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without the blessings, which women may not say.| lis argument rests on minority opinions and hiddushim(novelli). He cites an opinion that he says J. B. Soloveitchik attributed to his uncle, R. that

fulfillment of the obligation of Torah reading is incomplete with­

Velvele, an opinion for which there is no written source

out the blessings. He then cites a hiddush of the Magen Avraham," who contends, based on the commandment of hakhel(assembly to hear the book of the law described in Deut. 31), that women are required to hear the Torah read. Schachter, however, has omitted the second part of the citation. The complete citation reads:“It is written in Massekhet Sofrim: Women are obligated to hear the reading of the scroll as men are, and one is obligated to translate for them so that they understand. But here the women are accustomed to go outside.” The commentator contrasts the law of hakhel with the antithetical minhag ha-makom, but he does not condemn nor seek to eradicate the minhag ha-makom.

Schachter, on the other hand, concludes that women must hear the Torah read with its blessings. To reach this conclusion he places the condition attributed to R. Velvele upon the require­ment of the Magen Avraham’s, piling one minority opinion atop another. But in an implicit concession that this evidence will be less than universally convincing, he argues that even those who disagree that women are so obligated would have to agree that the commandment is fulfilled fully in a male minyan, whereas “by themselves[women] have only a facsimile and a vestige (dugma ve-zekher)” of the real thing.

Similarly, Schachter seeks to argue that the reading of Megillat Esther is another commandment that can be fulfilled completely only by attendance at what he calls“a regular,[that is, male] minyan.” Without citing the explicit statement of B. Megillah 4a that women are obligated in Megillah reading, he moves imme­diately to the dispute among the Rishonim as to whether women counted in the Megillah minyan. Citing the Shulhan Arukh and the Rema, he argues that without a minyan one may not say the con­cluding blessing. This is Schachter’s only acknowledgment that there is a body of opinion contending that the obligation of Megillah may be fulfilled without a minyan. For neither the issue of women counting in a minyan for Megillah nor for the question of whether a minyan is required for the final blessing does