The Fine Art of Torah Laining (“Reading”) – Part II

Yanov Torah (made from scrolls rescued
from the Holocaust) (courtesy of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanov_torah)

[Readers interested in some background regarding my selection of this week's topic will find it in the April 14 entry in Notes to Readers]

In The Fine Art of Torah Laining (“Reading”) – Part I, I discuss the manner in which the Torah is read aloud to the congregation. In this concluding part of the series, I discuss what may be, to many readers, the behind the scenes aspects of what is done to ensure that the reading is done accurately, the process of “correcting” an occasional errant reading of the Torah. 

In Jewish tradition, the Torah is treated with the honorifics reserved for a monarch.  One of them is that it is always surrounded by a retinue and therefore a minimum of three people attend the Torah while it is being read.  One, of course, is the reader.  The other two are known as gabbaim, which I would translate for this purpose as either “attendants” or “functionaries.”  One of the jobs of such “Torah Gabbais” is to listen closely to the reading of the Torah and to correct errors. 

Correcting a reader is a delicate process.  There is a threshold question of what is an “error” in the first place.  I was taught that correction was only required when the reader misread a word to the extent that the meaning was distorted.  Thus errors in the trope (notes) or even small errors in emphasis or pronunciation were not subject to correction as long as the essential meaning came through.  However, the standards of synagogues vary in this regard.  The independent minyan with which I am affiliated, the Mission Minyan, has extremely high standards and correction is more rigorous – basically any mistake in pronunciation is subject to correction in addition to errors that change the meaning of the words. 

Correcting a reader, however, has to be balanced against the effect of doing so. There is a substantial body of Jewish law that holds that correction has to be administered with due regard to not embarrassing the reader.  The rabbinic discussion on this subject contains opinions ranging from extreme lenity to equally extreme strictness.  A fine summary and analysis of the various approaches taken appears in Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, Correcting the Ba’al Koreh:  Punctilious Performance vs. Public Embarrassment, Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society (Succot 5770/Fall 2009) (with profuse thanks to my cousin, Jeff Rabin, himself a Torah Gabbai at Congregation B’nai David-Judea of Los Angeles for sending this on).  Rabbi Greenberg’s article makes clear that Jewish tradition is all over the place when it comes to the issue of when and how to correct a Torah reader.  It also validates both my approach and the approach adopted by the Mission Minyan to which I now conform.

No matter what standard is applied, however, correcting a reader is not a mechanical process.  It has to be done as a matter of split-second decisionmaking and timing.  Moreover, different readers react differently to being corrected.   Some get rattled by the interruption and it can actually cause more harm than good to interrupt such readers.  Some are resistant.  I remember with more than a little bemusement an excellent Torah reader at the synagogue (of which I am still, for a short time longer, a member) from my days as a Torah Gabbai there.  His reaction upon being corrected was to demand that I show him where he made a mistake by pointing to it in the Pentatuch.  (That is a breach of protocol on multiple levels but he really got upset when he thought we had accused him, unjustly, of making an error and it really mattered to him.)

Some readers need to be given a little space to self-correct – such readers often realize that they have made a mistake and just need a second for it to sink in – it is therefore better to just give these readers their head.  This is often the case with the category of reader who I categorize as “95% ready” – they know their portion but are just a little bit shaky for not having quite nailed it down.  They are hesitant and when they go off on a tangent they usually pull themselves back without assistance, or readily accept the safety line the Torah Gabbai passes to them by way of a correction.  This can sometimes happen when there the reader makes a mistake in the trope – such readers wind up cornering themselves as a result of a trope error and either end in mid-sentence, run on to the next, or, scary thought, just stop as they do not know what to do next.  While I am not accustomed to correcting trope errors, when doing so puts the reader back on track, then there is reason to do so.

Sometimes a Torah reader just loses the thread, referring to the trope.  I call these situations “swimming to shore” – the reader flounders and tries to finish the sentence and then regain the thread.  Correcting such a reader in trope often helps.  However, some readers prefer to be told the name of the note rather than have the word sung to them – this is particularly true if the Torah Gabbai uses a different trope system from the reader or if the Torah Gabbai uses a different octave so that the reader cannot just pick it up.

Some readers are so fast that the Torah Gabbais just cannot jump in quickly enough to intervene.  There is then the awkward situation of pulling the reader back multiple sentences to correct an error.  Often the decision is to let the error go rather than engage in so cumbersome a process. 

One thing I have definitely noticed over the years is that I do a better job the better I know the Torah readers and their proclivities (and they mine).  It is also incumbent to learn the tendencies of the other Torah Gabbai as it only disconcerts the reader all the more to have both Torah Gabbais correcting the reader simultaneously.  I work with some extremely able colleagues as Torah Gabbaim and I tend to defer to them – some humility here definitely does not hurt.  But there are times to jump in and as I grow more accustomed to my resumed role I find that I am getting back into game, so to speak.

Life for a Torah Gabbai can get even more interesting when the reader comes from a different tradition, for example, reads Torah in Ashkenazic Hebrew rather than Sephardic, or uses a trope unknown to the Torah Gabbais. It thus may not surprise my readers to learn that a post shul Shabbat nap is particularly welcome after a full morning of serving as a Torah Gabbai. This is seriously hard work even if much of what is done is largely invisible to the congregation.