Once the reader has started to read from the Torah scroll it is forbidden to chat even about Torah matters, even between honorees, and even if you have completed
[your review of] the whole
parashah. But there are some
[authorities] who permit
[one] to study silently. And there are some
[authorities] who hold that if there are ten
[other people] who are following
[what is being read from] the Torah scroll it is permissible to chat. And there are some
[authorities] who permit
[this] to someone for whom Torah
[study] is his
[sole] occupation. And there are some
[authorities] who permit
[this] to those who have turned away
[from the Torah reading] before the Torah scroll was opened, thus indicating that he does not want to listen to
[what is being read from] the Torah scroll, but
[would rather] read – and starts reading. It is permitted to read "twice scripture and once translation". None of this applies to
parashat Zakhor and
parashat Parah which must be read in
[a quorum of] ten by Torah law: one must pay attention and hear them read by the reader. Actually, a conscientious person should concentrate on hearing all of these
parashot from the reader.
It is forbidden to chat while the maftir is reading from the prophets until he has finished, just like a Torah scroll.
There is no need to stand while the Torah is being read. (There are some who take a stricter view for themselves and do stand, and this was the custom of Rabbi Me'ir of Rothemburg.
6:
During the month of Adar every year certain extra passages are read from a second scroll as
maftir on four occasions: on the Shabbat before or on Rosh Ĥodesh Adar we read
Parashat Shekalim; on the Shabbat which precedes Purim we read
Parashat Zakhor; on the penultimate Shabbat of Adar we read
Parashat Parah; and on the Shabbat before or on Rosh Ĥodesh Nisan we read
Parashat Ha-Ĥodesh.
7:
It is the considered opinion now of almost all academic scholars in the field of Jewish liturgy that it is in the annual reading of these four parashot that we should find the origins of the custom of the public reading of the Torah. In the historically "foggy" period from mid-5th century BCE to mid-4th century BCE rabbinic Judaism was gradually taking on the form that we recognize today. In the weeks before Pesaĥ they would read publicly from the Torah passages that were topically important. No doubt these passages were also the subject of elaboration and elucidation by the sofrim, the new teachers of the emerging rabbinic Judaism.
8:
We must now investigate the connection between these passages and the month of Adar. But let us first, almost parenthetically, note that in those years when there are two months of Adar these passages are read in the second Adar, or as rabbinic parlance has it, in "the Adar which comes right before Nisan". This is because each of these passages is connected either with the festival of Pesaĥ which comes in the month of Nisan or with Purim which falls in the month before Nisan.
9:
When the Bet Mikdash was standing, every year representatives of the priestly administration that governed the Temple would be sent out to all parts of the Jewish world – both in Eretz-Israel and in the diaspora – to collect the annual payment of one half-shekel that every Jewish household was required to donate to the Bet Mikdash in Jerusalem. This payment is first mandated in the Torah [Exodus 30:11-16]:
God spoke to Moses, saying: When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay God a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight – twenty gerahs to the shekel – a half-shekel as an offering to God. Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give God's offering: the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving God's offering as expiation for your persons. You shall take the expiation money from the Israelites and assign it to the service of the Tent of Meeting; it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before God, as expiation for your persons.
The Mishnah devotes a special tractate to this annual tax, named (not so surprisingly) Tractate Shekalim. The very first mishnah of this tractate reads:
On the first [day] of Adar they make proclamation concerning the Shekels…
The monies collected in this manner amounted to many millions of dollars in modern terms and filled the coffers of the
Bet Mikdash from which money was disbursed by the Temple treasurers for the purchase of the public sacrifices and the general physical maintenance of the Temple and its properties and all its other needs. Since, as the mishnah just quoted says, the proclamation used to be issued on 1st Adar, 6 weeks before Pesaĥ, it became the custom to celebrate this event annually by publicly reading the passage from the Torah quoted above in the synagogues on the Shabbat immediately before Rosh Ĥodesh Adar. (If Rosh Ĥodesh Adar falls on Shabbat it is read on that Shabbat.)
10:
On the Shabbat before Purim we read Parashat Zakhor, which is to be found in the Torah [Deuteronomy 25:17-19]:
Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt – how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
This passage was chosen, no doubt, because the major passage which describes Amalek, Exodus 17:8-16, was allocated to be read on the day of Purim itself. In a slightly different context we have already mentioned this:
HSG 012. Amalek is, of course, the prototypical progenitor of Haman the Aggagite.
11:
During the month of Adar we also read a lengthy passage from the Torah [Numbers 19:1-22] concerning the ancient rite of the Red Heifer. This passage reads as follows:
God spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: This is the ritual law that God has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. You shall give it to Eleazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence… The cow shall be burned in his sight … and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow… A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community. It is for cleansing… This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among you: He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be unclean for seven days. He shall cleanse himself with it on the third day and on the seventh day, and then be clean; if he fails to cleanse himself on the third and seventh days, he shall not be clean. Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles God's Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he remains unclean; his uncleanness is still upon him…
We have explained the halakhic implications of this ritual when we learned Tractate Yadayyim, which can be accessed from our web archives:
Yadayyim01.html. We have not discussed the philosophical aspects of this rather bizarre custom, and – unless specifically asked to do so – I shall not discuss this here since it will take us far from our topic. When we studied Tractate Pesaĥim we noted that all the thousands of people who flocked to Jerusalem at Passover time had to be in a state of ritual purity in order to eat the meat of their paschal lamb. See
Pesaĥim 6:3, explanation #4. Thus the public reading of this passage during the month of Adar was a timely warning that ritual purity was needed before Passover.
To be continued.
Due to the incidence of the Pesaĥ festival the next shiur in this series will be on April 20th. I take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and kasher Pesaĥ.
