Community Magazine February 2014

28 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE Mishnah Berurah Tiferet A Groundbreaking Halachic Work for Sepharadim A.D. COHEN L egend has it that when Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan (1839-1933), who is more commonly known as the Hafetz Haim, was working on his seminal halachic work, Mishnah Berurah , his son asked him why he was toiling so intensely on this project. The Hafetz Haim, as he was wont to do, answered by way of an analogy. He said that although the process of building and laying train tracks is fraught with danger, people risk their lives doing so because they know that one day a train will pass smoothly through the tracks they helped construct. “That is exactly what I am doing,” the Hafetz Haim avowed. “I am laboring relentlessly on the Mishnah Berurah because I want that one day the road of halachah will be smooth for the Jewish nation!” The Hafetz Haim authored numerous important works of Torah literature, but none as celebrated as the Mishnah Berurah , a masterful halachic text which took him30 years to compose.The six-volumework is arranged as a commentary to the first section of the Shulhan Aruch , and compiles the rulings and commentaries of leading Ashkenazic scholars who lived from the time of the Shulhan Aruch’s publication until the time of the Hafetz Haim. Each and every halachah, from the laws of Shabbat and Yom Tov to the proper procedure upon waking in the morning, is intricately sourced, expounded on and explained. The Mishnah Berurah is unique in its being accessible for the layman while also providing depth and intricacy for the scholar. Students and rabbis alike find the text enjoyable to learn and the information immensely valuable for the study of practical halachah. In the decades following its publication, the Mishnah Berurah earned a special place of prominence in the contemporary Torah world, and both the Hazon Ish and Rabbi Aharon Kotler chose the Mishnah Berurah as the text yeshivah students should utilize for the study of practical halachah. And thus the Hafetz Haim’s classic work became the foremost halachic text for Ashkenazic Jewry. ASepharadi Student’s Dilemma As Sephardic Jewry began to attend prominent Ashkenaz yeshivot, a newfound dilemma surfaced. Sephardic halachah, of course, does not always conform to the Ashkenazic tradition, and thus a Sephardic student cannot acquire the halachic training he needs from the study of the Mishnah Berurah . The alternatives were Sephardic halachic works, such as the Kaf Ha’haim (by Rabbi Yaakov Haim Sofer, 1870-1939), which are far less lucid than the Mishnah Berurah and more difficult to study. As a solution to this dilemma, Hacham Ovadia Yosef, zt”l instituted in Yeshivat Hazon Ovadia that the students should continue