Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
Have you ever had exciting news to give someone? How did you speak to them?
Did you ever need to tell someone something really upsetting? How did you tell them? Sometimes, we change the way we speak to match the mood of what we are trying to say.
In this week’s Torah reading, the third aliyah is a tough one. In it, God briefly promises lots of blessings if the people follow the mitzvot, but then horrible punishments and suffering if they don’t. Some of the threats are really awful, including the whole land being destroyed and the people being thrown out into foreign countries. This section is called the תּוֹכֵחָה (tokhehah, rebuke), and it is really hard to hear.
We do a few things to try to make it easier to handle:
Rule #1: אֵין מַפְסִיקִין בַּקְּלָלוֹת, אֶלָּא אֶחָד קוֹרֵא אֶת כֻּלָּן (משנה מגילה ג:ו)
We don’t break up this aliyah in the middle. We want to get it over in one shot. That’s why it is so long (37 verses) when other aliyot in the parashah are so short. (The first and second aliyot are only 3 verses each!)
Rule #2: נוֹהֲגִין שֶׁלֹּא לִקְרוֹת אֶחָד בִּשְׁמוֹ לַעֲלוֹת (רמ"א אורח חיים תכח:ו)
You don’t call someone up to recite the blessings for this aliyah unless they want to be called up. How could you offer someone to be on the receiving end of such horrible curses? In many communities, this aliyah is either given to the rabbi or to the person reading the aliyah; they absorb the blow for the rest of us.
Rule #3: Shhh!
Just like you might pull someone aside and give them bad news quietly, there is a longstanding tradition to read this passage softly and quickly. It is too hard for us to hear such painful things loudly. Listen carefully and you can hear the reader be loud at the beginning of the aliyah for the end of the blessings, get quiet for the curses, and then get loud again when things get better at the end of the aliyah.
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