Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Yoma 70 - Question and Answer

In learning today's daf, the following question occurred to me:
One of the reasons that the Gemora gives as to why the Kohen Gadol reads the parsha from Pinchas b'al peh is that taking out a 2nd sefer would necessitate an unnecessary brocha. Why could they not take out 2 Sifrei Torah at the same time as we do and read from each one as needed? Wouldn't the Kohen gadol be able to say the same brocha on both seforim?
Dov Dubovick
Chicago, IL

From learning the gemora and the fact that the gemora asked only on the second reason your question and not on the first reason, it seems evident that a second sefer torah would require another brocha and for the kohen gadol to recite both would be unnecessary.

I will check more though

A little further research seems to say that the reshash asks your kasho and adds that he has in mind on the second torah, so there should be only one brocha. The sevara I mentioned before is stated that each sefer should have its own brocha due to kovod hatorah.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

We were me'ayen into this kasha a bit further and came up with a teretz based on the loshon of the gemorah, the kasha is phrased: "Are we concerned with p'gam? But the braisa says..." That's mashma that the kasha was only according to Rav Huna Bar Yehuda that there's a problem of p'gam, but according to Reish Lokish that the problem is because of an unnecessary brocha, this isn't shver to begin with, because with 3 people in 3 seforim you certainly need 3 brochos. The only thing we need to explain is why should the same person have to make a new brocha b'chlal? Perhaps the reason is because there's a hefsek of rolling up the 1st sefer and opening the 2nd one or because a new sefer requires a new brocha (that's why when you call 3 people from 3 seforim each one says a brocha, even though when 7 people were called for the same sefer only the first one and the last one said a brocha).