| |
Staff
Clergy - Professional - Support
Aliyot:
Rising To The Occasion
Aliyot to the Torah have become a part of our tradition of which, I believe, we take for granted.
At our family simahot: B'nai Mitzvah, an aufruf, a baby naming, we expect, maybe, with some justification, to honor our friends and relatives who have come long distances to share the day with us.
I, for one, am somewhat dismayed by the often matter of fact parade of relatives and friends who are given aliyot at these events who butcher the brakhot (blessings) on the Torah.
Particularly in the case of B'nai Mitzvah, it is disheartening, to say the least, after one of our young people has worked hard to learn to daven (chant) the service, chant the Haftarah, and deliver the d'rashah to hear friends and relatives stumble all over four sentences of Hebrew which they supposedly know.
Unless the message to the teenager is "Do not end up like pitiful me!" we have caused embarrassment to that friend or relative, the Bat or Bar Mitzvah and the family, the congregation, and the Torah.
As often as we beg families to ask their honorées to review the prayers before the simhah, it is too often to keep count of the times when those pleas go unheeded.
It is interesting to note that the practice of only reciting the Torah blessings for each aliyah was a secondary development in Judaism.
Originally, the honorée of the first aliyah (Kohen) said the blessing before the Torah reading, then read the appropriate selection from the Torah.
Each subsequent aliyah would read only the proper selection from the Torah (without a brakhah), until the last honorée would read the final selection from the Torah and conclude with the blessing for "after the reading".
This practice was discontinued when enough of the Jewish population had become unfamiliar with the Torah text, so a designated Torah reader, Ba'al Koreh, read all or most of the text and the recipient of the aliyah only needed to recite the appropriate blessings.
I worry about the day when so many Jews may be unfamiliar with the blessings so that a designated reader will recite the blessings while the honorée simply stands there dumbfounded.
Some may accuse me of alarmism; and I hope they are right; but the evidence I see on a regular basis gives me reason to worry.
See you in Schule.
Back
to top
|
|
