Twice a year we face the dilemma of a minhag that has confronted (and at times confounded) congregations for generations. How do we treat the aliyah known as the Tochachah? To whom do we give this section of ominous rebuke that is read this Shabbat (in shelishi) and then, once again, just before Rosh Hashanah in Parashat Ki Tova (in chamishi)? Who would want such an aliyah replete with gloom and menacing warnings of consequences to be faced when the Jewish nation will veer from the Torah’s guiding light?
For sure, the sources record that if a ba’al korei unfortunately has a certain known “enemy” (sonei) among the congregation, that person should not be called up for the Tochahchah. For who knows what evil thoughts and wishes could lurk in the mind of even the best ba’al korei, consciously or subconsciously, wishing for certain of the kelalot (curses) to befall this “enemy” of his (R. Yaakov Emden, Siddur Beit Yaakov).
In fact, there are several practices with relation to just who ought to get this aliyah. I believe the most common, for a long while, is that the ba’al korei himself should be called for the aliyah. Sometimes in congregations where there is a hired shamash, he would be the one called, this being an assumed function of his on behalf of the congregation.
Often, a bar-mitzvah boy who would read his parashah on either of these two Shabbatot would not read the Tochachah for one reason or another. The regular ba’al korei would stand in just for that aliyah.
RaMa indicates that the one who does get the aliyah is not to be called up by name but rather is called up as “mi she-yirtzeh, let he who wishes to come forward do so now” (Orach Chayim428:6). Mishnah Berurah interprets this to mean that the congregation is polled for the person who would want to take the aliyah.
Then there may be some congregations where whoever does get the Tochachah is compensated with an elaborate Mi she-beirach at the conclusion of his aliyah, more elaborate than the ones received by any of the others who were called to the Torah.
But there are even some places where the rav of the congregation would be called for this aliyah, much like the more common practice when the rav is honored with several other aliyot such as in Shirat haYam, in BeShalach, or the Aseret haDibrot in Yitro and Vaetchanan.
I recall as a ba’al korei in my younger years, that a person who had no understanding of what the text is all about but just knew how to recite the birchot hatorah was called naively for this aliyah.
In any event, do whatever the current practice is in your congregation. When I arrived in Passaic at the only pulpit I served throughout my rabbinic years, I asked the gabbai on the first Shabbat Bechukotai to be called up for the Tochachah, and not because it was shlishi.
In subsequent years, on both Shabbat Bechukotai and Ki Tavo I repeatedly commented, almost annually, that my overriding reason for wanting these aliyot is because there are certain favorite pesukim that appear in both versions of the Tochachah which constitute for me a core value in my life. These pesukim, as life went on, became ever more meaningful and dearer to me.
Now, I am well aware and fully convinced of RaMBaM’s assertion as a fundamental of Jewish faith that every passuk of Torah is divine and was communicated from G-d unto Moshe Rabbeinu. Every pasuk had equal sanctity. Still, I never felt that a believing Jew was precluded from having most favored verses or sections for one reason or another.
In Bechukotai, the last four or five pesukim, the finale of the Tochachah, are the ones with which I have been enamored all the way back to my teen years, for reasons that have become fully apparent to me only later in life (Vayikra 26:42-45). The end of the Tochachah is G-d’s promise that a “deal is a deal”, so to speak, despite the rough mishaps and hitches along the way. That is what a covenant denotes in contrast to a simple contract. The terms of a contract may be renegotiated and, at times, even reversed. Not so for a covenant that is eternal. The B’rit Sinai among all the rest of its conditions stated that, despite the foreboding consequences of Jews veering from Torah and its mitzvoth at various times, the resulting dispersion will always have an inviolable condition whereby B’nai Yisrael remain for all times as G-d’s chosen nation (passuk 44). Moreover, just as the singular purpose of having been rescued from Egyptian bondage was to accept the Torah and continue on with it to Eretz Yisrael, so too, the Jewish people are to know always that this redemptive process - galut followed by return to Torah and to the promised land - will be repeated as a covenantal pattern throughout Jewish history.
This idea was so well expressed by the Rav, Rabbi Soloveichik, ZT”L, in his Kol Dodi Dofek in which he states that there may have been as many as six divinely engineered miracles, six knocks of G-d at our doors, so to speak, that became evident with the founding of the State of Israel.
The fourth of those “knocks” is a “knock …on the theological tent, and it may very well be that this is the strongest knock of all. When speaking of the land of Israel, all the claims of Christian theologians [have been] that all the biblical promises regarding Zion and Jerusalem refer, in an allegorical sense, to Christianity and the Christian church. [These] have been publicly refuted by the establishment of the State of Israel and have been exposed as falsehoods, lacking all validity.”
The notion of galut followed by the irrevocable promise of redemption is basic to our fundamentals of faith. Moshe Rabbeinu speaks of this in Parashat Nitzavim (See Devarim 30). Most all of the nevi’im echo the same promise.
This recurrent pattern is perhaps the reason that Shulchan Aruch (O.Ch. 559:5) codifies the minhag that, at the end of the string of mournful Tisha b’Av Kinot, the finale must be “k’tzat nechamah”, a short passage of solace reminding us of the divine irrevocable promise that Jews will come home under the merciful and watchful eye of their Father in Heaven. Therefore, as the Kinot are concluded, when properly recited by a chazzan in the know, the melody of the nusach correctly changes from the mournful sounds of a dirge, typical for Kinot, to a triumphant tone (a major scale like that which is intoned for the reading of Shirat haYam in BeShalach or the passages of the masa’ot at the beginning of Parashat Mass’ei). For these concluding p’sukim are those of p’sukai nechamah that come to remind us of G-d’s never forsaken people and the promise of their glorious return home.
All this is why I wanted for decades to be called up for the aliyah when the Tochachah was to be read. For I knew that one day I would merit being part of the great return of our people to our homeland, just as HaKadosh Baruch Hu promised.
Shabbat Shalom.
