Halakhah Study Group 046

2:
In our last shiur I wrote: The greatest mental adjustment that we must make … is to recollect that … in these paragraphs where the term used is "to roll" the scroll, or the honour of being "the roller", the reference is to what we would call today the honour of hagbahah, of raising the scroll so that the congregation can see the text of the Torah before it is dressed once again (by the person honoured with the rite of gelilah).

Clearly my comment was either insufficient or unclear, since Harry Pick sent me this learned message:

Permit me to point out that the magbi'a, the person honored with hagba'a, viz. raising the scroll after the reading is completed is not the "roller". To correctly perform the lifting of the Tora scroll, it must be spread apart so that three columns of the text are visible to the congregants, and the lifted scroll should be turned to the left and to the right for everyone to see the text. It is only then that the person holding the scroll takes a seat and it would be a most difficult task for that person to hold the tora scroll and to roll it. It is the person honored with gelilah, called up as a golel or goleleth who does the rolling of the scroll. As the title golel indicates "roller"; as we read in the first blessing of the Arvit Shema: Golel Or mipne'i khoshekh… You roll way light before darkness…"

As a description of what happens nowadays in congregations that follow Ashkenazi custom what Harry has written is perfectly correct and informative. However, as an explanation of the content of the paragraphs we are studying it is misleading. As I tried to explain – not very successfully, it would appear! – we have here two different usages of the Hebrew terms golel and gelilah. How this came about I shall try to explain in the following paragraph.

3:
When we first started our study of the Shulĥan Arukh I explained that the author or compiler, Rabbi Yosef Karo was born in Toledo, Spain in the year 1488. In the year 1492, when he was only four years old he was forced to flee Spain with his family and the many other thousands of Jews that were forcibly being expelled from their homes where they had lived for many hundreds of years. After wandering from place to place, they finally settled in Constantinople, Turkey. As a child he was taught by his father, and when his father passed away he was taught by his uncle, who cared for him like his own son. Already as a young man, he gained a reputation as a brilliant Torah scholar. He began by writing an explanation on the Rambam's Mishneh Torah (Kesef Mishneh), and then at the age of 25, while living in Adrianople (modern Edirne, in Turkey) he began writing his next book Bet Yosef. This was a voluminous commentary on the Tur which took him twenty years to complete. But for the average person it was far too much. What was needed was a concise clear and simple book, and so, years later (after having moved to Safed in Eretz-Israel) he wrote an abridgement which he called the Shulĥan Arukh. In deciding the law, he based his opinion on three great halakhic giants before him. They were Rambam (Moses Maimonides), Rif (Rabbi Yitzĥak Alfasi) and Rosh (Rabbi Asher ben Yeĥi'el). When these three were not in agreement Karo followed the majority opinion, thus giving greater weight to the Sefaradi customs, since only Rosh hailed from Ashkenazi lands.

4:
Thus the customs described by the Shulĥan Arukh are basically Sefaradi customs. (This is why it was necessary to add the notes of Rabbi Moshe Isserles for Ashkenazi congregations.) As we have mentioned now several times, in the main the Sefaradi custom is to house the Torah scroll in a highly decorated wooden case from which the Torah is not removed. This case can be opened because its two halves are hinged and when the time comes for reading the Torah it is stood upright on the tevah (reading desk), opened, and thus read. Since the scroll is not removed from its case, when the reading is completed it is only necessary to close the case again and fasten the clasp. This is what is called in the Gemara and here in the Shulĥan Arukh golel, "rolling", and this term must be understood as being distinct from the Ashkenazi term gelilah.

5:
Thus for the Sefaradi Jew the term golel (roller) indicates what for the Ashkenazi Jew is signified by the term hagbahah (raising). In Sefaradi congregations the scroll is raised aloft before the Torah reading while in Ashkenazi congregations it is raised after the reading. In either case the scroll should be manipulated in such a way that a seam is visible: it is very simple to repair a seam that comes apart; next to nothing can be done with a sheet of the scroll that is torn apart, and that sheet will have to be replaced. When the scroll is raised in a Sefaradi congregation the golel should raise it so that the case is nearest to him and the scroll inside it is furthest from him, so that the congregation can easily see the exposed text. As Isserles points out in his long and rather convoluted note this is impractical with an Ashkenazi type scroll. There are, here and there, people who try to emulate the Sefaradi custom by raising an Ashkenazi scroll "back to front" as it were, but as Isserles points out this is unnecessary (and unwise).

6:
An Ashkenazi type scroll is handled by two people: one raises it at the end of the Torah reading and another rolls it closed and straps it so that it will not come apart. (See the description given by Harry Pick, above, explanation #2.) The join of the strap should be in such a position that when the scroll is next to be used the join or clasp will be uppermost so that the scroll can be easily opened for reading.