Halakhah Study Group 040

1:
First of all we must clarify the translation given above, because it is not as clear as is the original Hebrew. What 146:1 is saying is that it is forbidden to leave the synagogue – or the place where the Torah is being read – while the Torah scroll is open, while it is being read. But, Karo continues, apparently to leave the synagogue in the hiatus between honorees would not be prohibited.

2:
The origin of this ruling of the Shulĥan Arukh is to be found in the Gemara [Berakhot 8a]:

3:
The sages were wont to liken the public reading of the Torah to the public declaration of their pronouncements by monarchs in ancient times. In order that the laws promulgated by them would be known to the general populace the kings of the ancient world would go out to their subjects and stand in a public place surrounded by all the awesome panoply that they could muster. A herald would then declaim in the name of the king the new law. The association with the public reading of the Torah is obvious: Israel's King has His herald, the honoree assisted by the Torah-reader, publicly announce the royal decrees. Obviously, the King Himself is deemed to be present as His laws are publicized just as the earthly monarch would lend all his own grandeur to the authority of the proclamation. It is now easier for us to understand the rhetorical question asked by Rabbi Ammi the the Gemara quoted above: would anyone present when a royal proclamation was being enunciated by the herald in the presence of the king himself dare to leave the assembly? And if someone did so dare, what would be his likely fate? Thus he associates a verse in Isaiah (whose plain meaning has nothing to do with our subject at all) with the idea that a dreadful fate awaits those who abandon God, represented by the divine laws which are being publicly proclaimed, as it were.

4:
Rabbi Abbahu, like Rabbi Ammi a sage from Eretz-Israel, would take the opportunity offered by the hiatus created when one honoree was being succeeded by another to leave the synagogue if he had to or wished to. However, this comparatively liberal attitude of Rabbi Abbahu, dutifully encoded by Rabbi Karo here in his Shulĥan Arukh, was frowned upon by much later authorities. For instance, in his monumental commentary on the first part of the Shulĥan Arukh, "Magen Avraham", Rabbi Avraham Gumbiner (1633-1683) tries to limit what is clearly permitted by Rabbi Abbahu. He cannot prohibit what the great Amora in the Talmud seems to have permitted by his own reported behaviour, but he can add circumscriptions: one can only leave between honorees if one has already heard the Toreah reading for that occasion in any case, or it is one's intention to return to the synagogue almost immediately, before the next honoree commences. And, he adds, "even that is permitted only for very urgent reasons".

5:
In modern times this ruling seems to be more or less ignored. I once had a non-religious colleague who was wont to remark that when he would pass a synagogue on Shabbat morning he would always know when the Torah was being read inside because of the large number of congregants standing and chatting outside! And he was referring, of course, to orthodox synagogues in the State of Israel. (I am referring to a teaching colleague, not to a rabbinical colleague!)

6:
In the quotation from the Gemara above we also find that Rav Pappa, a Babylonian Amora, asks whether it would be permiited to leave the synagogue between verses. To us this must seem a strange question, but we must remember what we discovered in the previous section: 145:

This was a lengthy process. Rav Pappa asks whether it would be permissable to leave the synagogue while the meturgeman is translating a verse into Aramaic: would this not be similar to leaving the synagogue between honorees? After all, it is not "the King's decree" which is being enunciated, but a translation of the decree, as it were. The sages of the Gemara were not able to reach a decision on this matter. Their uncertaintly must have derived from the consideration whether a translation has the same sanctity and authority of the original or not. So the Gemara leaves the matter undecided: teyku.

7:
The dates of Rav Pappa, who asked the original question about leaving between verses, are usually given as 293-363 CE. However, within four hundred years of his death we already find that the yearning for a stricter interpretation has set in. Rav Yehudai Gaon was a head of Babylonian Jewry from 757 to 761 CE. In his work Halakhot Gedolot he notes:

To be continued.

This concerns people who use the Netscape browser. I have found that if your computer is having difficulty in correctly reading Hebrew you should update your browser to the latest version: when I updated to version 7.1 I discovered that all the annoying 'errors' had disappeared! You can download version 7.1 from here. Just click on "Free Download".