Episode 22 - Can You Lead Prayers on a Fast if You're Not Fasting? (Transcript)

Rav Avi: Hello, and welcome to Responsa Radio, where you ask and we answer questions of Jewish law in modern times! I am Rabbi Avi Killip, and I am here with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Rosh Yeshiva at Mechon Hadar, a center for higher Jewish learning based in New York City.

Rav Eitan: Hello, Avi!

Rav Avi: "May a person who has been told by their doctor that they may not fast -- may they lead services on Yom Kippur? Is there a difference if they already knew that they could not fast when they accepted the role, versus someone who discovered the fact that they couldn't fast afterwards? And then, what if they lead an evening service having not yet eaten, but are planning to eat later? And is there any difference if this is a woman who is pregnant versus a person with some kind of illness?"

Rav Eitan: There's a lot in that question.

Rav Avi: There's a lot there.

Rav Eitan: Alright. Well, let's talk first generally about leading on a fast day when you're not fasting, and then we can head into Yom Kippur and some of these different questions. And just as sort of a frame overall here, I think there's two issues that for me, when I think about this, come to the fore. One is an issue of truth -- that is to say, is the person going to be saying or articulating anything that is false as a prayer leader by dint of not fasting? And then there's an issue of representation, can they somehow be representative and the emissary as a non-faster of people who are fasting? And those don't necessarily cut in exactly the same way. So let's kind of get the basic building blocks on this.

There is stuff that is different on fast days. Let's go outside of Yom Kippur for a minute now, just think about fast days like the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha b'Av and, you know, Tzom Gedalia and the tenth of Tevet, days like that. There are things that are actually different in the davening -- already in the Talmud it's reported that, oh, you're supposed to add in special stuff for them at each of the prayers in the day, it actually says explicitly, at the evening prayer and the morning prayer and the afternoon prayer. And it seems that that is probably something like what we have today in our siddurim, which is the aneinu paragraph, which is this paragraph where we say G-d, answer us b'yom tzom ta'anitenu, on this fast day when we are refraining from eating.

Now Rashi, on that Talmudic passage, reports a Gaonic tradition, so from the post-Talmudic period, that actually restricts this Talmudic statement, which said, oh, you add in these special paragraphs in the evening and in the morning and in the afternoon, and said no, actually you don't say them in the evening and the morning. Why? Because the person might not complete the fast. And so if they start saying oh, answer me on this fast day and then the next day they break the fast, it's completely false. And we only let them say it at mincha because we're confident that if they made it fasting to mincha, they're probably gonna make it to the end of the day, and at that point we don't worry about it.

Rav Avi: That's so interesting, it's the whole concept of making a decision about an action now based on what may or may not happen in the future.

Rav Eitan: Yeah, it's very unusual in that way, and actually a kind of compromise ends up emerging, which is we have the leader on fast days actually say that aneinu paragraph in the public amidah in the morning, but we only have the individuals say it at mincha. And the leader also says it at the mincha, at the afternoon prayer. So there's some degree of hedging of, like, hey, it's a fast day, don't we have to be saying something publicly?

Rav Avi: And that compromise sounds like it's hinged on the idea that we have extra faith in the fasting ability of the leader.

Rav Eitan: So, that may well be right, and this takes us directly to that question of how do we think about the leader, because what that little discussion seems to reveal is we do indeed care that the person who says this aneinu paragraph is fasting -- even if we suspect they won't be fasting, we don't want them to say it. But certainly, it would seem, if they're not fasting, they can't say that.

Rav Avi: Right. So step one is, does it even matter if they're fasting? And the answer is yes, it does.

Rav Eitan: It seems to be; however, it gets more complicated. Rav Yehuda Gaon, who is one of the figures in the Gaonic period, when you go back and actually look at what he says, so he clarifies, yeah, a leader who's not fasting can't be a leader, because he can't say aneinu. So let's say you have someone who's normally their job to lead the community in prayer -- you've got to take them out that day if it turns out for some reason they're not fasting, because how can they say "on our fast day," b'yom tzom ta'anitenu? The Tur, Rav Yaakov bar Asher, considers this ruling and rejects it, and he says, I don't understand -- that person could just get up and say, answer us on this fast day. Sure, he can't say it in some first-person plural form, but who says that's the necessary form of the prayer? And certainly, even for someone who's not fasting but is davening in a community of fasters, they can refer to it objectively as a fast day.

Rav Avi: Wow, that would be pretty dramatic, I think, if it happened.

Rav Eitan: Right. So it would single a person out, it would not be a good idea if it was not common knowledge that the person was fasting, but there's some notion there that yeah, you know, at the end of the day, you're representing a community, you can sort of acknowledge this community is doing something, and I'm doing it on their behalf, even if I'm not one hundred percent fully into it. So, even the Tur agrees, definitely, you should ideally have someone who's fasting lead. But he clearly entertains the idea that if for some other reason -- there's no one as qualified, certainly if there's no one else who can do it effectively, you wouldn't knock that person out of leading and have the community be much worse off because of this concern about how to say the words.

Rav Avi: And on a philosophical level, that opens up the possibility or the acknowledgement of the reality that a leader may not always have the same experiences of the person that they are davening with and for. Which seems especially striking on Yom Kippur, when we do a lot of first-person plural praying of things that we may not think of ourselves.

Rav Eitan: That said, the Shulkhan Arukh kind of backs off that, the reading of Rav Yehuda Gaon, and basically says, you're not fasting, you can't lead on a fast day, and just leaves it at that. Now, later interpreters try to walk that back, and essentially say, well, yeah, that's true for when picking someone, you definitely shouldn't pick someone, but they try to suggest that even the Shulkhan Arukh would agree, let's say someone began leading mincha and then it was clear once they're already standing up there that they're not fasting, and they realize it -- do they at that point, like, stop praying the amidah? Do they interrupt what's happening?

And the Magen Avraham wants to say, no no no, for sure in that case, even the Shulkhan Arukh would agree you kind of rely on the Tur's approach and you would just change the language. And that, I think, begins to open up a whole set of questions of what does it mean that someone has already started davening, right? I would say, from someone who did these kinds of gigs for many, many years, when a synagogue has signed you up in April to lead the High Holidays that year, you have already started davening, right? Like, you are locked into that arrangement, it's gonna cause all kinds of havoc at that point to dump that community, them to dump you, without even getting into another factor, which none of these sources are engaging, which is some of the financial issues that come up as someone who's committed to do something and they're, for better or worse, relying on some of the income that comes in from that, it's a much more extreme thing to say that person has to quit and drop out of that commitment as opposed to I'm looking around the room and saying hey, can you daven mincha, can you daven mincha, and then, okay, I'm gonna prefer someone who's fasting.

Rav Avi: Right. And the most extreme case of that would probably be a cantor or a paid year-round leader in a synagogue.

Rav Eitan: That's right. And so when we get to the Yom Kippur piece, that'll be a particularly aggravating factor, because there is this basic element of that is their job, right? Like, the cantor's entire job, on some level, is to lead Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, if not anything else, in a way that, yeah, the 17th of Tammuz, I think you can find a backup. Alright, so let's turn now to Yom Kippur. Because Yom Kippur is actually interesting in this way, in that it's different from the other fast days. The other fast days, particularly the ones like shiva asar b'tammuz and the non-Tisha b'Av ones, are not really days on the calendar other than being fast days. That is to say, if you are not fasting on the 17th of Tammuz, you are not observing the 17th of Tammuz. Yom Kippur is completely different -- it is a day where people who don't fast are expected not to do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with fasting. You are lighting candles.

And actually one of the things that's striking about the Yom Kippur liturgy, if you pay close attention to it, is it actually almost never talks about fasting. You are fasting in the background, but the actual paragraphs of the rabbinic text, other than, you know, poems that refer to it, and sure, the term yom tzom kippur comes up in prayers like unetaneh tokef, but in the actual description of what's going on, it's a day of atonement, it's a day of refraining from forbidden labor, et cetera, et cetera, it is sort of actually optically neutral on some level with respect to fasting in a way that this aneinu prayer is not.

Rav Avi: And on an even more abstract level, existentially, theologically, something is happening on that day for you, even if you're not fasting.

Rav Eitan: That's correct. And this notion, even, very powerfully captured in the rabbinic idiom itzumo shel yom mechaper, the power of Yom Kippur is that there's something about the day itself which atones. The fasting is this very central ritual, but it's not as if the fasting is itself the body of the spiritual cleanse, as it were, where by fasting my sins are erased; it's that fasting puts me in a mindset of repentance such that the day can be effective to do that. But the day actually has the power to do that on its own, right? No one ever suggested that a person who doesn't fast on Yom Kippur for legitimate reasons doesn't experience full atonement from G-d on that day.

Rav Avi: Thank G-d.

Rav Eitan: Thank G-d. This comes up in a very technical sense, where Rabbi Akiva Eger is asked whether someone who is not fasting on Yom Kippur on doctor's orders can have an aliyah in the morning, in shul. And Rabbi Akiva Eger says, in the morning of course you can give it to them, no question, because it is a day when you would have to read Torah anyway. Like, just on shabbat morning, you read seven aliyot, on Yom Kippur because it's a sacred day, you're reading six aliyot.

So you hear me say in the morning, he says, but I'm less sure about the afternoon. In the afternoon, when people are reading Torah, is it like shabbat afternoon, when we read Torah just because it's a holy day? Or is it like the other time we read Torah reading in the afternoon, which is a fast day, which you only read Torah in the afternoon because people are fasting? And, like, if you had ten Jews who weren't fasting on shiva asar b'tamuz and they gathered for mincha, they wouldn't read Torah. So I think he doesn't take up the question of leading, but a simple extrapolation of his analysis would lead to saying that actually whether you're fasting or not is irrelevant in terms of this set of concerns to whether you can lead. Because everyone, whether or not they're fasting, is required to pray all five of those tefilot on Yom Kippur, everyone is fully obligated in those -- yeah, there's this other obligation of fasting which this person may be exempt from, but actually vis a vis these concerns of is it false or are they sort of unable to actually discharge that obligation, that would seem to be a pretty straight-up answer of not fasting on Yom Kippur is not a disability to leading the davening.

Now, that said, to go back to my initial piece where I said there's issues of truth, I think the truth issue is not impacted here at all. But the representation issue might be a little more complicated. And this goes to a sort of grayer area of who's fit to lead on Yom Kippur at all. You have these really interesting statements in the Shulkhan Arukh that a person under the age of 30 shouldn't be leading davening on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when at all possible, because you want someone who essentially has experienced enough of life to have had enough pain that they can actually represent and communicate with the congregation.

Rav Avi: It's like they have to have some regrets.

Rav Eitan: Yeah, they've gotta have an understanding of what it is to be imperfect and not feel invincible. And I can imagine, again, a community, and I think this would be my preference, when picking from the outset who should lead, not to just, you know, flip a coin between someone who has a medical exemption and doesn't fast and eats on Yom Kippur and someone who makes sure they don't eat on Yom Kippur, but to prefer the person who doesn't eat because there's an aspect where they will be tapped into that element of the communal drama that this other person will not.

Rav Avi: Is there any halakhic language around the value of they're a beautiful davener? Like, they do a beautiful daven, they're gonna make a really spiritual experience for a community.

Rav Eitan: So yeah, actually, the Tur, that position that we talked about that was, like, eh, it's not such a big deal if the non-faster leads, actually says well, sure, it's better to have someone who's fasting lead if it's possible that the leader who is fasting will be better than someone else.

Rav Avi: Right. So that makes me think of the philosophical implications of Yom Kippur in particular, which is a holiday where we find ourselves saying a lot of things in the first person plural, even if they don't necessarily apply to us as an individual, because of the power of the day and the communal experience of it.

Rav Eitan: Yeah, it's great. So that's particularly powerful, because there's actually another view which on some level short-circuits our whole conversation here, which is where the Arukh Hashulkhan says no no no, you misunderstood the whole discussion in the Shulkhan Arukh. The Shulkhan Arukh, when he said if you're not fasting, you don't lead, only meant that about an optional fast day, where ten people come together and for some thing that they want to fast for, are entitled, we know, to have actually a full service with Torah reading and all of that if they want to establish that. And that's why, says the Arukh Hashulkhan, there was nervousness about a fast day that's only being created because a bunch of people are fasting -- how could you put someone up as a leader who's not fasting? But says the Arukh Hashulkhan, when you're dealing with a public fast day that's on the calendar, like the 17th of Tammuz, of course you can say yom tzom ta'anitenu, our fast day, because it's the Jewish community's fast day.

Rav Avi: So let's see if we can quickly go through some of these follow-up questions. The first follow-up question we touched on a little bit was, can they lead aravit if they've not yet eaten but are planning to eat later?

Rav Eitan: As we saw, when the ritual is about fasting, then it's potentially a problem to do that, but in this context of Yom Kippur, part of what I'm arguing, based on that Rabbi Akiva Eger and the Arukh Hashulkhan is, actually that issue doesn't come out on Yom Kippur at all. And so therefore the question of the fasting is simply really irrelevant for the purposes of determining whether that person can lead davening, assuming, right, this is the one caveat, assuming the person has some warranted exemption from the fast. It is a whole other level of problematic to allow someone to lead davening who says yeah, I just don't fast on Yom Kippur. It's not meaningful to me, but I get a lot of meaning out of leading shacharit. That's not someone I would feel comfortable assigning to davening in that way.

Rav Avi: Okay, so then let's address this last question, which is would there be any difference of a woman leading who is pregnant and maybe eating because she's pregnant, as opposed to someone who has an illness?

Rav Eitan: Yeah, so here's how I think you can imagine, I don't have millennia of precedent, so I'm gonna give you my take on it, that I think time is gonna see sort of how it plays out. You know, I feel two impulses here and I'm interested to hear kind of how you would think about it. On the one hand, there's a part of me that feels that, well, you know, pregnancy is a very kind of temporary condition, by definition, and there's a sense in which perhaps the right response is to say maybe even moreso than with someone who has a condition, let's say, like diabetes, where they're not gonna be able to fast for their entire life, that actually the years where a woman who is serving as a prayer leader is pregnant, maybe those are years where there's, she takes a sort of step out of that rotation and doesn't, you know, sign up for it that year, and is aware of it, and with all of the usual caveats we engaged with before, of, you know, you're far enough in the process, the shul's signed you up, you don't know, but that --

Rav Avi: You're the cantor.

Rav Eitan: Okay, so we'll get to the cantor in a second, because that's what pulls me the other direction. But that when you're just asking the question -- let's say there's an independent minyan, that's like, hey, who should we ask to lead davening this year? You know, from our stock of daveners. You might say, well, okay, you know, such and such is pregnant this year, we'll give her off this year, we'll come back to her next year and put this person in the rotation. There is something about that that makes sense to me. I think where I'm pulled the other direction is by two factors.

One, you talk about the cantor and you talk about certain kind of steady arrangements of being in this position, and the implication of having a kind of policy or approach I just had would be to, you know, knock out a significant number of women at a key phase of being a kind of reliable go-to person to fulfill that kind of role. You know, someone who's expecting in September and October, that may happen anyway, but you have a kind of more dramatic impact there. That's one piece. The other piece is, I'm not sure pregnancy and illness should be thought about in the same way, in that illness is something we can all honestly say we genuinely wish neither we nor anyone else suffered from. Pregnancy, for the continuation of the human race and the Jewish people, is a positive state of being that we want and hope will be a mainstay in the communities in which we live.

And it's not that, you know, therefore there aren't some meaningful parallels that are very appropriate between being in a kind of state of illness and having your body compromised and being pregnant in terms of leniencies that are afforded, but there is something about sort of treating someone who is not fasting because they're pregnant as being in a sort of non-ideal mode of fully representing the community, that rubs me in the wrong way from that angle. And here's maybe the one creative thing I would potentially say: I'm not sure even that that early Gaonic opposition to people who are not fasting leading is even clearly about, when you look at the sources, someone who has an authorized exemption not to fast, as opposed to someone who's just not fasting, and someone who is pregnant in a kind of very obvious, optically clear way, in most cases, is quite obviously in a position of, you know, potentially different situation with respect to the fast.

Here's where it's complicated. Alright? And here's where I really am interested what you think. The problem is, of course, let's remember, pregnant women are obligated to fast on Yom Kippur. They don't have an exemption -- it just may be that in any number of cases, a given woman who's pregnant might be told you have doctor's orders that you need to eat. The tricky case, and I'm not sure I have a clear answer to this, is what is truly the case for most pregnant women is whatever possible chance they might have had of making it through Yom Kippur successfully fasting, or eating and drinking in small amounts, would be significantly compromised if not eliminated by having them take on a job of leading. And what that means is, what you're really asking is, is it permitted to engage in an elective activity, maybe a mitzvah-related activity, for a community but nonetheless one that you're planning that will end up having the effect of making you need to break Yom Kippur?

Rav Avi: Yeah. I think that comes up even not in terms of leading, but just in terms of going to shul, that there are many pregnant women who ask themselves, is it better to stay at home and fast or to walk a mile, you know, or even less than a mile, maybe, to get to shul, which could cause them to have a much harder time? And I think in terms of your framing of the pregnancy not being the exemption, that also is a helpful way to think about the distinction between pregnancy not being an illness but pregnancy frequently leading to the potential for illness. And I think particularly one thing that sets pregnancy apart when we originally stated the question, the person asked is it different if you already knew that you were gonna be ill, I think a lot of times pregnant women don't know yet how they're gonna feel on the particular day of davening. It's hard to know whether they'll be totally fine or whether they'll run into some kind of health problem in the moment.

Rav Eitan: Right. And I think, look -- it's a very taxing thing to lead davening on Yom Kippur. Even those of us who have not been pregnant and never will be pregnant, I mean I've had some grueling situations with leading davening on Yom Kippur. One time I actually almost passed out after, like, leading davening for the entire day. There is some degree of everyone, and certainly pregnant women, of doing their best to kind of assess in advance, what am I reasonably going to be able to handle, this notion of eating in smaller amounts is a potentially useful tool for saying okay, well, maybe what I can do is try my best to kind of make it through it in this fasting situation, but what I'll know I may have to fall back on but won't be so outrageous is to eat in these sort of smaller amounts that will maintain some sense of participating in the fast with the rest of the community.

And it could be that, you know, women who do really know that actually their state in pregnancy is so fragile that just really taking on anything like leading in that way is just going to actually lead them to a complete loss of any eating-drinking restrictions on Yom Kippur, it might be that that subset of people is not the right set of people to do that job, and there's other ways that they can and should contribute.

Rav Avi: Right, but it's important for us to clarify, that's a decision that affects them personally in their personal observance, and it's not gonna affect or change their community's responsibility to find a reasonable davener.

Rav Eitan: That is correct. Their davening would still be one hundred percent valid no matter what they did. That really goes back to the more difficult issues that you raised of how does someone who doesn't know exactly how they're gonna feel in those situations, how are they gonna feel, should they cut themselves off they would otherwise normally do?

Rav Avi: What's the responsibility of the davener to tell the community that they're not fasting? I think it comes up with pregnancy, you described pregnancy as something that's obvious to everyone, but at the beginning of pregnancy, when in fact it's sometimes the hardest not to go without eating, because of nausea or morning sickness, is people are frequently not ready to tell the community that they're not fasting or that they're pregnant, and I think a lot of times with illness also, it's something that people deal with privately; they may not want everyone to know that they have whatever the condition is.

Rav Eitan: That's a very tough question, I feel like we could do a whole other episode on the issues of what kind of disclosure does a person need to give a community about what they're doing. For this purposes, the way it would feel to me is, you're not fundamentally compromising the tefilah of the community in terms of what you're doing by leading it in the sense of, you know, what we've talked about, the fasting/not fasting on Yom Kippur isn't really relevant to your core obligation in tefilah. You should feel good for your own internal reasons, but I would say it does have ramifications for the community about being legitimated and having a legitimate exemption or practice of what you're gonna do on Yom Kippur, and if you feel like you just have some idiosyncratic decision that you've made about what you think is okay but the community wouldn't approve of that, that's probably something you need to share.

But I don't think every diabetic who needs to eat on Yom Kippur needs to tell their community, actually, I'm a diabetic, so I eat. But I also think, and I've heard some bad stories about this, you have to be extremely private and concealed about your eating in those circumstances. Like, you don't show up to your hosts, you know, on Yom Kippur morning as a visiting rabbi from out of town and say, can you tell me where the cereal is, because actually I eat. Like, you gotta pack yourself some secret food that you stash away and no one should know about it. Not in the sense that it sort of is something to hide or be ashamed of, but particularly when you're visiting in a community like that, there's something about giving people a sense of, you know, I'm with you in this, that you have to be very careful and sensitive to not breaking down.

So I think the key thing is, you've gotta feel like you've gone through enough of a process with integrity of I feel like I'm doing the right thing in terms of my religious obligations. Once you do that, as long as you're very discreet and private about it, I don't think there's a disclosure requirement beyond that. But it's a really great question.

Rav Avi: Great, that's really helpful, and I think it also has implications and lessons for those of us who are not leading in how we behave in the congregation also. Thanks.

Rav Eitan: Thank you.

Rav Avi: Responsa Radio is a project for the Center for Jewish Law and Values at Mechon Hadar, and is produced by Jewish Public Media, which creates, curates, and promotes excellent Jewish content. If you have a halakhic question you'd like answered on the show, email us at [email protected]. You can also leave us a voicemail at (215) 297-4254

Texts Referenced

שבת כ״ד א:ד׳

שֵׁנִי וַחֲמִישִׁי מַאי עֲבִידְתַּיְיהוּ? אֶלָּא שֵׁנִי וַחֲמִישִׁי וְשֵׁנִי שֶׁל תַּעֲנִיּוֹת וּמַעֲמָדוֹת. עַרְבִית וְשַׁחֲרִית וּמִנְחָה מִתְפַּלֵּל שְׁמוֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה, וְאוֹמֵר מֵעֵין הַמְאוֹרָע בְּ״שׁוֹמֵעַ תְּפִלָּה״, וְאִם לֹא אָמַר — אֵין מַחֲזִירִין אוֹתוֹ. וְאֵין בָּהֶן קְדוּשָּׁה עַל הַכּוֹס וְאֵין בָּהֶן הַזְכָּרָה בְּבִרְכַּת הַמָּזוֹן.

Shabbat 24a:4

Before drawing a conclusion, the Gemara seeks to clarify: Monday and Thursday, what is their purpose in this discussion, i.e., why are Monday and Thursday mentioned here if no special prayers are recited on those days? The Gemara explains: Rather, certainly the reference is to Monday and Thursday and Monday that are fast days for rain and of ma’amadot. On those days, in the evening, morning, and afternoon prayers, one recites eighteen blessings and recites a passage pertaining to the event of the day, i.e., the fast, in the blessing: Who listens to prayer. However, if one did not mention it, we do not require him to return to the beginning of the prayer and repeat it. And, on those days, there is no kiddush recited over a cup of wine, and there is no mention of the day recited in Grace after Meals.

תוספתא ברכות א׳:ח׳

אלו ברכות שמקצרין בהן המברך על הפירות ועל מצות ברכת הזמן וברכה אחרונה [שבק"ש] ושבבהמ"ז אלו ברכות שמאריכין בהן ברכת תענית וברכות של ראש השנה וברכות יוה"כ מברכות של אדם ניכר אם בור הוא אם תלמיד חכם הוא.

Tosefta Berakhot 1:8

These are the Berachot (blessings) which are [coined to be] short: One who blesses on fruit, and on mitzvot, the Beracha (blessing) of Zimun, and the last Beracha of Shema. These are the Berachot which are [coined to be] long: the Beracha of Fast Days, and the Beracha of Rosh Hashana, and the Berachot of Yom Kippur. From [the way] a person [says] his Berachot it is recognizable if he a fool or if he is a sage.

רש"י על שבת כ״ד א:ד׳:ב׳

ערבית - לילי כניסתן ואע"פ שאוכל ושותה כל הלילה מתפלל תפלת תענית מאחר שנכנס היום והכי נמי אמר רב הונא במסכת תענית (דף יא:) יחיד שקבל עליו תענית אף על פי שאוכל ושותה כל הלילה מתפלל תפלת תענית. ובתשו' הגאונים מצאתי ברייתא שנו רבותינו פעמים שאדם שרוי בתענית ואינו מתפלל ופעמים שאינו שרוי בתענית ומתפלל הא כיצד כאן בכניסתה כאן ביציאתה כלומר ערב תענית אע"פ שעתיד לאכול לאחר תפלה מתפלל תפלת תענית וליל מחרתו אף על פי שעודנו בתענית כשמתפלל תפלת ערבית אינו מתפלל תפלת תענית וסוף דברי הגאונים כתבו אבל אין אנו רגילים לומר ערבית ואפילו שחרית שמא יארע לו אונס חולי או בולמוס ויטעום כלום ונמצא שקרן בתפלתו:

Rashi on Shabbat 24a:4:2

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טור, אורח חיים תקס״ו:א׳

בתענית צבור אומר ש"צ עננו בין גואל לרופא וחותם ברוך אתה יהוה העונה לעמו ישראל בעת צרה וכתב אבי העזרי ששמע מאביו רבי' יואל ומרבו רבי שמשון ז"ל שהיו תמיהין על מה סמכו הראשונים שמתפלל ש"צ עננו בין גואל לרופא כשמתפללין על גזירה או על כל צרה שלא תבא עליהם וכן למה קורין ויחל דכיחידים דמו כדחזינן אפי' באנשי ננוה דחשיבי כיחידים לענין שאלת מטר אבל תענית בה"ב שאחר הפסח ואחר החג נהגו בהן בכל תפוצות ישראל ולא הוי תענית יחיד והראב"ד כתב על אלו שהן תענית יחיד ולא יאמר בהם ש"צ עננו בין גואל לרופא ולא יקראו בהן ויחל: וכתב א"א הרא"ש ז"ל ובאשכנז עשאום קבע והכל מתענין בהם וסמכו על מעשה דאיוב דכי הקיפו ימי המשתה והעלה עולות למספר כולם כי אמר איוב אולי חטאו בני וכן בשמחה ומשתה של החג אולי חטאו נ"ל דנהי דכיחידים דמו לענין שאלה היינו טעמא כדמפרש בירוש' שאין לשנות מטבע ברכות די"ח ברכות תיקון נביאים הם ואין לשנות בהם אבל קהל שמקבלין עליהם תענית ודאי רבים איקרו ויכולין לקבוע ברכות ע"כ ומיהו נראה שצריך שיהו עשרה שמתענין ואפי' לרבינו תם שכתב שאם יש ששה או שבעה שלא שמעו קדיש וברכו יכולין לומר קדיש וברכו אף על פי שהשאר שמעו הכא מודה דבעי עשרה דהתם היינו טעמא כמו שכתב אדוני אבי ז"ל מידי הוא טעמא אלא שכל דבר שבקדושה לא יהא בפחות מעשרה והרי הוא מקדש השם בעשרה אבל הכא לענין קביעות ברכה צריך שיהו עשרה ואפי' אם יש עשרה בעיר שמתענין אם אין י' בב"ה אינן יכולין לקבוע ברכה: ונוהגין להרבות סליחות בברכת סלח לנו ופר"י שסומכין על הא דאמרינן (ע"ג ח.) ואם בא לומר בסוף כל ברכה מעין אותה ברכה אומר רק שיתחיל מעין הברכה ואח"כ יכול להאריך בדברי ריצוי ותחנונים כפי רצונו בין יחיד בין רבים והא דאמר רבי יהושע בן לוי שיכול לומר אחר תפילתו אפי' כסדר י"ה לא בא למעט בסוף כל ברכה וברכה אם התחיל מעין הברכה אלא שלאחר התפלה יכול להתחיל ולומר היאך שירצה מה שאין כן בתוך התפלה ויש מקומות שנוהגין לומר סליחות אחר סיום י"ח ברכות וכ"כ רב עמרם שיכולין לומר סליחות בסלח לנו והכי קאמר רב נטרונאי מנהג ב' ישיבות בתענית צבור בשחרית אומרים ז' סליחות ובמנחה ג' ואם יש פנאי אומר יהוה וכ"כ רב שר שלום בתענית צבור אין מנהגינו לומר סליחות אחר י"ח ברכות אלא בסלח לנו כתב רב נתן ש"צ שאינו מתענה אינו יכול להתפלל שכיון שאינו מתענה אינו יכול לומר עננו ואיני יודע למה שאינו אומר ביום תעניתי אלא ביום תענית הזה ותענית הוא לאחרים ודאי אם אפשר שיהיה ש"ץ המתענה טוב הוא מאחר אבל אם אי אפשר נ"ל שיכול להתפלל איתא במדרש אהרן וחור תמכו בידיו מכאן שאין פוחתין מג' העוברין לפני התיבה בתענית צבור לכך צריך בתענית צבור שיעמדו שנים אצל ש"צ שיאמרו עמו סליחות וי"א שכל תענית שיארע בב' ויהוה שקורין שחרית פרשת היום ובמנחה ויחל דתדיר קודם או יקראו שנים בפרשת היום והשלישי ויחל ורב עמרם כתב שבתעניות הכתובים בפסוק דוקא קורין ויחל חוץ מבט"ב ורב שר שלום כתב שבכל תעניות צבור וכל תעניות שגוזרים על הגשמים וכל דבר הצריך להם אומרים ויחל בשחרית ומנחה בין בב' וביהוה בין בשאר ימים כל תעניות יש בו נשיאות כפים במנחה חוץ מביום הכפורים שתחת מנחה נושאין כפיהן בנעילה וכן נוהגין בשתי ישיבות:

Tur, Orach Chayim 566:1

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בית יוסף, אורח חיים תקס״ו:א׳:א׳

בתענית צבור אומר ש"צ עננו בין גואל לרופא הכי משמע בפ' קמא דתעניות (יג:) דקאמר יחיד שהתענה אומר עננו בין גואל לרופא ופריך וכי יחיד קובע ברכה לעצמו אלא בשומע תפלה אלמא דש"ץ קובע ברכה לעצמו ואומרה בין גואל לרופא וכ"כ הרי"ף וכ' בא"ח אומר עננו בין גואל לרופא דכתיב יהוה צורי וגואלי וסמיך ליה יענך יהוה:

Beit Yosef, Orach Chayim 566:1:1

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אורח חיים תקס״ו:ה׳

בתענית צבור ש"צ שאינו מתענה לא יתפלל:

Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 566:5

On a communal fast, a prayer leader who is not fasting should not lead.

מגן אברהם תקס״ו:ז׳

לא יתפלל. נ"ל דאם אירע שעבר לפני התיבה יאמר בש"ת עננו ביום צום התעני' הזה עיין בטור ובססי' קי"ט וה"ה אם אין ש"ץ אחר מוטב שיתפלל מי שאינו מתענה משיתבטל לשמוע קדיש וברכו עיין סי' נ"ג ס"ז:

Magen Avraham 566:7

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חיי אדם, שבת ומועדים קל״ב:ל״ג

בת"צ ש"ץ שאינו מתענה לא יתפלל ואם אירע שעבר לפני התיבה יאמר (בש"ת) עננו ביום צום התענית הזה (מגן אברהם סי' תקס"ו ס"ז) ונ"ל דתיבת בש"ת הוא ט"ס דממ"נ לדעת ר' נתן משמע דאפילו עלה ירד ולטור משמע דיאמר ברכה בפ"ע בין גואל לרופא וכיון דפסק בדיעבד כטור א"כ יאמרנה כדין כן נ"ל (ובמחצית השקל מקיים גי' המגן אברהם שלפנינו בש"ת וז"ל דהטור ס"ל דאפילו לכתחלה יכול להתפלל מי שאינו מתענה ולומר ברכה בפני עצמה ונהי דהרב"י הסכים לדעת החולקי' היינו לכתחל' גם אפי' דיעבד שלא לקבוע ברכה בפ"ע אלא יאמרנה בש"ת ויסיים ג"כ בא"י ש"ת לבד וכיון שאומר ביום התענית הזה ולא תעניתנו שפיר דמי דאינו משקר כסברת הטור וגם לא קבע ברכה בפ"ע וגם הצבור יצאו י"ח כמבואר בסי' קי"ט דאם שכח הש"ץ עננו יאמר בש"ת וכתב שם המגן אברהם דאם סיים בש"ת לבד יצא לכן אם הש"ץ אינו מתענה יעשה כן לכתחלה) וה"ה אם אין ש"ץ אחר מוטב שיתפלל מי שאינו מתענה משיתבטלו לשמוע קדיש וברכו. ואם אין בב"הכנ י' שמתענים אע"פ שיש בעיר י' שמתענים אין הש"ץ קיבע ברכה בפ"ע אלא דינם כיחידים ומ"מ יאמרנה בש"ת כיון שהוא תענית צבור (א"ר וכ"מ בתשובת רשב"א סי' ס"א). ויחיד שאינו מתענה ומתפלל עם הצבור יאמר בש"ת עננו ויאמר ביום תענית צבור זה (אלי' זוטא בשם ב"ח) אבל כשמתפלל עם הש"ץ לא יאמר אפילו עם הש"ץ לברכה בפ"ע. וש"ץ המתענה תענית יחיד לא יאמר עננו כשמתפלל בקול רם אפי' לא התפלל עדיין בלחש אלא יאמר עננו אחר סיום תפלתו והש"ץ יאמר במנחה אלהינו ואלהי אבותינו ברכנו בברכה כו':

Chayei Adam, Shabbat and Festivals 132:33

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משנה ברורה תקס״ו:י״ח

(יח) לא יתפלל - ואם אירע שעבר לפני התיבה יאמר בשומע תפלה ענינו ביום צום התענית הזה וה"ה אם אין ש"ץ אחר מוטב שיתפלל מי שאינו מתענה ממה שיתבטלו לשמוע קדיש וקדושה וברכו:

Mishnah Berurah 566:18

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