The reading of the Torah parshah is divided into seven parts, each called an aliyah. A man is honored by being called up to the Torah to recite a blessing before and after an aliyah (see p. 266).
This honor itself is also called an aliyah. The first aliyah is reserved for those of priestly descent (Kohen); the second aliyah for Levites (of the tribe that assisted the priests in the Temple); and all the rest are reserved for Israelites—that is, anyone who is neither Kohen nor Levi. These aliyot are often distributed for special occasions. The Bar Mitzvah boy and his family will be honored with several aliyot. But other events in life also warrant this honor: on becoming a groom, the engagement of a daughter, the yahrzeit (anniversary of death) of a parent or an in-law, the birth of a new baby, thanksgiving for saving from a near mishap, a wife recovering from an operation, someone in the family returning from a long trip, and so forth. One often pledges a contribution to the synagogue upon receiving an aliyah. (This steady source of donations is an important supplementary source of income for synagogues whose membership dues and fund-raising activities do not generally cover the budget.) Since no moneys are handled on the Sabbath, payment is made later.
In addition to the seven aliyot, the last few verses of the parshah are repeated. They constitute an eighth aliyah called the Maftir. This eighth aliyah is typically reserved for the Bar Mitzvah boy; however, the Maftir can be used for any other purpose, or by any other male over thirteen.
After a person has an aliyah, he waits at the reading table until the next aliyah is completed, then shakes hands all around, and returns to his seat. Along the way, those in his reach will extend a hand, wish him a yasher koach—may your strength increase. He responds with the expression baruch ti’he’yeh—may you be blessed.
Who reads the Torah? That, too, varies. It is read with special cantillations, special intonations for different words. But that’s not all. The reader must memorize beforehand the cantillation associated with each word, because the Torah scroll for ritual use is written without vowels and without cantillation marks. So the reader must be skilled. Many communities have a regular Torah reader; however, he defers to a Bar Mitzvah boy when the latter has prepared the entire parshah himself.
Although the reading is completed, the Torah is not put back just yet. First comes hagbah (lifting the Torah) and gelila (wrapping it), followed by the Haftorah, a reading from one of the books of the Prophets. Hagbah is an honor a reasonably strong man is called upon to perform. A full-sized Torah scroll is a hefty object. It must be held aloft, on its two rollers (called “trees of life”), and held open to the section just read. The person honored with hagbah must hold the Torah high and must swivel around so that all the congregation can look upon it and sing out together, “This is the Torah that Moses placed before the people of Israel according to the Word of God, through the hand of Moses.” Since the scroll is rolled from one end to the other over the course of the year, its weight can be distributed very unevenly, depending on what part of the year it is. I never checked it out, but I suspect that butchers must have strong left arms because the kosher butcher in our congregation, may he rest in peace, was always given Hagbah during the first periods of the new reading cycle, when all the weight of the Torah scroll was on the left. (We read the Torah from right to left, and unroll it bit by bit as we move along each week.) After swiveling around, Mr. Hagbah then sits in a seat nearby, holding the Torah upright on his lap while Mr. Gelila (the roller-upper) rolls the two trees of life closed, ties a cord around the waist of the scroll, covers the Torah with a Torah wrap (usually made of embroidered velvet), and tops it off with the rest of its finery—silver crowns for the trees of life, and a silver breastplate hung across the Torah wrap. Mr. Gelila then goes back to his place, shaking all extended hands en route, while Mr. Hagbah remains seated, holding the Torah comfortably in his arms while the Haftorah is recited.
The Haftorah portions were chosen two thousand years ago to correspond to a theme in the Torah reading. The Rabbis didn’t want the people to neglect the Prophets altogether, what with such great emphasis placed on the Torah, but it was unrealistic to attempt a reading of the entire Prophets; so a chapter from this book and a chapter from that were selected. It is fascinating to see the counterpoint of the two readings. A Torah portion dealing with the sacrifices is matched by a prophetic portion stressing the idea that God prefers heart and feeling to animal sacrifices. Another week, a Torah reading that heavily warns of punishment is tempered by a prophecy of consolation and redemption. (Compare, for example, Deuteronomy, chapters 26–28, with its Haftorah, Isaiah, chapter 60.) Some weeks, the connection is not obvious and the amateur Haftorah sleuths speculate thoughtfully on the connections.
The Haftorah is read from a printed book, not from a scroll. In ancient times it, too, was read from special scrolls, but that art is mostly gone. Many Bar Mitzvah boys read both the Torah and Haftorah readings; some read only the Maftir portion of the Torah plus the Haftorah. Or the Haftorah may be read by any male over thirteen for any special occasion. The psychiatrist in our congregation always reads the Haftorah on his wedding anniversary. (No need to analyze; it’s simply a Jewish way to honor a special day in his life.)
After the Haftorah reading is completed, the circuit with the Torah scroll is made again; with equal pomp it is returned to the ark.
What comes next in the service is that invention of modern Jewry, the rabbi’s sermon. Introduced first by Reform Jews, the sermon is an adaptation of premodern Orthodox services where the rabbi or the most learned worshiper would review for the congregation some highlight from the Torah, adding the traditional commentaries. Today’s sermon is connected to the par-shah but not restricted to it. Modern rabbis have a knack for finding something in the parshah to link with current political situations, a contemporary social issue, or an overall religious or ethical problem.
Sometimes the search for relevance goes too far. In recent years, as criticism has grown that the sermon too often sounded like an editorial from The New York Times or The New Republic, rabbis have tried to recover the eternal message of the tradition. Instead of being second-rate news commentators, the rabbis strive to be first-rate teachers of Torah and rabbinic wisdom. Some rabbis have shifted to teaching a text from the Torah or some other classic source. Others have opened it up to questions and answers from the congregation. In any event, the key to a good sermon seems to be the balance between wisdom and text and the ability to apply it to personal, communal and societal concerns.
The sermon is less central in the Orthodox synagogue, for people come primarily to fulfill the obligation to pray or to be with the community. Some Orthodox synagogues will manage without a rabbi altogether. However, a rabbi with a consistently good sermon can be a major draw in the Orthodox synagogue as well. A barometer of the rabbi’s speaking ability is the direction of traffic immediately before and after sermon time. A good speaker will often bring in a whole group who pack the shul at that moment. With a poor speaker, a perceptible exodus will frequently occur at that point, with people filing back in right after the talk. Outsiders are sometimes embarrassed, but the informality and individualist mood of Orthodox synagogues seem to allow for it.
The sermon is followed by Mussaf, the special additional service for Shabbat. It begins with a silent prayer called the Amidah or the Shmoneh Esreh and concludes with several prayers sung in unison or responsively.
Unlike its more liberal counterparts, in an Orthodox shul the members say all the prayers individually. Whatever the rabbi is required to recite, so is the least of his congregants. However, individuals do pray at different speeds. Thus, in order to avoid total chaos, the Rabbis of ancient times instituted the requirement for a special shaliach tzibbur, messenger of the congregation. His expressed function is to carry the sentiments of the entire congregation to God in a special way, but his real function is to keep prayers on track. At the end of each prayer, he will repeat the last few words out loud, and when he finishes everyone
moves on to the next prayer. The device of shaliach tzibbur was really an act of genius on the part of the ancient Rabbis. It allows for individual prayer within a cohesive congregational setting, quite a remarkable dialectic. In most Orthodox congregations a professional chazzan (cantor) is the shaliach tzibbur, but there are many shuls that get by very nicely with a ba’al tefila (a prayer leader), often a lay member of the congregation who has a pleasant voice and knows how to lead.
After the service, a Kiddush is occasionally held in the shul, to celebrate a particular simcha (happy event). A Kiddush can range from wine and cake to elaborate catered spreads. One of my favorite stories is about Jed A., a former student of my husband’s at Yeshiva University in New York City. After graduation, Jed became a Peace Corps worker, serving in Ethiopia for two years. He spent his first weekend back in the States with us. It so happened, just that Shabbat, a family in our congregation was making a Kiddush reception in honor of their son’s Bar Mitzvah. It was a very lavish reception, and the entire congregation was invited. Jed got down to the social hall early, heaped his plate with four different kinds of fish, two or three salads, a piece of potato kugel, a piece of noodle kugel—more food than he had seen in two years of Shabbatot (plural) in Ethiopia. As he stepped away from the table, he realized he had forgotten horseradish for his gefilte fish. By now, the lines at the serving tables were four deep, but Jed was not to forgo horseradish, his first in a long time. So, plate in hand, he got back in line. The woman in front of him happened to turn around. She looked at his plate, then looked him straight in the eye and in a tone of utter disgust said, “For God’s sake, finish that one first!”
After shul, everyone returns home for the second Shabbat meal. Even if one has recited or heard Kiddush in shul, it is still customary to recite it again at one’s own table. The Kiddush on Shabbat morning is quite different from that of Friday night. It is a much shorter Kiddush, the essence of which is the single blessing over the wine; in some homes, Kiddush is recited over schnapps, for which there is a separate blessing. The Rabbis, with their exquisite sensitivity, dubbed it Kiddush Rabbah—the Great Kiddush, or the Large Kiddush, so that its feelings (that’s right, the Kiddush’s feelings) should not be “hurt” by being so much more abbreviated than the Friday-night Kiddush. Nowadays, the trend in many homes is to add several preliminary passages, in accordance with the interpretation of this or that scholar. Thirty years ago, most Orthodox Jews would recite only one short traditional verse (“And therefore God blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it”), followed by the one-line blessing over wine or schnapps. Today, some men recite a Kiddush as long as Friday night’s. Like much else in tradition, Shabbat morning Kiddush grew in stages.
(Some people start here:)
Veshamru venai Yisrael et haShabbat la’asot et haShabbat ledo-rotam berit olam. Baynee uvayn b’nai Yisrael ot hi le’olam, ki shayshet yamim asa Adonai et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz uvayom hashevi’i shavat vayinafash.
Al kayn bayrach Adonai et yom haShabbat vayekadeshaihu.
Baruch ata Adonai, Elohainu melech ha’olam, borai pri hagafen.
The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and ceased from His work (EXOD. 31:16-17).
… Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (EXOD. 20:11).
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Who creates the fruit of the vine.
If an alcoholic beverage other than wine is used, the following blessing is substituted for the one over wine:
Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu melech ha’olam she-hakol nee-yeh bidvaro.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, by Whose will all things exist.
The hamotzi is recited over two challot, the same as Friday night. Meat is generally served for Shabbat lunch. Zemirot and Birkat Hamazon are similar to those of Friday night.
“Sleep on Shabbat is pure pleasure,” tradition tells us. So it is that after lunch or after a walk, the custom is to take a nap. A Shabbat afternoon nap is the most delicious sleep of all. Perhaps it’s because a Sabbath-observant Jew doesn’t care if the world runs on while he/she sleeps.
Not everybody naps. But let me tell you about a whole city that naps, and the sheer power of custom in the Jewish world. Some years ago, we spent Shabbat with a cousin in B’nai Brak. B’nai Brak is the heart of Israel’s Orthodox community as Jerusalem is its soul. My cousin and his wife have seven children. So do many of their neighbors. Six, eight, or ten—four children in B’nai Brak is considered zero population growth. And these families all live in apartment houses, with four bedrooms at the most. So the streets and apartment terraces are filled with children, all day long, hundreds of children on every street. You can hear the sounds of laughter and the crying of small voices at every turn. Suddenly, at about two o’clock on Shabbat afternoon, the sounds recede. At two-thirty you might hear an occasional baby cry, but that’s about all. It is as if there was not a single child in all of B’nai Brak. Now I know firsthand that you cannot force a six-year-old to nap if he/she is bursting with energy, and I know that the parents in B’nai Brak love their children dearly, consider children their greatest blessing, and their greatest wealth. They would never force a child to sleep. But somehow the magic, the appeal, the necessity, and above all the inviolability of a Shabbat afternoon nap is communicated to thousands upon thousands of young B’nai Brak children, who themselves have learned to nap or to rest or read or play very, very quietly. And if you ever want to see a city come suddenly to life again, a city streaming back to life, teeming with young life, just be in B’nai Brak any Shabbat afternoon at four.
What happens after naptime depends on how late Shabbat ends, and in which community one finds oneself. Every Orthodox community varies. My shul offers youth groups on Shabbat afternoon, led by the community’s own youth. When I was a teenager, for years I led an Oneg Shabbat group, with girls barely two years younger than I. My two sisters did the same thing, and among the three of us we knew every kid in the community. We used to tell stories about Jewish heroes, sing songs, talk about Zionism or Israel, or the parshah. And we would play games. There’s a whole slew of Shabbos games, mostly mental ones, since one cannot write on Shabbat. I think my sister Judy invented most of them. Now, some of my own children lead youth groups, and they do pretty much the same thing. In my daughter’s group is the daughter of a woman whose youth leader I once was.
On Shabbat afternoon, for adults, there are classes in Torah, also in Mishnah and Gemara (the two layers of the Talmud); there are classes for men, simultaneous classes for women, or mixed classes with different subject matter. In some communities no formal classes at all are scheduled, but individuals will find a few friends to study with on a regular basis. Several years ago, in our town, an artist-photographer-mother-of-five on her own initiative started teaching a women’s Mishnah class, scheduled at the same time as the rabbi’s Gemara class. It still meets regularly in shul every Shabbat afternoon, October through June, and has grown from year to year.
Shabbat Minchah service, once again attended mostly by males, has the special feature of introducing the Torah portion of the coming week. Three men are called up for aliyot. These aliyot, however, are different from those of Shabbat morning. Each is but a few sentences long, altogether adding up to one seventh of the entire parshah to be read next Shabbat. Still, the symbolism there is too good to miss. Jews never stop learning Torah. No sooner do they finish this week’s portion than they begin next week’s, which should be studied a bit every day, so that by the following Shabbat, one will have reviewed the entire parshah.
During spring and summer months, the afternoon is longer. It is traditional between Minchah and Maariv to study a work called Pirke Avot or the Ethics of the Fathers. Pirke Avot, which is part of the Mishnah, con
tains aphorisms and choice ethical statements of the Sages of the Talmud. Hundreds of commentaries have been written on the six chapters of this book. In many communities, lay people will take turns with the rabbi in teaching “Perek,” as this work is affectionately called.
All this learning makes Shabbat a mind-stretching day—and the linchpin of a remarkable, popular adult education system.
The mood of Minchah is supposed to be messianic in tone. Shabbat will soon be over, it’s back to the real world, and one hopes for the Messiah to come along and help straighten out the real world.
This mood continues at shaleshudos—more properly called shalosh seudot or seudah shelishit, the third of three Shabbat meals. Shaleshudos is served between Minchah and Maariv. The meal is light; one has eaten enough and the emphasis is spiritual rather than physical. But still, a little physical never hurts: challah and herring, egg salad, club soda and ginger ale, sponge cake or a few kichel. There will be zemirot; perhaps a few words from an out-of-town Jewish dignitary or scholar who happens to be spending Shabbat with relatives, or a Dvar Torah from the rabbi; or a talk by a meshulach trying to raise money for a struggling yeshiva in Israel, then Birkat Hamazon and seudah shelishit is all over in forty minutes.
There is a certain male camaraderie about the shaleshudos served in the subterranean mahogany or walnut channels of the shul—but it is gentle, subdued—and messianic. Nor is there any rejection of the few women who come.
It’s hard to capture this same spirit over shaleshudos in one’s home, but for those who don’t return to shul late Shabbat afternoon, a light meal is served at home: challah, fruit, salads, a cold-fish platter, soda—or coffee if there’s hot water still left in the kettle. … In the summer months, when Shabbat ends late, shaleshudos is often a nice time for inviting guests.
How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household Page 8