לעילוי נשמת

יואל אפרים בן אברהם עוזיאל זלצמן ז”ל

Question: A boy in our shul with moderate learning disabilities has an upcoming bar mitzvah. He wants to lein like his friends. His parents believe he can do a reasonable job but cannot promise to what extent he will be reading, as opposed to reciting by heart with some prompting from familiar letters.

Answer: The child’s feelings are very important. After fleshing out the problem, we will search for halachic justification for leniency.

The Gemara (Yoma 70a) relates to an instance when it is permitted to read a Torah passage by heart (see Rishonim’s explanations, ad loc.). The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 139:3) rules that one may not lein even one letter by heart. For this reason, he disallows giving an aliyah to a blind person, who cannot read the letters of the sefer Torah. The Rama (ibid.) accepts the minhag to let a blind person have an aliyah, but that is based on the thesis that the baal korei’s reading is the critical one (Mishna Berura 139:12). When necessary, it is possible to read from a Megillat Esther scroll missing a large minority of text (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 690:3). However, this is a leniency regarding Megillah which is called an “iggeret” (see Mishna Berura 690:10), and probably not concerning leining from a sefer Torah.

Still, we can allow the boy to read for a combination of reasons. We will start with mitigating opinions. The Rambam (Shut 294) posits that a shul without a kosher sefer Torah can read with brachot from a pasul one. In that discussion, he says that one can read with a bracha even by heart. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 143:3) does not rule this way, but “it is still a Rambam,” and the Rama (ad loc. 4) cites both opinions.

In fact, the Rambam’s general thesis is accepted in a related case. If a pasul in the sefer Torah was discovered in the midst of leining, the Shulchan Aruch (ibid. 4) says that after taking out a kosher sefer Torah, bedieved we rely on what was read. In that context, the Mordechai (Megillah 392) writes that if one encounters missing words before he has read three pesukim, he should read those words by heart and continue until a place one may stop. He argues that the problem with reading by heart is the prohibition (editor’s note—see Orach Chayim 49; we tend to be very lenient on this) on reciting the written Torah not from a text and that this does not apply here because the intention had been to read from a kosher sefer Torah. This bar mitzvah boy also intends to read from the text, and we are just nervous about his success. It is a good question to what extent we accept the Mordechai (see Living the Halachic Process III, A-14), but it is not a dismissed opinion.

Another mitigating opinion is admittedly a less accepted one. The Kolbo (cited in Beit Yosef, Orach Chayim 142) states that if a baal korei makes a mistake in reading, we can rely on the oleh’s correct reading of the text. The above opinions along with significant embarrassment of a child whose disabilities disallow him doing what his peers do (see Rama, Orach Chayim 139:3; Beit Yosef, Orach Chayim 142), might suffice to be lenient.

Now to fundamentals: As one who thinks a lot about Kriat HaTorah, I assure you that if there were an absolute need for baalei kriah to fully read every letter, we would often not be yotzei. Experts will tell you that we standardly look at a word and recognize it based on key letters and context, without always actually processing every letter (that is why proofreading is difficult). Since we have the ability to read every letter (see Menachot 18b) and process the word by looking at it in a manner everyone calls “reading,” that reading relates to every letter. An expert on the reading of children with challenges confirmed that this child will—in all likelihood—not read by heart. Rather, his high familiarity with the text will help him read. While it may be somewhat different than the average person, it is considered reading from the sefer Torah.

Therefore, this boy may lein. His teacher should train him—like all bar mitzvah boys—to read from the text. If he can move the yad along properly, he is reading!

Rabbi Mann is a dayan for Eretz Hemdah and a staff member of Yeshiva University’s Gruss Kollel in Israel. He is a senior member of the Eretz Hemdah responder staff, editor of Hemdat Yamim and the author of “Living the Halachic Process, Volumes 1 and 2” and “A Glimpse of Greatness.”