Beth Abraham encourages members to lead challenging weekly ritual

Cantor Andrea Raizen (Center) with Beth Abraham Synagogue lay Torah readers (L to R): Elaine Arnovitz, Steve Horenstein, & Norm Lewis

 

By Martha Moody Jacobs, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

Shavuot, which falls this year on May 29 and 30, is known as Hag Matan Torateinu, the Festival of the Giving of our Torah. According to Jewish tradition, although the Jewish people were given the Torah at Mt. Sinai, we never cease to receive the Torah, through continuous study of its teachings.

Fourteen members of Beth Abraham Synagogue — nine men and five women — receive the gifts of Torah hands-on during Saturday morning services. These 14 are the Conservative synagogue’s Shabbat Torah readers.

They are assigned their six to 10 lines weeks in advance. On some Saturdays, all the Torah reading is done by laypeople, up to five in one service.

Rabbi Bernard Barsky sees an enormous benefit in this. “In most places, Torah reading is done only by the cantor or rabbi,” he says. “Some people, especially older people, have this awe about the Torah, and this brings them close to it…it just pulls people in.”

The number of lay Torah readers has grown since Barsky arrived at Beth Abraham in 2003.

At the time, congregant Steve Jacober was eager to start a Torah-reading class for laypeople. Barsky gave Jacober his enthusiastic support, and the first Jacober-led class, including several women, graduated a dozen readers.

“I had been doing Haftorahs (public weekly readings from the Prophets) and just wanted to expand my abilities,” Ralph Williams recalls. “I feel it’s a service to the congregation and a learning experience for me.”

Karin Hirschkatz grew up in a Conservative synagogue when women didn’t read from the Torah. She had her first experience reading Torah at her son’s Bar Mitzvah. At the time, she memorized the tropes — the ancient system of musical notations connected to reading the Torah — from listening to a tape and singing along.

Hirschkatz joined Jacober’s second class to learn to read Torah trope; she’s chanted from the Torah monthly at Beth Abraham now for three years.

“My parents were observant,” Hirschkatz says, “and it’s a connection to them.” Neither of her parents lived to see her read.

While reading the Torah at Beth Abraham Synagogue for Saturday morning Shabbat services, Hirschkatz tries to keep what she calls a “vertical focus.”

She makes a point not to look at the worshipers sitting in the sanctuary. “I focus on trying to be an instrument and not thinking it’s about me at all.”

When Jacober left Dayton in 2007 to become the executive director of a synagogue in Washington, D.C., Beth Abraham’s new cantor, Andrea Raizen, took over the six-week Torah-reading class.

Her first class graduated last spring; a new one starts soon.

“I love empowering people to take on this mitzvah,” Raizen says.

Steve Horenstein and Norm Lewis both learned Hebrew growing up. Raizen asked them to join her class. Both men wanted the challenge.

“The tropes aren’t all that difficult,” Williams says. “There’s a limited number, and there are a limited number of words in the Torah, so you start to recognize (them).”

Raizen laughs. “Adults pick this thing apart and are so analytical. Kids just repeat the trope and we sing.”

She tells her adult students to stick with it. “It’s hard, but at some point it kicks in. People think I just go up there and read off the cuff. If I’m reading that week, I study all week long.”

Beth Abraham Synagogue is on a triennial Torah cycle. One-third of each week’s Torah portion is read over the course of a year; the entire cycle is completed over three years.

Conservative and Orthodox synagogues also read from the Torah during morning services on Mondays and Thursdays. Longtime congregant and veteran Torah reader, Dr. Leonard Spialter, reads the Torah for Beth Abraham’s weekday services.

Torah readers study from a book called a tikun kor’im, which contains facing versions of each portion, the right side of each page with the vowels and trope markings and the left side without, as it appears in the Torah scroll.

Hirschkatz, Horenstein, Lewis and Williams review the English translations of each text.

“It’s easier to memorize the portion if you know what it’s about,” says Horenstein.  “Sometimes you end up with a famous phrase,” Lewis says.

“There’s a certain aspect of (Torah reading) that’s like a performance,” Williams says. “If I’m more fluent in understanding what I’m reading and doing, it becomes more spiritual.”

After each reading, Horenstein feels excited. “It’s sort of a spiritual high.”

Lewis mentions his satisfaction in “being part of the tradition and helping to carry it on.”

Williams feels good “any time I see or feel or hear that it’s made a difference to the congregation.”

Horenstein practices his Torah lines before he goes to bed each night. Sometimes he dreams he is reading the Torah and loses his place. “I’m hoping I outgrow that,” he says.

“I still get excited,” Lewis says. “I hope it never wears off. I mean, this is the Torah.”