Q&A: Weekly Torah Portion Twice and Targum Once
Weekly Torah Portion Twice and Targum Once
Question
I don’t have the energy for reading the weekly Torah portion twice and the Targum once. Do you have some kind of leniency, or something like that?
Answer
In the Talmud it does not sound like this is Jewish law, but rather a good practice (that one’s days and years are lengthened). However, the halakhic decisors did not take it that way.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t see how this proves that it is a halakhic obligation. These could be directives or recommendations. Just as the testamentary instructions of Rabbi Yehuda HaHasid are not Jewish law.
In Rav Bibi bar Abaye’s case, it doesn’t look like a recommendation. He needed to complete the portions before Simchat Torah and thought the eve of Yom Kippur was a good time. They told him to find another time, and that it was preferable to do it together with the congregation.
Same as above. It could be a good practice.
Why is it that when the halakhic decisors adopt something, that doesn’t give it the power to obligate, like an obligation from the Talmud?
The question is why the Talmud has authority, not why the halakhic decisors do not. Because we accepted the Talmud upon ourselves. And “the decisors” are a collection of people, not an institution, and no one accepted them, or any of them.
If I may ask the Rabbi (for Torah it is): does the Rabbi himself practice reading the weekly portion twice and the Targum once?
If this were merely in the category of good advice, then from their perspective fulfilling the practice of reading the weekly portion twice and the Targum once would ostensibly be a qualitative waste of Torah study time.
That’s hairsplitting. According to your approach, there would be no room at all for things that are advice or good practice, since it would always be a waste of Torah study time.
Rabbi, forgive me, but already in the Talmud they relate to this as an obligation, as the Talmud brings a number of stories:
“Rav Bibi bar Abaye thought to complete the Torah portions of the entire year on the eve of Yom Kippur. Chiyya bar Rav of Difti taught him: It is written, ‘And you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month in the evening’ (Leviticus 23:32). Do we fast on the ninth? Surely we fast on the tenth! Rather, this teaches that anyone who eats and drinks on the ninth, Scripture considers it as though he fasted on the ninth and the tenth. He thought to do them earlier. A certain elder said to him: We learned only that one must not read earlier and must not read later, as Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to his sons: Complete your portions together with the congregation, twice Scripture and once Targum” (Berakhot 8b).
And in the midrash: In the midrash, Rabbi our Holy Teacher instructed his sons in three matters at the time of his passing: that you should not eat bread on the Sabbath until you finish the entire portion (cited in Tosafot there, on “yashlim”).