Gabbai Shailos IV

This past Shabbos an interesting question came up during leining. The ba'al korei said "posach" (with a kametz) instead of "pesach" (with a segel). He then started the next posuk, stopped and went back to the word "posach" in the previous posuk and corrected his mistake and continued from there. Towards the end of the aliyah someone came over to me and said that since the ba'al korei had started the next posuk before correcting his mistake, he should have gone back to the beginning of the previous posuk and not just start from the word "posach". Being that I really had no idea if this was a legitimate ta'anah and since this person was adamant that he knew what he was talking about, I made the ba'al korei go back. (I always try to err on the side that will give me the least amount of grief and preserve shalom).

Anyway, the question is what should I have done?

After looking into it, I decided there were really 3 issues.

1) Was it necessary to go back for that mistake.

Answer: NO.

The Shulchan Aruch/Mishna Berura is quite clear that for a mistake that does not change the meaning of the word, there is no need to go back. A mistake of "posach" and "pesach" seems to fit that catagory. Even though the Sha'ar Tzion quotes the GR"A who is makpid, most poskim hold there is no need to go back and b'dieved you are definately yotzei. Certainly in this case where the next posuk had already been started it probably would have been better to just continue.

2) In general if you are correcting a mistake do you have to repeat the full possuk or just go back to that word.

Answer: I didn't find anyone in the Shulchan Aruch or Mishna Berura who discusses this. However, I found a Chayei Adam (quoted in a Shut Tzitz Eliezer) that discusses this . He says one might think that you have to start from the beginning of the posuk because of "kol pasuk d'lo pasak Moshe anan lo paskinan"-basically we can't create our own pesukim and we must follow the pesukim that Moshe set up. However, in this case you are only repeating the words "l'hashlim" to finish the posuk and it would not be considered as creating your own posuk. Therfore one could just go back to the word you made a mistake in.

I would say that based on this, the ba'al korei should have finished the posuk he was in the middle of before going back since by stopping in the middle of the posuk he was creating his own posuk.

3) The 3rd question is that would the Chayei Adam apply in this case where you already started the next posuk. Would the Chayei Adam say that even here you can go back to the word you messed up, or maybe since you started the next posuk you need to go back to the beginning of the previous posuk.

Answer: I don't know. I can hear both sides of the issue and I didn't see anyone talking about it.

To sum up, l'chatchila, once the ba'al korei started the next posuk I should have told him not to go back. I still don't know if there was a problem of going back to the middle of the previous posuk after starting the next posuk. Anyone have any ideas?