Monday 18 January 2021

Electric Transmission of the Reading of the Megillah

 

 

There is an obligation to hear the Megillah of Ester on Purim. Actually, the obligation is to hear it twice, evening and morning.

 

So, can you fulfil the obligation over Zoom?

 

The issue has received significant Halachic attention, as has related questions; can you amplify Torah reading during large weekday services, or respond 'Amen' to a blessing said over the telephone and other related cases.

 

The significant Sugya is in Sukkah 51b which discusses a practice of the Great Synagogue of Alexandria; a Synagogue so large that people at the back couldn't hear what was being said at the front. A flag system was used and when people saw the flag, they would respond Amen. This is called an 'Orphaned Amen,' (see also Brachot 47a). Rashi and Tosafot in Brachot state that this is acceptable since the people knew which blessing was being said, even if they didn't hear the blessing, but the Shulchan Arukh (OH 124:8) states that this only works for general blessings but that the specifically aural Mitzvot (e.g. Shofar and Megillah) cannot be performed unless sound is heard.

 

Then came the invention of electricity and specifically the possibility of using microphones and amplifiers.

 

The two modern approaches are articulated most clearly by Reb Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (Minhat Shlomo 1:9), and Reb Moshe Feinstein (IM OH 2:108).

 

Reb Auerbach states that Halahcically significant hearing can only happen as a result of a mechanical process where the vibrations caused as a sound is produced are in a direct chain of causation with the vibrations that hit the eardrum. As such, electrical transmission of sound cannot be relied on. Auerbach's position - and he makes this explicit, acknowledging the pain this position may cause - means that hearing aids cannot be used during Megillah reading. If a person needs a hearing aid to hear, says Auerbach, they cannot fulfil these Mitzvot, and should not say the blessing.

 

In contradistinction, Reb Feinstein argues that sound is essentially a wave pattern, and since that wave pattern can be captured (by a microphone) and relayed (by a speaker), it is possible to say that a transmitted sound is the same sound as the produced sound. This would allow Mitzvot to be performed on the basis of transferred sound. He points out that the vibrating air molecules at the point of the production of a sound are never the same molecules as vibrate against our eardrum as we hear sound. Sound is always being transferred and relayed from one medium to another.

 

Rav Waldenberg (best known for his work in medical ethics) uses Feinstein's understanding in a position that supportive of a Rabbi who broadcasts the Megillah reading throughout a hospital so as to enable patients to hear it (Tzitz Eliezer 8:11). 

 

I find Feinstein's articulation of the nature of sound, at the very least, reliable in times of a pandemic. In fact, I think you can go further than this. And indeed we should.

 

I do not accept Rav Auerbach's analysis of the nature of hearing. Hearing is not a function of the eardrum, it is a function of the nervous system. All hearing arises as a result of electronic signals firing inside our nerves and brain. Feinstein has to be right that the central question is - are the signals that are being fired along our nerves the same signals that a Megillah reader would produce if we were indeed standing next to such a person? I find the Auerbach's position - which states that a person with a cochlear implant does not hear! - errant, as well as needlessly harsh. 

 

Of course, in an ideal world, a person should be in the same room as a Megillah reader, but I hold that this isn't the only way in which one considers Halachically reliable sound, this year, in the context of Covid.

 

At New London Synagogue we will have a Zoomed Megillah reading (also streamed to our www.facebook.com/newlondonsyn/live page. This system may be relied upon by anyone unable to personally attend a Synagogue in person.

 

See

 "Fulfilling Mitzvot Through Electronic Hearing Devices", Chaim Jachter and Ezra Frazer, Gray Matter volume 2 pp. 237–244. ISBN 1-933143-10-X

https://web.archive.org/web/20080511204358/http://www.yasharbooks.com/grayexcerpt2.pdf

 

Also, Rabbi Jeffrey Fox on the Auerbach position

https://roshyeshivatmaharat.org/category/distance-based-mitzvah-perfomance/?fbclid=IwAR2oFAnNrfNeBS_4_ZKzNppIWiaEsAeuBZy2aEj1B1qZZFP_1OIYY1jtmic

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