with two more verses, and then read the haftarah with its blessings. What if we remember the mistake, or notice it, after we have begun the blessings for the haftarah, or after Musaf? It is essentially the same. In these cases, as the Alter Rebbe also writes in Shulchan Aruch, even after Musaf—even though Musaf is over, the Torah scroll has been put away, and the davening has ended—we take out the Torah scroll again. We call up someone new for an aliyah and read with him the verse where the mistake was made, along with two more verses, with blessings before and after. That is the procedure here. This is how the Alter Rebbe rules in Shulchan Aruch. Sometimes there are shuls where people do not really know the halachos, and then someone who knows a bit more comes in. They tell him what happened, even though the davening is over and they are already sitting at a farbrengen. The mistake comes up, and someone who knows says, “No, that’s not right. We have to go back and read it.” So that is what they do: they take out the Torah scroll, call someone up, and read with him the verse where the mistake was made along with two more verses, with blessings before and after. That is what the Alter Rebbe writes in Shulchan Aruch. The question is what happens if we remember the mistake, or discover it, or someone tells us that we need to repeat the reading, when it is already time for Mincha. It is already time for Shabbos Mincha. Can we still correct the mistake then? So we need to know

21:40 Speaker 2 that according to the Sefardic approach, the main authority who discusses this is the Chida. The Chida says no—it is lost, lost, lost. Once the time for Mincha has arrived, it cannot be corrected. You have to daven Mincha, read the Mincha Torah reading, and that is it; the opportunity is gone. That is what the Chida writes. All the more so, if we remember it after Shabbos, we do not correct it. But Yalkut Yosef writes otherwise, even though he, too, is a Sefardic halachic authority. He says that if you remember before Mincha—or after Shabbos—you wait until the following Shabbos. On the following Shabbos, you read the verse where the mistake was made and immediately move on to the current parsha. That is his solution. He says that on the following Shabbos, when we take out the Torah scroll, we do not begin with the weekly parsha. We read the verse where the mistake was made, skip straight to the weekly parsha, and continue. That is what Yalkut Yosef writes. There is something here that calls for further examination in the rulings of the Chida and other authorities. As we will see later, why, seemingly, could we not make up the reading at Mincha? Before Mincha, there is an opportunity to make it up. We will discuss later that there is an option to make up the reading before Mincha. Or, at any rate, if we make it up the following Shabbos, why read only that verse? Why not read the entire parsha? Shaarei Ephraim discusses a case where people were reading the Torah, and in the middle of the reading one person got upset with another: “How are you reading?” “What are you doing?” They began arguing, a quarrel broke out, and as a result they went home. They did not want to be together anymore; the group broke up. The Torah reading stopped in the middle. In that case, Shaarei Ephraim says that the following Shabbos they must

23:50 Speaker 2 simply make it up. They have to read that parsha again. So the question is, why not do the same here? Why would we read only that verse? Seemingly, here too we should read the entire parsha. This calls for further examination. Piskei Teshuvos does raise this question about the ruling: why, indeed? So it would seem that we can correct the mistake, as we will see later, either at Mincha or on the following Shabbos. Perhaps there is a concern about burdening the congregation. If there was a mistake in only one verse, are we now going to read the entire parsha because of it? There is reason to say the cases are not alike. In the case Shaarei Ephraim discusses, they had read perhaps half the parsha—they had read a substantial section of it. But when it is only one verse, why read the whole thing? At most, we could read that verse with two more verses or something like that, and then go on to the new parsha. Seemingly. In any event, all of this concerns a mistake in the Torah reading. Now we will discuss a less common question: a case where we did not make a mistake in the Torah reading, but did not read at all. A situation arose where we missed the Torah reading on Shabbos—we missed the weekly parsha reading at Shacharis. What do we do in that case? Do we have to make it up? Can this reading be made up, or is it a case of “once its time has passed, its offering is void”? What does halachah say? So, the practical halachah is that the parsha must be made up, but that is when the reading was missed by the congregation as a whole. In other words, not that someone comes

25:58 Speaker 2 Say one person says, “I didn’t manage to hear the weekly parsha read on Shabbos. So next Shabbos I’ll put together a minyan and make up the reading.” It doesn’t work that way. Making up the reading is not an option given to an individual. We’re talking about a congregation that missed the Torah reading. So there have to be at least ten people who did not hear the Torah reading on Shabbos. In fact, the halachic authorities require more than that: it has to be an established synagogue congregation, not just ten people who each happened to miss the weekly parsha. We’re talking about a congregation that normally gathers to read the weekly parsha on Shabbos, but for some reason did not read it that Shabbos. In that case, the reading can be made up. We need to make up that parsha the following Shabbos. And this is a situation we know well. We experienced it during the COVID period, when people missed readings—not just one parsha, but several. With all the lockdowns and everything, some people simply did not hear the Torah reading for several Shabbosos. So the question arises: Can you make up several parshiyos, or only one? It’s like making up a missed tefillah. If I missed Minchah, I can make it up at Maariv. If I missed Shacharis, I make it up at Minchah. But if I missed both Shacharis and Minchah, then the earlier one is lost. I can only make up the most recent tefillah, not the one before it. Perhaps the same applies to the weekly parshiyos. Now, many halachic authorities write that you can make up all the parshiyos, because it isn’t comparable. Why not make them all up? You can make up

27:55 Speaker 2 all the parshiyos. But there are authorities who write that you cannot. The Vilna Gaon, for example, writes that you can make up only one parsha, no more. And it appears that the Ketzos Hashulchan rules that way in practice as well. This halachah actually made things a little easier for us during the COVID period, when people missed several parshiyos. How could you tell someone he needs to sit in shul all day making up every parsha he missed? So the Ketzos Hashulchan gave us something of a leniency: make up just one parsha, and that’s enough. That is the halachah in practice. We make up only one parsha, even if the missed reading was a double parsha. Say we missed a double parsha: I make up only one parsha, not both. That is how the Ketzos Hashulchan rules. So that’s what we do in practice. The question is, how do we make up the reading? First, let’s emphasize something we discussed: this isn’t only if we missed an entire parsha. We said that even if we failed to read a single letter—even one letter of a word—we need to make it up. It is essential to the reading. The Shabbos morning reading must be complete, and we will have to make up what was missed. So with that in mind, if we missed an entire parsha, how do we make it up? Some authorities write that the following Shabbos we read the parsha we missed and the new parsha, treating them like a double parsha. With a double parsha, three people are called up for aliyos in the first parsha, three in the second, and the fourth aliyah bridges the two parshiyos. They hold that we should do the same when making up a parsha

30:03 Speaker 2 from the previous week. But other authorities disagree. The Kaf Hachaim—and not the Shaagas Aryeh or the Shaarei Ephraim—writes that we should not make it up that way. Instead, we call up the kohen and read with him the entire previous parsha that we missed, continuing into the new parsha until the point where the second aliyah begins. So we read the entire previous parsha with him, begin the new parsha, and stop at sheni. From there, we call up the remaining people for aliyos in the usual order. His argument is that it is better for those called up to read from the current parsha. Why call up three people in the old parsha, with the fourth aliyah also beginning there? It is better to use the seven aliyos for reading the current parsha, the parsha of this week. The Ketzos Hashulchan also rules that this is preferable: read the previous parsha with the kohen, continue through the beginning of the new parsha up to sheni, and then call up the others for the rest. Now, as we said, all of this concerns the Shabbos reading. But if we missed a Monday or Thursday reading, even if an entire synagogue congregation was unable to read the Torah that day, it cannot be made up the next day. That is what the Biur Halachah writes. You cannot make it up the following day. Once that day has passed, it’s gone. You can still read it on the same day until sunset, but the next day you can no longer make up the Monday or Thursday reading. It isn’t such a serious loss, because in any case we read that parsha on Shabbos. As for mistakes in the readings for

32:05 Speaker 2 the festivals—I don’t mean Yom Tov; the Yom Tov reading is like the Shabbos reading. I mean the readings of Chol Hamoed and so on. There are quite a few details, depending on which day of Chol Hamoed it is and which passages are read. But the general rule is this: as long as we read something relevant to that day, even if it wasn’t exactly the passage we were supposed to read—as can happen on Pesach, when there are various passages—we have fulfilled our obligation and do not need to make up the reading. But if we read something else entirely, with no connection to that day, then we do need to go back and read it. There are times when someone is called up to the Torah, he comes up and says the blessing, and then they suddenly realize they’re at the wrong place. The correct place for the reading is a little farther on or a little earlier. In short, they didn’t show him the correct place for his aliyah. What do we do then? The accepted ruling in the Shulchan Aruch is that it depends. The Ketzos Hashulchan rules the same way: it depends on whether the correct place was visible to him. After all, when you open a Torah scroll, at least three columns are visible. So although they didn’t point out the right place to him, perhaps it was in the column before or the column after. In other words, it was visible to him. In that case, he does not need to repeat the blessing; they simply read from the correct place, and that’s it. But if the correct place for the reading was not visible to him—neither farther on nor earlier within the open portion of the Torah scroll—then in that situation, his blessing...

34:04 Speaker 2 It doesn’t count. He needs to say the blessing over the Torah again, and then they should read with him from the correct place. That’s the standard ruling: it’s how the Magen Avraham rules, and how the Ketzos Hashulchan rules as well. But some argue otherwise, based on the Pri Megadim—the Biur Halacha cites this—and the siddur Derech Hachaim. Their argument is that all these cases in which we require the person called up to say the blessing again are cases where we didn’t know at all what reading was supposed to be read. In ordinary circumstances, we know what the weekly parsha is. I know which parsha it is; it’s just that there’s been some confusion. We weren’t paying attention and showed him a different reading. But generally speaking, we know which parsha needs to be read, so that isn’t considered the kind of mistake that requires another blessing. Therefore, even if the correct place is later on—much later, even—or much earlier, and it wasn’t open in front of the person called up at all, he still doesn’t need to say the blessing again. We simply roll the scroll to the correct place and read from there, as long as he hasn’t taken his mind off it or spoken about things unrelated to the reading, and so on. We read from the correct place without another blessing. The Biur Halacha does indeed cite several authorities who say this. But there’s a problem here, because the Ketzos Hashulchan presumably saw the Mishnah Berurah and the Biur Halacha; he saw this ruling and didn’t address it. He gave the standard ruling, like the Magen Avraham: as we said, another blessing is required. On the other hand, there’s the Kaf Hachaim, a very important and widely accepted halachic authority, who also agrees with the Pri

35:59 Speaker 2 Megadim that one should not say the blessing again unless we didn’t know at all what the reading was supposed to be. That kind of situation, where we don’t know what the reading is supposed to be, could happen during the Torah readings of Chol Hamoed Pesach, when various different passages are read. We could become so confused that we don’t know at all which passage we’re supposed to read. But in ordinary circumstances, that isn’t the situation, and according to the authorities we mentioned, there’s no need to say the blessing again. So there’s seemingly something of a dilemma here, because ultimately the Ketzos Hashulchan rules that we should say the blessing again. The Ketzos Hashulchan is the Chabad halachic authority, and as long as there’s no other Chabad ruling, we treat his ruling as definitive. But after all, there’s also a doubt here concerning blessings. So this really needs to be weighed: should he say the blessing again or not? In my opinion, that depends on the judgment of the halachic authority deciding the case. But that’s where things stand.