HOW TO CARRY THE TORAH

“It occurs to me that the Torah is held on the left shoulder (heart side) if a person is right-handed and on the right side if a person is left-handed, following the custom of the Tefillin wrapping.” (From Dr. Floyd Fierman, El Paso, Texas.)

WHAT requirements, if any, are there in the legal literature with regard to how the Torah should be taken out of the Ark (i.e., with which hand, etc.) and how should it be carried to the reading desk? The analogy suggested in the question with the tefillin is a helpful one. The Talmud is very specific with regard to the tefillin. The tefillin shel yad shall be put on the left arm of a right-handed person and on the right arm of a left-handed person (b. Menachos 37a ff.). Some such parallel is indeed implied in some of the later legal literature with regard to handling the Torah, as will be seen. Of course there is this basic difference between the tefillin and the Torah: the tefillin are required to be worn by each person, but no one is required to have the Torah with him constantly except, perhaps, the king (see Deuteronomy 17: 18, 19). The king is required to have the Torah with him at all times, but Scripture does not specify how this Torah should be handled. As for the average person who comes into contact with the Torah only occasionally, there are certainly no legal specifications (in Bible or Talmud) as to how he shall handle the Torah.

While it is true that neither the Bible nor the Talmud has any requirement as to how the Torah should be handled, some such requirement begins to appear very soon in post-Talmudic times. The Tractate Soferim 3:10, a Gaonic tractate, states that he who hands a Sefer Torah to another man should give it with his right hand and the recipient should take it with his right hand. This requirement, if it can actually be called a requirement, is based on the verse in Deuteronomy 33:2: “From His right hand, He gave them a fiery law,” i.e., since, according to this poem, God gave the Torah with His right hand, we should always handle it with our right hand. Perhaps the next reference is in Sefer Chassidim (109) written in the Rhineland in the twelfth century, which quotes the statement in Tractate Soferim almost verbatim.

From this source the requirement of handling the Torah with the right hand found its way into the law gradually, apparently through the Ashkenazim. The classic Sephardic authorities do not mention it at all. Thus, there is no such requirement in the Tur (written by Jacob ben Asher in the fourteenth century in Spain) in Orah Hayyim 134, which would be the natural place to mention it since he speaks of taking out the Torah. Nor does Joseph Caro in his Bes Joseph, his great commentary on the Tur, make any reference to it. However, Moses Isserles of Cracow, in his commentary Darche Moshe to the Tur, quoting a Rhineland authority, Maharil (Jacob Moellin), says he should take the Torah with his right hand; but here he cites as a proof text, not the verse given in Soferim from Deuteron-omy, that God gave the law with His right hand, but the verse from Song of Songs 2:6: “With his right hand doth he embrace me.”

Likewise in the Shulchan Aruch, Joseph Caro himself makes no mention of which hand should take out the Torah from the Ark but, again, Isserles in his note does mention it. Furthermore, the latest authorities seem to bear in mind the analogy with the tefillin. Ephraim Z. Margolis of the last century, in his Shaare Ephraim (section 10) says that the man should take the Torah out with his right hand, but if he is left-handed, he should take it out with his left hand. The requirement of using the right hand (for average right handed people) has become a fixed rule with Ashkenazim at least, and is to be found in the two latest authorities in discussing this Shulchan Aruch section, namely, the Aruch ha-Shulchan by Jehiel Epstein and the Mishnah Berura by the Chofetz Chaim.

Now, having taken it out with his right hand, should he rest it on his left shoulder or on his right shoulder? In this regard there is not even a semblance of a requirement. There are two hints, but they seem to be mutually contradictory. If Isserles (and Maharil, his source) quote the verse from the Song of Songs, “His right hand embraceth me,” it would seem to imply that it should be the right hand which curls around the Torah and presumably the Torah then rests on the right shoulder. On the other hand, Dov Ber Reifman, in his classic work on the rules governing the Torah reading, Shulchan ha-Keriah, page 12, says that the man should indeed take it out with his right hand, but carry it against his heart ( k’neged libo). This would imply that when you take it out with your right hand, you rest it on your left shoulder against the heart. This procedure would seem to be the natural one, but there is no clear requirement with regard to it.

To sum up, then, there is no definite requirement in the Talmud as to which hand should take out the Torah; but based upon the post-Talmudic treatise Soferim, the Ashkenazim gradually developed the rule that the right hand should always take it out of the Ark (except for a left- handed man). As to which shoulder it should rest against, only the vague reference of Reifman (k’neged libo) and perhaps, too, the convenience of handling seems to require that it should rest against the left shoulder.