[Avodah] ga'al yisrael

[Shlomo Pick]

the MB 66:35 (based upon earlier sources, eg. magen avraham) offers three suggestions to avoid ansering Amen to the bracha of ga'al yisrael, all suggestions to the congregation who will hear the bracha out loud.  there is no suggestion of the chazzan saying it softly.
r. baruch epstein in his baruch she'amar roundly criticizes those chazzanim who say it quietly, and if i recall, even has a prohibition for it.
i remember seeing an article in haPardess defending the chazzanim, but the arguments mustered were not impresive. on the other hand, RYBS said that the bracha should be said aloud, and so it is practiced by R. Sraya Devlitzki in his vatikin minyan in Bnei Brak, and thus has Rav Elyashiv also paskened.
To me, it appears that if the problem could simply be alleviated by the chazzan saying it quietly, why didn't the MB or anyone earlier mention such an option.
Furthermore, according to the Rambam, tefillah bezibbur begins with kadish and barchu and the chazzan should say the entire birchot kriyat shma out loud, and that includes ga'al yisrael.
in OH 59:4 there is a similar issue with the end of ahava rabba/ahavat olam, and the mechaber says one shouldn't answer amen to that bracha so that there should be no hefsek, and here the chazzanim don't say it quietly but the medakdekim say it with the chazzan as suggested by ga'al yisrael.
And if one should retort that bnei ashkenaz are not choshesh for this mechaber based upon the Remah there and MB 59:25, then one should paskin like the ramah in OH 66:7 to answer Amen after the chazzan and evern reports that was the custom.
thus it would appear that the chazzan's silence is a minhag without Ta'am, for it is not consistent (ikvi).
however, after all this, see r. Pheifer's  Ishei Yisrael, pp. 163-4, paragraph 24, and fn 83.
shlomo pick
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20090129/faf68429/attachment-0001.htm>