Most of our torahs are a size where basically any able-bodied man can do it (yes, this honor does skew to the male-bodied because of the upper body strength thing, though plenty of female-bodied folks can do it, too), but for this particular scroll - it's not just very heavy, it's tall.

We read from it YK afternoon specifically because that's Leviticus and that makes it balanced. I can do hagbah with a regular scroll as long as most of the weight is on the right hand (rotator cuff injury), but I only know of one woman who's done it with the big scroll.

And every year I watch this hagbah through my fingers, it stresses me out so much!

Can you give him a chance to practice? A lot of people don't know how to do it well: unroll to just past shoulder width, legs apart, dip, use the edge of the amud to lever it upright, lift, rotate, then either sit or lower it back down, depending on local custom. And have people on either side.

We offer them the opportunity to practice, they don't all take us up on it. And I know how to do it, I'm just not physically strong enough to do it with this scroll, so you don't need to explain it to me.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise, sorry; I was imagining what I would tell someone if I were instructing them, based on my muscle memory.