by R. Gil Student

Some yeshivas (and offices) have the practice of shortening the minchah prayers by utilizing the “short minchah” (or “heikha kedushah“). However, customs differ exactly how to congregants should act during this shortened service.

The Rema (Orach Chaim 124:2; 232:1) cites the Maharil who says that in an emergency, the prayer leader should not repeat the Amidah. Rather, the prayer leader immediately begins the prayer out loud, continues out loud through the Kedushah section until the blessing Ha-Kel Ha-Kadosh, and then proceeds silently. At the same time, the congregants recite every word in those first three blessings together with the leader and then continue silently on their own. In this way, Kedushah is recited quickly with the leader and the prayer is recited only once, without repetition.

The Beis Yosef (Orach Chaim 234) days that this was the common Sephardic practice for minchah every day, even without an emergency. However, the rabbis in Tzefas where he lived attempted to stamp out that practice, excommunicating anyone locally who observed it. Rav Ovadiah Yosef (Yechaveh Da’as 3:16) quotes other Sephardic authorities who similarly opposed this practice. However, as noted above, the Rema allows it in unusual circumstances.

Rav Yosef (ibid.) allows the practice when the repetition of the prayer is endangered. For example, if there are only 10 men in the minyan and some will fail to respond “Amen” to the blessings, the prayer is almost in vain (Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chaim 124:4). In such a case, it is better to have a heikha kedushah than a bad repetition.

The Ba’er Heitev (124:4) notes different practices regarding the heikha kedushah. Sephardim begin their silent prayer together with the leader. If they all stay at the same pace, they will end at the same time. However, Ashkenazim begin their silent prayer only after Kedushah. If they all keep the same pace, the leader will finish before everyone else because he will be done with three blessings as they begin their first. Rav Eliezer Melamed (Peninei Halakhah, Tefillah 19:5) suggests that an Ashkenazi who prays slowly should pray Minchah together with the leader so he can finish in time to answer Kaddish. In my experience, if you pray very slowly and try to pray together with the leader, you may have trouble reaching Kedushah in time.

Rav Hershel Schachter (Nefesh Ha-Rav, pp. 126-127) quotes Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik as preferring the Sephardic practice. He believes that the Kedushah should be part of your Amidah prayer. When the leader is repeating the prayer, he is reciting a prayer as everyone’s representative and the Kedushah is part of it. However, when the leader is merely saying the first three blessings out loud, the Kedushah will only be part of your prayer if you are saying the prayer together with the leader.

While the permission mentioned above only applies to emergencies, others have adopted it as standard practice. Offices are concerned that people must return to work quickly. The yeshivas reportedly argue that their students are losing time from learning–that constitutes an emergency situation. R. Nathan Kamenetsky describes this as “the common assumption” (Making of a Godol, improved edition, p. 612). However, he adds that his father, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, “explained that since the Reader’s repetition was instituted for the benefit of those individuals who were too unlearned to pray on their own (einam beki’im) and had to listen to a Reader, it was recited only in synagogues (batei kenesses), never in study halls (batei midrash) where only scholars congregated” (ibid.)