[Avodah] What will be with Simchas Torah

Akiva Miller akivagmiller at gmail.com
Thu Oct 1 20:12:27 PDT 2020


.
I asked:
> Is this "completion of the Torah" necessarily referring to the
> public laining in shul each Shabbos morning? Can it possibly
> refer just as well to our private learning of the parshios, such
> as those who learned the parsha each week by reading it themselves
> from a chumash while the shuls were closed? Granted that such
> learning was not an actual chiyuv, . . .

Rav Elazar Teitz corrected me:

> It isn't? See OC 285:1.

For those of you who did not look up his reference, it refers to Shnayim
Mikra V'Echad Targum, which of course, is indeed an actual chiyuv.

I *could* justify my comment by saying that there's no chiyuv to read the
Chumash on Shabbos morning between Shacharis and Musaf if one didn't get to
minyan, whereas Shnayim Mikra applies all week long. But I won't say that.
:-)

Instead, I will reiterate and strengthen my first comment: Does anyone
explicitly say that this siyum is on the public laining? Perhaps this siyum
(Simchas Torah) is really on our accomplishment of having completed a full
cycle of Shnayim Mikra! And if so, then this year's Simchas Torah is as
genuine as ever, at least for those people who continued learning even when
the shuls were closed.

In fact, I'll note that when we have a regular Siyum, we generally have the
Mesayem learn his final piece, and that leads to the celebration. We might
begin by sitting down and making Hamotzi, but always, the learning precedes
the celebration. In contrast, on Simchas Torah we dance for hours, and then
we finally settle down to hear Chasan Torah. That's a siyum? But if the
siyum is actually on completing Shnayim Mikra, which should have happened
before leaving for shul, then the dancing is *after* finishing Vezos
Habracha, which makes much more sense.

This segues nicely to something I've been wanting to write for a few months
now...

Once upon a time, I did learn Shnayim Mikra V'Echad Targum regularly. But I
was young, and still in yeshiva, and didn't appreciate the Aramaic, and I
gave up on it. When the shuls closed this past spring, although (as I wrote
above) I felt no obligation to read the parsha, I *did* think it was a good
idea. For lack of minyan, I was davening Vasikin, and this made for a VERY
long Shabbos morning. So after I finished Shacharis, I pulled out my
favorite Chumash (or several of them), and read every single word aloud.

It was a life-changing experience.

Hearing the laining in shul, I often lose my place, or for whatever other
reason I get "stuck" on an interesting pasuk or section, and I spend a few
moments or minutes studying it. Of course, this inevitably leads to missing
other parts of the parsha. But this year, I saw things that I might never
have seen before. With no one else yet awake in the house, I had so much
time to leisurely study it as deeply as I chose to. Eventually, I turned to
Musaf, and quite often I ended up with a nice idea to share at lunch.

When the shuls reopened, that free time was no longer there, but I didn't
want to lose the chance to read every single word. And that's when I
decided to start Shnayim Mikra again, pacing myself through the week. The
schedule changed, but the content is still there - and now in triplicate!

I really didn't expect Onkelos to teach me any new insights into the
parsha, and indeed, my knowledge of Aramaic is so weak that most of his
ideas went way over my head. But reading this Rosetta Stone taught me a
surprising amount of Aramaic and Hebrew! In the very beginning I saw how
proficiency in Shnayim Mikra could help a person's Gemara skills. As time
went on, I noticed patterns of how certain Hebrew words got
consistently translated into Aramaic the same way. I'll share just one
example: I always presumed that the word "techum" (as in "techum Shabbos")
was Hebrew. But I saw at least a half-dozen times where Onkelos uses that
word as a translation of "gevul". My concordance gives close to 300 places
where "gevul" appears in Tanach, and not a single case of "techum". I am
led to conclude that they are not synonyms, but translations.

Another example that I noticed a few days ago: I should have figured this
out decades ago, from the word "yalfinan" ("we learn"), but it was not
until I saw Onkelos on Devarim 33:10 that it dawned on me that "ulpan" -
the place where olim learn Hebrew - is an Aramaic word!

Enough rambling. I have to go finish my sukkah. Chag Sameach, everyone!

Akiva Miller
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