Q&A: Validity of a Megillah
Validity of a Megillah
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi!
In Megillah 19b, Tosafot on the words “and Rabbi Yehuda validates” say that a blind person can fulfill others’ obligation, and the Rema ruled this as Jewish law in Orach Chayim 139:3 (in contrast to the Shulchan Arukh, which says that a blind person should not be given the Torah reading). Today it would seem that blind people should be allowed to read from the Torah, or at least receive an aliyah.
My question following from that is: would a Megillah be valid if it were written both in Assyrian script and in Braille? Meaning, after a space between verses there would be Braille in between, since a blind person cannot read it by heart, because one does not fulfill the obligation that way.
Thank you very much for your time!
Answer
Why make one Megillah with two kinds of script instead of making a special Megillah for the blind? Still, one could discuss whether Braille is valid as script in a Megillah. My intuition is that it is no worse than a Megillah in another language and another script. But precisely if Braille is valid as script, it should not be written inside a regular Megillah, because then one script would invalidate the other.