On the High Holidays, I talked about what your Jewishness 2.0 for you might look like. I presented a very specific challenge, that I’d like to repeat and emphasize here.

What’s the hardest skill in Judaism? Reading from the Torah. The script looks like what you see above the bima: No vowels, no punctuation, and you have to chant it according to the notes, but the notes are not in the Torah itself. You have to learn it in advance. But when you do, when
you come up here and chant from the Torah in a service, there is no
feeling quite like it. You have done the holiest thing there is.

I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m looking for 18 people who will read at least one Aliyah on a Shabbos or holiday morning this year. It can be any Shabbos or holiday morning that’s good for you. We can arrange it far in advance. It can be an Aliyah as short as three verses, which is three sentences. But you have to do it correctly; no looking back and forth to the book like the Rabbi has to do in a pinch. We’ll
give you a tape or an MP3. We’ll give you the page from the Tikkun that has both the reading wiand without the vowels. We’ll practice it with you on the bima beforehand.

I will contribute $20 to the Izzie
Juda Holocaust Torah Fund for
each reader, but only if there are
18. I’m hoping people will
encourage each other. That would
be 360, 20 times Chai, which
means “Life.” If there are more
than 18, I’ll give $36 to the Izzie
Judah Holocaust Torah Fund for
each one above that number.

No one gets grandfathered in;
even if you have read before or
you read during the week, you
have to do something on a
Shabbos or holiday. By the way,
Izzie Juda read Torah for the first
time at a service I led at the
Towers when he was in his late
90’s. Just saying. You’ve heard of
the Pepsi Challenge? This is the
Izzie Challenge.

Why am I doing this? To show you
that you can do anything. Again,
this is the hardest skill in Judaism.
If you can do this, you can do
anything else. And you will feel
your Jewishness in a very
complete way.
Rabbi Benjamin E. Scolnic