Rav Avi: Welcome to Responsa Radio, where you ask and we answer questions of Jewish law in modern times. I'm Rabbi Avi Killip, speaking with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Rosh Yeshiva at Mechon Hadar, a center for higher Jewish learning based in New York City. Hey, how you doing?
Rav Eitan: I'm good Avi, how are you?
Rav Avi: I'm great. So here's a very practical question for gabbais or minyan organizers. "My shul has a weekly maariv minyan, an evening service hosted at individual homes. On a day when Hallel is recited, would it be permissible to recite Hallel with its blessings following maariv? Most if not all of the people who go to the maariv minyan are not able to attend morning minyan, and they are almost certainly not saying Hallel individually throughout the day. Can we move this part of the service normally done in the morning into the evening in order to include more people in the performance of this ritual?"
Rav Eitan: Alright, this is a really interesting question. There's like a local answer here, and then there's something much more global that I think we could engage. There's the local question of this particular Hallel configuration, and then I'm hearing a broader question about how much can we kind of reconfigure the way we do things in the public prayer space to accommodate the realities on the ground of the people who are coming to pray in that space for whom maybe things about the regular schedule of davening don't work so well. Let me give the local answer quickly. This one's an easy one. The answer is no, you can't do it.
Rav Avi: Well, we're out of luck.
Rav Eitan: And that's because Hallel can be recited all day, but only during the day. That is to say, daylight hours. The Mishnah in Megillah is very specific about this, it says the entire day is permissible and sort of valid for saying the Hallel, but specifically the day, and the Talmud has a fantastic proof text for this, quoting the text of the Hallel itself, it says that G-d is to be praised mimizrach shemesh ad mevo'o, from the time that the sun rises until it sets. And that kind of sets the idea that the Hallel prayer itself is basically said in full daylight, in a kind of triumphant presentation of gratitude, and that's not something you would do under the cover of darkness. So that's the kind of local answer.
Rav Avi: So, just to be clear: they were asking specifically about maariv, which is an evening service. If they had been asking about mincha, would there be a different answer?
Rav Eitan: Great. So I think that's a great way of maybe broadening this. Because if we're asking about the flexibility to accommodate people's schedules but kind of within the parameters of, let's say, the halakhic guidelines here, so yeah, let's go with your thought experiment for a minute. Let's say the minyan was meeting for mincha, or was even meeting for maariv, like, right around sunset, so there was, like, a little bit of time to get it in before the day was done. Could they then recite Hallel if, you know, the people hadn't been there at minyan this morning? So I want to throw out a couple of kind of values and considerations, and then share a couple of interesting texts. These are the four issues which kind of come in pairs, that I would think about around this kind of question. The first principle is one that comes from a verse in Kohelet, that kind of evokes this phrase that the Talmud uses in a few places, meuvat lo yuchal litkon. There are certain crooked things that can't be made straight. Or another kind of expression like this is avar yomo batel korbano, once a day when a sacrifice was supposed to be offered has passed, there's no way to kind of make that up.
And one element here I think you have to consider is, there's certain things that sometimes you just miss, and it's actually important, I think, as a culture, as a religious culture, a prayer culture, to emphasize that. You can't always get credit for, you know, everything you turn in late, and communal schedules don't always turn somersaults to accommodate individual people. And that's not just about, you know, it's not just being mean; there's a certain inculcating of an ethic of responsibility, like you had an appointment, it was at a certain time, if you missed it you can't make it up. That's one thing I would think about.
Rav Avi: I could also see that as liberating in a sense of not making me feel like wow, if I never davened mincha up until now, I shouldn't join in the project because I'm already behind on 20 minchas this year. Sort of, you know, the idea that I can jump right in wherever I am at this moment and participate in this ritual without feeling like I started out in debt.
Rav Eitan: What you're saying conjures up for me another model, which I know you'll appreciate as a daf yomi learner, which is what it's like to fall behind 10 pages in daf yomi. And that can be kind of demoralizing and overwhelming, because you can't really just skip, you gotta kind of go back and make it up.
Rav Avi: I'll interrupt and say 10 dapim is just about exactly as far behind as I am at this moment!
Rav Eitan: Okay. But this also, I think, calls to mind a second value I would think about, which is when you have a certain responsibility to do something, there is something nice about having the ability to make it up to sort of make sure that you don't just get away with not doing it. And so that's a sort of competing impulse that would make you say, well okay, you weren't at morning minyan -- that's maybe non-ideal, but we still want to make sure that people are saying Hallel. So those are two things that are sort of a pair that are in tension to think about.
Rav Avi: Yeah, I think Hallel is a great example for this, because for people who do try to recite Hallel during a holiday, it's just one of the most fun services to recite. It's one of the most fun rituals. So I think there really is a sense of, ugh, I missed my opportunity, I would love to have another chance, and not, even moreso than maybe some other services where you would feel a burden to go back to it.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, yeah. A second pair of considerations: one of them is torach hatzibbur, the idea of kind of inconveniencing the community. And this is something that's very important to remember, where you kind of add in a whole module to a service that doesn't really contain that thing. Like, having Hallel at a mincha service. You're affecting other people -- you're affecting the other people who have shown up -- there might be a person there who did say Hallel that morning, why are you gonna make them sit through it because someone else didn't do that? And that's a very serious consideration, which is balanced in some ways in an equal and opposite way by the principle of the great opportunity lizakot et harabim, the notion of there being a special privilege to be able to do something that will enable lots of people to do a mitzvah. You know, you got all these people who are gathered together, you have a chance to get eight more people to have said Hallel that day, how can you not take that opportunity? So that's some of what I think we have to kind of think about as we look at a couple interesting examples that might shed some light on this.
So one really interesting example of kind of missing something and then doing it later in an odd way is raised in the Ohr Zaruah in medieval Austria and Germany. And he talks about actually something that happens in Cologne one shabbat, where they are not able to read Torah in the morning on shabbat, and it seems like either there was someone who was supposed to read the parsha who never showed up; in other sources it sounds like there was maybe some kind of fight. Whatever it is, the morning davening in terms of Torah reading gets totally derailed, and they never read it that shabbat. And the Ohr Zaruah reports that there was a ruling in Cologne that the next shabbat, they had to read two parshiyot, both the regularly scheduled parsha, and they had to make up the prior week's. And there's this sense of the community has some kind of obligation to kind of read the Torah beginning to end, it's terrible that they missed it the first week, but they're not off the hook, and they gotta fill that in.
Rav Avi: So this is a little bit different because it's nobody in the community heard the Torah reading, as opposed to I individually slept in and missed hearing the Torah read this week, and therefore I need to hear both parshiyot the next week.
Rav Eitan: That's exactly right. So I think here, we have the notion of, let's say, torach hatzibbur, of, like, the community being inconvenienced isn't really an overwhelming factor, because the entire community is in this boat together, and they have some kind of corporate responsibility that they all share to do this. And therefore I think that makes the other issues kind of rise to the surface, and as long as it feels appropriate, which this rabbi felt it was, to read two parshiyot on a given shabbat, and it's not sort of like out of place, then they should do that. And it'll sort of reinforce that this is their responsibility and ultimately the community will get the benefit of still having covered the entire Torah from Beresheet to Vezot Habracha over the course of that year.
Rav Avi: There's also something striking about maintaining the integrity of the ritual, that you're not saying he ruled they needed to gather first thing Sunday morning to read the whole parsha that they missed over shabbat; you're saying no, wait until the next shabbat when the framework is the same, and just leyn more, read more of the Torah on that morning. But the container still seems to be similar in that you needed to hear this on a shabbat morning as part of a shabbat morning Torah service.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. So it's amazing that you say that, because that is actually where the conversation then goes. You get in the early modern authorities among the acharonim -- the Ateret Zekainim is one commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh and other surrounding sources, he actually says that let's say the community misses Torah reading on Monday morning. Right? What should they do if they didn't get a minyan? And he says they should actually read Torah on Tuesday, so as not to go three days without Torah. Because one of the reasons given in the Talmud for why we read on Monday and Thursday is you should never have a three-day stretch where there's not at least Torah reading. And so if you go from Saturday and you miss Monday, by reading on Tuesday you'll still be able to make that up.
Now, interestingly, almost everyone who comes after him completely rejects this idea. And one of the proofs that one of his critics cites is exactly what you just said, which is, well, the Ohr Zaruah didn't say that you make up the parsha on Sunday morning; clearly the Ohr Zaruah said you wait until the following shabbat. But if you didn't read on shabbat morning, then when was your last Torah reading? It was Thursday morning, and if you want to prevent going three days, shouldn't you have to read it on Sunday morning? And the source doesn't seem to say that, and that suggests -- I like your terminology of the container -- there's something here about, no no no, Torah is read on shabbat morning, shabbat afternoon, Monday morning, and Thursday morning. We might a little bit alter what we read on those times, but we're not going to create an entirely different ritual space in order to compensate for, you know, what was basically a communal screw-up.
Rav Avi: Right. The other thing that's interesting about the missing Monday morning is that the structure of the Torah reading throughout the week already contains an opportunity to hear that same reading again on Thursday, and then again on shabbat. So if it's a matter of make sure you heard the reading this year, we have built in, you know, the four different opportunities, at least, for those first aliyot to hear those.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. That's right, that makes it very different in that case. So here's where it gets to another interesting piece. What if for some reason the community wasn't able to read the parsha on shabbat morning, but there was a minyan or there was a qualified Torah reader or the fight that delayed things has finally blown over by shabbat afternoon? Let's say by shabbat mincha the community has gotten its act together -- what should you do? And Rav Yechezkel Landau says you read the parsha, the full parsha in the morning, at mincha. Then there's debates, did he mean to fold it in with the regular mincha reading, did he mean to read it first and then do mincha afterwards? But there's this sense that the entire day is appropriate on shabbat for reading the parsha, and even though it's kind of aesthetically and historically scheduled to be between shacharit and musaf in the morning, like Hallel, that we began with, which can be said all day, so too the seven-aliyah full Torah reading is appropriate all day on shabbat.
So this led to the following fascinating practice and ruling: Rav Azriel Hildesheimer, who was one of the great German rabbis in the 19th century and who was particularly one of the prominent leaders of what we, you know, might retrospectively call today Modern Orthodox community, but you know, he was part of the sort of shabbat-observant Jewish German community that is nonetheless deeply engaged with the world in all kinds of ways. And he confronts the following problem. He has many people at his synagogue who send their children to public schools, right? The Jewish day school had not yet been invented. And public schools in Germany in the 19th century, the Gymnasia, met on shabbat morning as well. And so you had many kids who as part of their basic education had to go to school, or went to school, on shabbat morning.
We can presume, let's say, they didn't write or do anything physically problematic, but they were not in shul, they were not there to hear the Torah reading. And Rav Hildesheimer established for them essentially a prayer space where they would gather at around two to three in the afternoon, right after, it seems, they had lunch with their parents, and he would then do the following: he would daven musaf with them, which is valid all day, he would read the entire parsha with its seven aliyot in the afternoon, and he would then daven mincha and do the short mincha Torah reading. And this was clearly his way of saying these people are not here in the morning, there's no way I'm going to change that right now, I wouldn't do the entire synagogue service for everyone in the afternoon, but why would I not for this specific select group of schoolchildren have something where they can then hear the parsha?
Rav Avi: It's interesting. I've actually been in a community where during a weekday holiday when we'd run out of time for musaf in the morning, we actually did musaf at mincha, added musaf to mincha, which it sounds like is a very similar model to this.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. It is, and I think it's -- I don't know what the factors were exactly there, but what's being balanced here is on the one hand there's this sense of okay, let's accommodate these people and let's be realistic and to the extent the halakhic parameters still maintain that it's valid to do this, let's do it, why wouldn't we take advantage of that? And yet, in this case we actually learn about this practice from Rav Hildesheimer's student, Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman, in his responsum Melamed Lehoyil, and he says what can I do, Rav Hildesheimer established this, and so it's on good authority, and clearly he felt there was, like, a crisis of Torah that needed to be addressed. But, not sure so sure it's so wise to actually do this on a permanent basis. He's clearly worried about some larger dynamic of oh, well, then people will just sort of push the halakhic parameters to their limits based on decisions they've already made, and will kind of lose the frame of when do these various rituals happen organically? And that, I think, is a really interesting balancing act.
Rav Avi: So that sort of goes back to if I go back to the frame of our original question, that you might end up saying, well, there's no reason for me to get up and go to shacharit in order to daven Hallel when I know I will have an opportunity at this other afternoon minyan later today.
Rav Eitan: That's right. And so I could imagine, you know, a kind of sensible guideline on this being after morning minyan sending out an email to the people who you're hoping to have there that night and say, you know, minyan will be at 4:30 -- for those who weren't able to say Hallel earlier in the day, we'll gather at 4:15, a little before we start, to have an opportunity to do that. And that might be a way of saying look, the ship has already sailed, people who didn't come didn't come, but we're gonna then encourage people to maybe create this space where why should they miss out on Hallel? Obviously I can imagine doing nothing as well, but if there is some drive that this will add something, that might be the right way to balance it.
Rav Avi: Right. So the bigger frame is, maybe you can change the way you perform the ritual to meet your life, but then don't restructure your life around the new format of the ritual.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. There's some balancing here of, you know, you obviously don't do something at an invalid time, but you shouldn't even do it at, like, a mildly crazy time, like reading Torah on Tuesday morning, and you also shouldn't do things kind of out of place that don't belong there when not everyone present needs it. But if you have an entire group of people like Rav Hildesheimer's schoolchildren or the medieval community in the Ohr Zaruah missing Torah reading on shabbat morning and you've got a service that's, you know, earmarked for them, then it seems to me that it's good to stretch where possible to allow the maximum number of people to fulfill a mitzvah or a communal obligation that they would otherwise default on.
Rav Avi: Great, so I think this is a really, it's an interesting and helpful example of how ritual and specifically ritual intended to be done in community, the community is integral to that, and how we can bend or not bend that ritual in order to best meet the needs of our community. Thanks.
Rav Avi: Have a halakhic question you'd like answered on the show? Email us at halakhah@hadar.org. You can also leave us a phone message at (215) 297-4254. Responsa Radio is a project of the Center for Jewish Law and Values at Mechon Hadar, and is produced by Jewish Public Media, which creates, curates, and promotes excellent Jewish content.