has, always, the right as a congregation to make decisions excluding sinners from being called up. He adds that many Hun garian congregations have long made such decisions as a“fence against evildoers.”
The difficulties involved in this question are reflected in the very wording of the dispute as it was presented to Simon ben Zemach Duran. Some of the disputants considered that what was involved was kevodei ha-Torah , the honor due to the Torah , and therefore the dignity of the service. Other disputants insisted that to come up to the Torah reading was an obligation, a mitzvah, and therefore we have no right to keep a man from his religious duty.
The fact is that the legal literature never clearly defines the true status of this function. For example, is being called up to the Torah to be deemed as a religious duty, incumbent upon every Jew, just as praying three times a day is a duty? If it is a duty, then it would not be possible to debar a man from it, and thus prevent him from performing a mitzvah. Maimonides says(Hilchot Tefilla, XV, 6) in a somewhat analogous situation, speaking of a priest who had sinned:“We do not tell a man to add to his sin by neglecting a mitzvah.”
But being called up to the Torah may not be a mitzvah at all. It may be a right that any Jew can claim and, therefore, could protest if he were not called up to the Torah after a long time. There is no doubt that many pious Jews consider this a right which they can demand, and object if they are not called up. The Talmud (Berachos 55a) says that if a man is given a Torah to read and does not read it, his life will be shortened. Therefore it is believed by some that to refuse to go up to the Torah shortens one’s life(see Yesodei Yeshurun II, 201). A Yemenite, some time ago in Israel , sued the officers of his congregation on the ground that they were prejudiced against him and had not called him up to the Torah for a long time. He was suing for what he called his rights as a Jew. Certainly many Jews have that feeling, whether it is so in the law. Then again, it may be neither a duty on a man’s part which he must fulfill, nor a right which he may demand, but a privilege which the congregation confers. In that case, the congregation can bestow that privilege upon whomever it deems worthy and withhold it from whomever it judges unworthy.
Since this basic definition of what the status of the ceremony is(duty, right, or privilege) has not been clarified in the law, the probabilities are that the status is vague and that it has the nature