Q&A: Twice the Scripture and Once the Translation
Twice the Scripture and Once the Translation
Question
I’ve been a serious Torah student, thank God, for many years.
And for many years already I’ve been completely lax about the rule of reading the weekly portion twice in the original and once in translation. It bores me and wears me out.
I wanted to ask your view: is there any lenient basis to permit not reading it, or does the law brook no compromise and I absolutely have to do it every single week?
Answer
It’s obvious that you’re a genuine Torah student (not sarcastically). It really is astonishingly boring and not very beneficial. Perhaps there is room to be lenient, since on the face of it the Talmud does not make it sound like a halakhic instruction. Even though the halakhic decisors do tend to treat it that way.
Discussion on Answer
In Shibbolei HaLeket it is written that it is proper to complete the weekly portion twice in the original and once in translation, which implies that it is not an obligation, and Maharshal also ruled this way in practice. (The Magen Avraham too, in section 285, wrote that the wording “A person should always arrange his table” implies that it is not an obligation.)
But in Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh (and other medieval authorities) it says “is obligated.” And one has to consider whether this necessarily means a full-fledged obligation, or whether it is more like “a person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim.”
The point is cleaving to the blessed Creator, plus observing Jewish law. And it is definitely possible to fulfill both through reading the weekly portion twice in the original and once in translation.
If there is intellectual enjoyment in Torah study, which usually happens, that’s a bonus.