The Three Blessings: Boundaries, Censorship, and Identity in Jewish Liturgy

The Three Blessings

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The Three Blessings Boundaries, Censorship, and Identity in Jewish Liturgy

YOEL H. KAHN

2011

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kahn, Yoel H. The three blessings : boundaries, censorship, and identity in Jewish liturgy / Yoel H. Kahn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-537329-5 1. She-lo asani ishah (Jewish morning benediction) 2. She-lo asani goi (Jewish morning benediction) 3. She-lo asani ′aved (Jewish morning benediction) 4. Judaism—Liturgy. 5. Talmud. Menahot XLIIIb—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 6. Jews—Identity. I. Title. BM670.S43K34 2010 296.4′5—dc22 2010009515 Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society), 1985. Used by permission of The Jewish Publication Society. Copyright ©1962, 1992. Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Publication of this volume was aided by a gift from the Koret Foundation.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

‫‪For Dan‬‬ ‫כְּתַפוּּחַ בַּעֲצֵי הַיַּעַר‬ ‫כֵּן דוֹּדיִ בֵּין הַבָּניִם‬ ‫בְּצִלוֹּ חִמַּדְתִּי‬ ‫וְיָשַׁבְתִּי‬ ‫ופִּרְיוֹ מָתוֹק לְחִכִּי‪.‬‬ ‫שיר ג׃ב‬

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Contents

Acknowledgments, ix Introduction, 3 1. Defining Oneself against the Other: Sources and Parallels in Late Antiquity, 9 2. Assimilation and Integration: The Classical Rabbinic Sources, 19 3. From Private Piety to Public Prayer: Reconciling Practice with Teaching, 27 4. Competitive Traditions: Early Palestinian Practice, 35 5. Censorship in Medieval and Renaissance Liturgy, 45 6. Women, Slaves, Boors, and Beasts, 61 7. Material and Mystical Worldviews, 79 8. Recasting Boundaries and Identity in Nineteenth-Century European Prayer Books, 93 9. Identity and the Creation of Community in Modern American Liturgy, 105

viii

CONTENTS

Conclusion, 123 Appendix: Babylonian Talmud Menahot 43b and Parallels, 131 Notes, 135 Bibliography, 189 Index, 215

Acknowledgments

This project has its roots in a study session on problems of translation in liturgy that I led for the Ritual Committee of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco in 1990. I began the research during a sabbatical from the congregation while a Merrill Sabbatical Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School in 1993. My friend Lynn Eden encouraged me to “spend an afternoon” in the library exploring a question that interested me. This work is the product of that “afternoon,” give or take sixteen years. What began as a sabbatical research project evolved into my doctoral dissertation and now this volume. It brings me great joy to share the fruits of my labor. My interest in this topic, my vocation as a rabbi, and my engagement with Jewish texts and spirituality are inextricably linked to my first experiences as a member of a spiritual community during the two summers I spent as a camper at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations’ Camp Swig-Solel in Saratoga, California (now Union for Reform Judaism’s URJ Camp Newman in Santa Rosa). I will always be grateful to the counselors, staff, and community there. I have been blessed with encouragement and faith from teachers and rabbis at every stage of my education and career. With great affection and gratitude, I thank my teachers and mentors: Rabbi Jerry Danzig, Pinchas Rimon, Prof. Sarah Yafat, Prof. Yosef Dan, Prof. Ze’ev Brinner, Prof. Dov Noy, Rabbi Bernard Mehlman, and Phyllis Mintzer z”1.

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Over the many years of this project, I have benefited from the guidance and enduring confidence of three teachers whose patience and faith have always been with me. Prof. Lawrence Hoffman has been an advisor and mentor to me since my first days in rabbinic school and ever since. He suggested to me that this topic was worthy of further study. I am especially grateful to Rabbi David Ellenson, now the president of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, whose faith and encouragement began when he sat on my rabbinic school admissions committee, and who has repeatedly gone out of his way to help me—including traveling to Berkeley on three different occasions in support of my scholarship and rabbinate. At the Graduate Theological Union, the encouragement of Prof. David Biale sustained me throughout many years. I would never have completed the scholarship that resulted in this book without his help. The administration and faculty of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) were exceedingly cooperative during the years when I was enrolled in the GTU doctoral program. In 1997, a GTU Presidential Dissertation Award enabled me to make a research trip to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. For their ongoing and generous assistance, I deeply appreciate Binyamin Richler and the staff of the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem; the librarians of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Arthur Kiron and staff at the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies Library, University of Pennsylvania; the librarians of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion; Phillip Miller (Klau Library, New York); Yaffa Weisman (Frances-Henry Library, Los Angeles); and the staff at the Klau Library, Cincinnati. Rabbi Aaron Petuchowski graciously allowed me access to the library of his father, Rabbi Jakob J. Petuchowski z”1, and gave me permission to use the materials therein. The collection includes the only North American copies of many nineteenth-century German Reform prayer books. I also thank the custodian libraries who granted me permission to photocopy and study their manuscripts. For several years, I have participated in the annual Manfred Lehmann Memorial Workshop on the Hebrew Book at the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. My understanding and appreciation of the diverse sources I have been privileged to use has been greatly enhanced by these workshops. My own study and practice have been nurtured and sustained through my participation in the rabbinic spirituality program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and through my fellowship as a Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. I have been able to do this work with the cooperation and encouragement of the Jewish community institutions where I have worked: Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco; the

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xi

Hillel Foundation at Stanford University; the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; and, for the past three years, Congregation Beth El of Berkeley, California. For their gracious assistance, I thank Rabbi David Ariel-Joel, Zachary Baker, Seth Barron Shonkoff, Rabbi Marc Bregman, Sarah Bunim Benor, Uri Ehrlich, Eric Friedland, Karla Goldman, Paul Hamburg, Melila Hellner-Eshed, Seth Jerchower, Moshe Lazar, Rabbi David Lilienthal, Daniel Matt, Rabbi Bernard Mehlman, Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, Lisa Ochs, Stefan Reif, Charlotte Rivkah Halloran-Couch, Shalom Sabar, Rabbi Michael Shire, Joanna Smiley, Rabbi Mark Washofsky, Dvora Weisberg, Rabbi Moshe Zemer; and, of blessed memory, Rabbis Michael Klein, Chaim Stern, A. Stanley Dreyfus, and Michael Signer. Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press has been an enthusiastic champion of this project and I am further indebted to two anonymous readers at Oxford University Press who carefully critiqued my manuscript and kindly offered invaluable corrections and suggestions. The publication of this book is generously supported by a grant from the Koret Foundation. I deeply appreciate the ongoing encouragement I have received from the board and staff of the foundation. In 1985, when I was preparing my rabbinic thesis at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, I dedicated my work to the person who has always had the most faith in me. At the time, for fear that speaking the truth openly would prevent my ordination as rabbi, I only used initials. It is with pride and gratitude that I am able today to dedicate this work to my life partner and legal husband, Dan Bellm, Daniel Yosef ben Avraham v’Sarah. The words we spoke at our wedding still ring true: ‫כְּתַפוּּחַ בַּעֲצֵי הַיַּעַר‬ ‫כֵּן דּ וֹדיִ בֵּין הַבָּניִם‬ ‫בְּצִלוֹּ חִמַּדְתִּי וְיָשַׁבְתִּי‬ ‫ופִּרְיוֹ מָתוֹק לְחִכִּי‬ ‫שיר ג׃ב‬

As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved; Under his shadow I delight to sit, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Song of Songs 3 Kislev 5770/November 2009 San Francisco, California

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The Three Blessings

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Introduction

Sitting in synagogue many years ago, trying to pay attention but not fully engaged, I noticed that a series of blessings in the Shabbat morning liturgy of my Reform synagogue appeared to lack thematic unity. Although they were presented as a unit, they did not seem to belong together; the litany began with thanks for being made “in the Divine image” and then moved to an odd mixture of references about God’s relationship to the world (e.g., “who opens the eyes of the blind” and “who makes the earth firm upon the waters”). This experience of dissonance led me to investigate the sequence’s origins and textual history. Ultimately, I focused my work on the opening series of three blessings. I quickly learned that the liturgical text was based on a baraita (a passage from a pre-Talmudic source) attributed to Rabbi Meir in Tractate Menahot of the Babylonian Talmud. Therefore, my original question—Where did these blessings come from?—could perhaps be answered. Limiting the inquiry to the textual history of the passage, however, begs the question of the various meanings these words and their recitation have had over time. I have therefore tried to answer the question of how these blessings, in their various forms, have been used and understood. In particular, how and when were spontaneous, private utterances transformed into regulated, public prayers—that is, included in the liturgical canon and governed by rules of when and how they should be said. After these texts

4

THE THREE BLESSINGS

became part of the “public” ritual language, how did individuals renew their meaning as their social, political, and theological worlds changed? Printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Menahot 43b, quote this baraita in the name of Rabbi Meir: “A person must recite three blessings every day, and they are: [Praised are You, ETERNAL . . . ] who has made me an Israelite, who did not make me a woman, who did not make me a boor.”1 (The first blessing, as we will see, was first changed to avoid offending non-Jewish sensibilities in medieval Europe.) This instruction has always been controversial, beginning within the Talmud itself and continuing through the present day. Despite the formal introduction of these blessings into the daily morning liturgy more than 1000 years ago, the propriety of whether and how to recite them has been an ongoing subject of debate. In this book, I review the textual and liturgical history of these three blessings from their origins through contemporary usage.2 The history of these blessings—and of their many variations—sheds insight on the varying ways in which Jews have used liturgy to create and express the boundaries and values of their identities. This book considers two primary types of evidence about the use and meaning of these blessings throughout the centuries. First are the texts that include them, primarily prayer books in manuscript and printed form. These sources testify to what the compilers or editors of the texts thought Jews should say. They are not definitive proof, however, of what any individual or group actually recited. Manuscripts in which space was left for censored words or phrases hint that what was written down did not always correspond to what was actually spoken; perhaps even when the censored words were not said aloud, their absence was nonetheless noted by, and meaningful to, the worshiper. Beyond the literary history of these texts, this book asks how these blessings have been understood. I examine what Jews have said about the meaning of the blessings and the rules for reciting them. Sources include legal responsa and codes, commentaries on prayer books, and other references to the blessings. The three blessings—and the interpretations assigned to them—have always been elements in the continual creation and reaffirmation of group identity and boundaries. Every group has a master narrative that defines and explains why the world is as it is. The myths and stories that a family, group, community, or people tells about itself, and that articulate and reinforce core ideas, make up the master narrative. The Torah is part of Judaism’s master narrative. Perhaps more significant for historical Judaism, however, is the rabbinic master narrative, which insists that it was not just the written Torah that God gave Moses at Mount Sinai, but also the necessary techniques for its subsequent interpretation. When the master narrative of the Jewish (and wider) culture consistently confirmed the

INTRODUCTION

5

superiority of men over women, everything from the Bible to the liturgy to the legal system reflected this value. Whether by repeating certain texts or by participation in social interactions according to normative rules, men and women continually enacted and affirmed—to themselves and to each other— the truth of this superiority. Over time, however, the master narratives of communities have changed, and, in an effort to avoid dissonance, the meanings assigned to these blessings have also changed. Each change in the meanings ascribed to the blessings has supported and articulated the then-current master narrative. Thus, beginning in the nineteenth century, the blessing “who did not make me a woman” was both critiqued for being inconsistent with a new and growing narrative of women’s rights, and defended with a new interpretation that insisted that, in fact, the blessing could be understood as a statement of women’s spiritual superiority over men!3 Within the master narrative, however, these blessings, and the interpretations given to them, have also served a secondary function: to validate the overall legitimacy of the master narrative itself. A part of every such narrative is its own claim of authenticity and historical legitimacy. When modernizing Jews wanted to soften the first blessing—changing the negative “did not make me a gentile” into the affirmative “made me an Israelite”—they invoked the example of the many early prayer book manuscripts that used their preferred language, while often neglecting to mention that this change was originally the result of censorship. The liturgical traditions, style, and practices of a community are called a rite. Although historical Jewish liturgy is commonly differentiated on the basis of geographical rites, the prayer book examples in this volume are not strictly organized according to such rites. For example, Fustat (old Cairo), where the medieval Genizah manuscripts originated, had two synagogues: one organized according to the customs of the Land of Israel and the other according to those of Babylonia. Although each was loyal to its own customs, throughout hundreds of years the two groups were influenced by each other. The Genizah manuscripts cited should be considered examples of the variety of prayer books used in Egypt in different synagogues during a lengthy period, but cannot be definitively described as “Palestinian” or “Babylonian.”4 The majority of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century manuscripts described in chapter 5 were written in Italy, but Sicilian, Greek, Romanian, Spanish, and French examples are also cited. There are not enough examples of these different rites to make claims that they had distinct traditions of the three blessings, nor were these blessings considered an identity locus for a community, as piyyutim (liturgical poems) and certain other local customs were.5 These examples do, however, demonstrate the shared background of southern European liturgies. Although there most certainly once was, for example, a Romanian

6

THE THREE BLESSINGS

rite, the limited extant evidence suggests that it was not meaningfully distinct from its neighbors.6 As Lawrence Hoffman has pointed out, the concept of geographically determined rites is historically problematic.7 The assumption that local communities “receive” a unified liturgical corpus that then develops internally over time without influence from other Jewish communities ignores Jews’ historical mobility and ongoing interactions across boundaries. Similarly, in the absence of a colophon—a note from the manuscript’s copier or owner— it is impossible to date most medieval manuscripts more precisely than to a specific century. Most surviving manuscripts date from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The three-fold blessings text, commonly understood as an exemplary summary of rabbinic Jewish ideas, may have originated as a Hellenistic identity slogan. Deliberately echoing the Hellenistic statement, Jews in late antiquity modified one term of the original slogan, thereby creating a directly opposing aphorism about the primacy of Jewish identity. Although there may have been different understandings of the privileges involved, Jews and Greeks found common ground in asserting the superiority of male over female and free men over slaves. These distinctions, which were so important to ancient Greek and Jewish cultures alike, may have been the basis for a theological counterclaim by Paul on behalf of the early Church. Although the social boundaries that the oppositions affirm are never forgotten, the original force of the statements is, at different times, dissipated in three different directions. First, fearful of offending the majority non-Jewish society, the “gentile” was transformed first into a dim and distant figure who, during the medieval period, lived long ago, or, during the nineteenth century, was the uncivilized “heathen.” Often, the expression was suppressed entirely. Second, in Kabbalah, the boundaries that are simultaneously threatened and protected are internal to the self. Instead of referring to the circumstances of birth, the individual male Jew’s soul is in nightly danger of being transmigrated into the feared “other.” Third, since the Enlightenment, many Jews have abridged, disavowed, or otherwise distanced themselves from the explicit force of these blessings. The degree of discomfort correlates with the depth of the individual’s identification as a fully participating member of modern western culture, and with the degree of fealty owed to the received text. (This, in turn, generates continual interest in establishing the authenticity of the “received text.”) Throughout the course of seeking the answers to my own questions, I have come to appreciate the depths of continuity and of otherness between my own life, culture, and practice, and those of every period I studied. Most fulfilling to

INTRODUCTION

7

me was the realization that so many of the questions that have interested me were of deep concern to earlier generations as well. This research has illuminated aspects of the lives and spiritual identities of historical communities and individuals, helping me—and, I hope, you—to enjoy a deeper and more sympathetic appreciation of the nuances of history, text, and prayer.

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1 Defining Oneself against the Other Sources and Parallels in Late Antiquity

The expansion of Hellenistic culture and influence reached its zenith in the centuries following the successful conquests of Alexander the Great in 333 BCE. Hellenistic culture held as an enduring and central tenet of ancient Greek culture faith in the superiority of Greeks and Greek civilization over other peoples and cultures, even as it assimilated them. The Greeks characterized all non-Hellenic groups as “barbarians.” The sharp distinction between Hellene and barbarian was already legally and religiously emphasized during the period following the Persian wars (490–479 BCE), when new laws excluded non-Greeks from participation in key social activities, and declared barbarians to be a source of ritual uncleanliness.1 Like many other human groups, the ancient Greeks identified themselves by explicit contrast to who they were not. This definition of “self-as-not-the-other” was summarized in an aphorism that was circulating as early as the third century BCE, if not before. In its best-known form, the statement was attributed to Socrates, who is reported to have said: [T]here were three blessings for which he was grateful to fortune: First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; Next, that I was born a man and not a woman; Thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.2

10

THE THREE BLESSINGS

Jews modified this Greek witticism and began repeating it as a Jewish rejoinder to the competing Hellenistic slogan. Although the Jewish version ultimately entered the exclusively Jewish space of the synagogue as part of the daily liturgy, the original Jewish context of the saying was probably the marketplace, the bath house, and other shared semipublic places where people gathered. Similarly, sometime during the last centuries before the common era, Zoroastrian Persians modified and adapted the same Hellenistic saying to their local culture and religious language, creating a prayer in which only the statement about nationality was changed.3 In all ancient cultures, texts and teachings of all kinds circulated for many generations as oral traditions before they were ever written down. Although it is often possible to date the earliest literary reference to a particular text, this information does not disclose any earlier oral history. The earliest source for a parallel Jewish text to the Greek aphorism is in the Tosefta, the collection of early rabbinic texts attributed to teachers who lived before the year 200 CE. Tosefta Berakhot 6:18 reads: “Rabbi Judah says: A person must bless three blessings every day: ‘Praised [are You ETERNAL . . . ] who did not make me a gentile, praised [ . . . ] who did not make me a boor, praised [ . . . ] who did not make me a woman.’”4 A slightly different version is recorded in the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Menahot. Observers have long noted parallels between the Talmud’s language and the Hellenistic aphorism that circulated in various forms.5 The closest parallel to the Jewish text comes from the third-century CE Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius, who suggests that the passage he is quoting is long known and that its origins are already clouded by the time he writes it down. Diogenes cites literary traditions that assign the origins of the aphorism to one of two important Greek philosophers: Thales and Socrates. Diogenes first cites the fifth-century BCE biographer Hermippus, who in turn attributes the passage to Thales (ca. 620–ca. 546 BCE), whereas others, Diogenes observes, cite the passage in the name of Socrates (ca. 470–399 BCE). In later texts, it is most commonly taught in Socrates’ name.6 Plutarch, an approximate contemporary of Rabbi Judah, assigns the passage to Plato in his collection of biographies, Parallel Lives: Plato . . . lauded his guardian genius and Fortune because, to begin with, he had been born a man and not an irrational animal; again, because he was a Greek and not a Barbarian; and still again, because his birth had fallen in the time of Socrates.7 These Greek sources all contain three comparisons. In each one, the speaker is “thankful that I am this and not that.” Two of the three comparisons,

DEFINING O NESELF AGAINST THE OTHER

11

“human and not an animal” and “Greek and not a barbarian,” are found in both Plutarch (in the name of Plato) and Diogenes (in the name of Socrates). A first-century Greek philosopher, Dio Chrysostom makes a passing reference to the key idea of being “human and not an animal,” and adds the element of geography: Socrates . . . counted himself fortunate for many reasons— not only because he was a rational being, but also because he was an Athenian.8 In the fourth century, the Church father Lactantius (240–ca. 320) combined all the elements included in the versions of Plutarch, Diogenes, and Dio, thereby generating a new version with five elements, three of them stated as comparisons: Plato would give thanks for being born a man and not an animal, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a Barbarian, an Athenian in the time of Socrates.9 First in Greek- and later in Latin-speaking circles, different versions of this aphorism circulated for hundreds of years. Although the earliest known written text only appears during the first century of the common era, it is later quoted in the name of Hermippus. According to different Hellenistic traditions, this aphorism was first said by Thales, Socrates, or perhaps Plato—all revered, emblematic figures.10 Isaac Hirsch Weiss, a nineteenth-century Jewish historian, suggested that the Greek aphorism was “common knowledge” during the first centuries of the common era and declares: “It would be impossible to recite the Hebrew blessing without recalling Socrates’ daily prayer of gratitude.”11 Of course, none of the classical sources hint that Socrates or any of the other Hellenistic figures credited with originating this remark recited it daily. In Jewish practice, however, the parallel words ultimately did become part of “the daily prayers of gratitude.” Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, Weiss projected this much-later Jewish ritual practice back onto Socrates. In so doing, he defended Judaism against the charge of chauvinism by insisting that the Jews were merely imitating normative cultural practice. Like so many first-generation scholars from minority cultures seeking to claim a place in the western academy, Weiss was surely conscious of how his historical research could be understood as reflecting on the character of his own contemporaries. Against complaints that Jews were boastful and not truly western, Weiss’ effort to locate

12

THE THREE BLESSINGS

a criticized Jewish practice in Socrates’ own behavior was surely a powerful cultural defense.12 Although the specifics are without doubt wrong, Weiss correctly suggested that when Jews adopted this Hellenistic identity statement, their affirmative statement of Jewish identity resonated against the common cultural background of late antiquity.13 In its original context, the Jewish recitation of this statement derived its power as a counternarrative to the widely known Hellenistic version. In various versions of the Hellenistic saying, the contrast is usually phrased as being “thankful that I am affirmative, and not negative.” The Babylonian Talmud presents the three blessings entirely in the negative: “not a gentile, not a slave, not a woman.” The Palestinian Talmud preserves a variant version of the blessings from that found in the Babylonian Talmud, but both Talmuds present these blessings as exclusively negative formulations. A much wider range of textual variations, however, are found in the liturgical texts preserved in the Cairo Genizah.14 Several Palestinian–influenced liturgical texts preserve Jewish parallels identical to the Greek’s “affirmative and not negative” style. Although there were many variations circulating, the following arrangement found in a Genizah fragment is typical: Praised are You ETERNAL our God King of the Universe who created me a person and not a beast a man and not a woman an Israelite and not a gentile circumcised and not uncircumcised15 free and not a slave.16 This example contains five paired identity statements. One modern scholar suggests that both the “circumcision” and “not a slave” references may be later additions to an original, three-part Hebrew formulation.17 If correct, the original Palestinian Jewish formulation was a direct “translation” of the Greek version. Although the Babylonian Jewish formulation of these blessings has only the single negative element in each of the three statements, this Palestinian formula follows the Greek example of paired, opposing elements: “made me [desirable attribute] and not [undesirable].” Table 1.1 shows how the Genizah text exactly mirrors the Greek version as recorded by Diogenes. In notable contrast to most Hebrew formulations of the blessing, which place “not a gentile” at the top of the sequence, this Genizah text places it in the third position, perfectly mirroring the Greek opposition, “Greek and not a barbarian.”18 This suggests that the earliest Jewish form of the saying

D EFINING ONESELF AGAINST THE O THER TABLE

13

1.1. Comparison of Hellenistic and Palestinian Jewish Texts

Diogenes Laertius, “Thales,” i. 33

Genizah prayer book fragment, Taylor-Schechter NS 121.5

[I] was grateful to fortune

Praised are You . . . who created me

that I was born a human being and not a beast

a human being [adam] and not a beast

I was born a man and not a woman

a man and not a woman

a Greek and not a barbarian.

an Israelite and not a gentile.

may have been the simplest possible direct adaptation of the Hellenistic version. Although this Jewish example is taken from a prayer book, the passage probably began its life—in both Hellenistic and Jewish culture—as a slogan rather than as a prayer. Isaac Hirsch Weiss’ imagination notwithstanding, none of the Greek or Latin authors state that the author of the text expressed these sentiments daily. More likely, this was a folk saying or slogan that was commonly known. In the face of a powerful Hellenistic majority culture, some Jews may have pushed back by appropriating and transforming this well-known saying, asserting Jewish superiority over Hellenistic culture in an act of cultural resistance. If, as some suggest, the word gentile in the Hellenistic Jewish context specifically meant Greek, the force of the Hebrew “an Israelite and not a gentile” had an even sharper edge. Recent scholarship has argued that the conflict between Hellenism and Judaism during the Second Temple period was much less heated than previously imagined.19 Jonathan Goldstein, a strong proponent of this view, nonetheless leaves open the possibility that “‘Gentile’ [goy (Heb.), ethnos] in Jewish texts may on occasion mean ‘Greek.’”20 In its earliest form—for we need not assume that the Jewish version of this saying was first coined during the second century by the rabbi in whose name it was first recorded—the force of “made me a Jew and not a goy” may have resonated for late Second Temple Jews as a double entendre: responding specifically to the popular Greek statement, “made me a Greek and not a barbarian,” with “made me a Jew and not a Greek [goy],” while simultaneously expressing the more general Jewish identity claim: “made me a Jew and not a gentile [goy].”21 Further evidence for the popular familiarity of this saying—in both Greek and Jewish circles—comes from the New Testament. If Jewish and Greek versions of these identity statements were competing during the first century of the common era, Paul trumped the competing claims by asserting the ultimate superiority of “baptism into Christ.” In Galatians 3:27–28, he declares:

14

THE THREE BLESSINGS

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, There is neither slave nor free, There is neither male nor female For you are all one in Christ Jesus. The respective superior positions, “Greek and not a barbarian” as well as “Jew and not a Greek/gentile,” are both dissolved, according to Paul, in baptism.22 The dissolution of the differences between Greek and Jew must have had particular resonance in the early Church, which was divided by the conflicting backgrounds of its members.23 The opposition male versus female, which is found in all the Hellenistic and Jewish versions, is also erased in the Galatians passage. These two verses have been among the most debated and controversial passages in the entire Christian scriptures, and modern commentators are no more agreed today about their meaning than the Church fathers were. The Galatians text is one of several early Christian texts that emphasizes the erasure of human identity boundaries; through baptism, the believer becomes one with Christ and, perhaps, with the collective body religious of believers. The New Testament contains two cognate passages that invoke similar pairs of opposites. The first is in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Although emphasizing the unifying power of baptism, this passage does not suggest that the original distinctions are erased, only that all can access the sacred. The second passage, from Colossians, more closely resembles the Galatians text: “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).24 The Colossians passage was in turn reworked in the Tripartite Tractate, an early Christian gnostic text from the second-century Nag Hammadi library (popularly known as the Gnostic Gospels): For when we confessed the kingdom which is in Christ, [we] escaped from the multiplicity of forms, and from inequality and change. For the end will receive a unitary existence, just as the beginning is unitary, where there is no male nor female, nor slave and free, nor circumcision and uncircumcision, neither angel nor man, but Christ is all in all.25 The Nag Hammadi text, which was composed later than the New Testament Epistles, appears to project the time of unity in which existing oppositions will

D EFINING ONESELF AGAINST THE O THER

15

be dissolved into the future: “For the end will receive a unitary existence. . .  .” This promise, though, is already inherent in baptism: “When we confessed. . . .”26 The Nag Hammadi passage supports the argument that the Galatians text was used in early or proto-Christian baptismal liturgies. The force of the eschatological claim was surely reinforced by popular familiarity with the language and its radical restatement in this theological setting.27 The opposition “human and not a beast,” which appears in the Greek and Palestinian Jewish sources, is not found in Paul—perhaps because, unlike the oppositions that are invoked, it cannot be resolved through baptism. (It is also absent in the official rabbinic texts, including the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmuds.) Interspecies rivalry, though, did not need to be resolved; this was not a subject with which early Christians or potential Christians were concerned. In the transference of the aphorism from a Greek to a Jewish setting, the only necessary change was nationality; the superiority of humans over animals and men over women were meaningful categories of difference in both Greek and Jewish culture. When Paul used the text for his own rhetorical goals, the contrasts that were important to him and his listeners were social boundaries (i.e., nationality, gender, and slavery). Each of these was a topic of significant discussion and conflict for the early Church; the Galatians passage points to one possible resolution advocated by some early Christians, and perhaps by Paul himself. For the later gnostic author, it was not only the earthly distinctions that were destined to be erased, but also the boundary between humans and heavenly beings: “neither angel nor man.” By this point, the Christian reformulation, “in Christ, there is no x nor y,” had developed its own literary history, and the author of the Tripartite Tractate was able to add a new pairing to the litany that would have been unimaginable both to Paul and to most of the earlier Jewish and Hellenistic transmitters of the text. Many modern commentators have struggled to explain the presence of “neither male nor female” in Galatians in light of its absence in the related New Testament passages in Corinthians and Colossians.28 One explanation is to be wary of imagining greater editorial unity across the New Testament than ever existed. Because each Epistle has an independent origin and textual history, even common rhetorical or literary formulas could certainly have been reformulated in different settings with slight variations. In composing the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul (or a subsequent editor) may have formulated the passage specifically as a rejoinder to the then-popular Jewish/Hellenistic aphorism. In its polemical liturgical context, it was phrased to respond to and trump the competing claims of the competing cultural systems. The absence of “no male or female” in the other two New Testament passages has no satisfactory explanation, beyond the proposal that—for both speaker and for listeners—this was

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a more socially disruptive, radical claim than the other propositions. For the author of the Nag Hammadi passage, who was prepared to eliminate the vertical distance between heaven and earth, reaffirming the eschatological erasure of gender distinctions was not too overreaching. The Galatians text is consistent with both the Palestinian and the Babylonian formulations of the Menahot blessings. Like the Babylonian Talmud, the Galatians passage contrasts the slave and the free person. The sequence in Galatians—nationality, slavery, and gender—corresponds to the Talmud’s order. It is an appropriate polemical rejoinder either to “who has not made me a gentile” or to “who has made me a Jew and not a gentile,” without favoring either formulation. Just as the content of the Galatians passage synthesizes the Greek and Jewish texts, its literary structure resonates with the Palestinian and Babylonian Jewish formulas as well as with the Greek. it has the same three elements as the Babylonian version and it echoes the “made me positive and not negative” structure of the Greek and Palestinian Jewish versions. Two modern authors, for divergent reasons, criticize the theory that the Jewish blessings had their origin in Greek culture. During the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) reversed the order, writing that “Plato owes to the Jews the theism with which he is periodically seized,” and then cites Plutarch, Lactantius, and a German translation of the Jewish morning prayers as evidence that Plato’s statement was copied from Jewish culture.29 In contrast to Isaac Weiss, Schopenhauer wanted to show that the blessings, which he found offensive, were not Hellenistic in origin, but were a Jewish creation. He wanted to preserve the “purity” of Greek ideas, and thus located the origins of the disputed claims in Judaism where, he claimed, they in turn influenced Hellenism.30 On the other hand, the mid-twentieth-century Jewish scholar Saul Lieberman firmly insisted—for entirely different reasons—that these blessings were exclusively Jewish in origin and that there was no basis for assuming any extraJewish influence. Lieberman was not concerned about Jewish chauvinism, but rather hoped to defend the independence of the Jewish religious tradition from outside influences. He made this claim despite his own presentation of evidence to the contrary.31 The respective claims of Schopenhauer and Lieberman were informed by their own understanding of how Jewish culture has interacted with other cultures over history, and they read the evidence in support of their points of view. The “three blessings” apparently began as an ancient version of a boasting one-liner, a folk or popular saying that asserted and reminded speakers and listeners about core distinctions that were part of how they understood their own place in the world in contrast to others around them. Regardless of who

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said it first, other groups borrowed the saying and began to tell it about themselves, inserting their own name as the preferred national group over whomever was considered to be the “other.” Hellenistic, Jewish, and Zoroastrian free men could all agree on their superiority to women and slaves, so these elements were not changed as the aphorism jumped from group to group and language to language. Not surprisingly, the Hebrew version of the aphorism was taught in Jewish rabbinic circles and was ultimately included in normative rabbinic texts. Once codified in this way, the stage was set for its eventual transformation into a prescribed daily prayer.

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2 Assimilation and Integration The Classical Rabbinic Sources

For the past 1500 years, the Talmud has been the foundational text of rabbinic Judaism. Compiled between the third and sixth centuries of the common era, the Babylonian Talmud gradually became the basis for all authoritative interpretation of the Torah. Regardless of historical origins, the attribution in the Babylonian Talmud of the “three blessings” to a leading early rabbi resulted in the further transformation of what may have begun as a witticism into a specific religious duty. In the Babylonian Talmud, the “three blessings” appear in Tractate Menahot, folio 43b. The Talmud, like other classical texts, existed in manuscript for hundreds of years before being committed to print. Thus, although many commentators on the Menahot text debate the fine points of the printed Talmud, these editions do not preserve the oldest versions of the text. The published version reflects changes in the text that occurred throughout the course of internal Jewish transmittal of the literary tradition, as well as the results of censorship.1 All early manuscripts of the Talmud, as well as the commentaries that relied on those manuscripts, contain the phrase, “who did not make me a gentile (goy),” whereas the printed edition reads “who has made me an Israelite.” This important change was the product of censorship by the Church. For modern readers, the apparent denigration of others inherent in the negative formulation of these blessings is disturbing. The Amoraim, the third- to sixth-century rabbis whose debates are

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recorded in the Talmud, were not distressed about this point, but were exercised about other issues. The primary concern, reflected in the Talmud’s discussion of the earlier quotation, is the precise language that should be recited and the differentiation among the various groups mentioned: Rabbi Aha bar Jacob heard his son reciting the blessing, “[Praised are You, ETERNAL,] who did not make me a boor.” He said to him, “arrogance—to such an extent!”2 He [the son] said to [his father]: “Then what blessing should one say?” “ . . . who has not made me a slave.” But is not that in the same category as a woman? A slave is worse.3 The anonymous rabbinic editors did not accept the initial negative comparison with a “boor.” In the rabbinic imagination, society was divided into two primary groups: the educated (including, of course, the rabbis themselves) and the “commoners,” variously identified as “boors” or ammai ha-aretz (peasants; literally, people of the land), with the latter two terms sometimes used interchangeably. Rabbi Aha bar Jacob objected to the practice of giving thanks for “not having been made a boor.” His exact objection is unclear; perhaps he was concerned that the blessing could be insulting to fellow Jews, or perhaps “boor” was too vague a category. (How, in fact, was his son confident that he wasn’t one himself?) Thus, the category “slave”—a status that everyone could recognize—is substituted in place of “boor.” The anonymous debaters raise an immediate challenge to this substitution: Do not women and slaves enjoy identical halakhic (Jewish legal) status? Both are exempted from a variety of religious and civil responsibilities and privileges in rabbinic law. If so, there is no functional difference between “not a woman” and “not a slave,” in which case the proposed revision of the third blessing would be redundant, and would therefore be a “blessing in vain.” This challenge is dismissed with the anonymous conclusion: “A slave is worse.” For more than 1000 years, the instruction to recite these blessings circulated in two distinct versions: one with the three original terms—gentile, boor, woman—and another that added the Babylonian Talmud’s caution against “boor” and substituted “slave” in its place. Some communities relied on the authority of the version found in the Palestinian Talmud, which did not include Rabbi Aha’s objection, and therefore retained “boor.”4 The talmudic discussion turns on the language of the baraita, the authoritative passage from the early rabbinic period, quoted in the name of Rabbi

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Meir. Louis Ginzberg held that the version of the baraita preserved in all editions of the Talmud was already a corruption and that the original objectionable term was not “boor” at all. Instead, he proposed that “boor” was a substitution for an earlier usage of behemah (beast).5 The category “(rational) human and not a beast” is one of the original oppositions found in the Hellenistic sources. If Ginzberg was correct, then the three terms of the earliest Babylonian–Jewish formulation of the tradition—not a gentile, not a woman, not a beast—would directly parallel the earliest non-Jewish sources. Ginzberg posits three stages in the evolution of the talmudic passage: first, an original version of the baraita with the terms “not a gentile, not a woman, not a beast.” This now-lost version of the baraita was the basis for Aha bar Jacob’s anger and his proposed substitution for “not a beast” with “not a slave.”6 Whatever the original term, the substitution of “slave” for the third comparison was made in the Babylonian Talmud and in communities where its authority was paramount. However, in Palestinian–influenced liturgies, as well as in other communities that relied on the authority of the Tosefta tradition, the use of “boor” persisted.7 Saul Lieberman vigorously disputes Ginzberg’s claim, insisting that “boor” was the original term. The dispute between Ginzberg and Lieberman turns on the dating of the extratalmudic Jewish sources. If Ginzberg is correct, then the Palestinian liturgies preserved in early manuscripts represent a more “authentic” (i.e., ancient) form of the text than that found in the Babylonian Talmud, and this would be further evidence for the non-Jewish origins of these blessings. Lieberman apparently cannot countenance either of these conclusions, and, therefore insists upon the chronological priority of the normative rabbinic versions and the Jewish exclusivity of the blessings. Lieberman strongly objects to the proposition that any Jewish blessings could be based on non-Jewish sources, and insists upon proving the independence of the rabbinic text, free of external influence. After citing the sources that document the non-Jewish parallels for our text, he nonetheless insists that “there is no basis for finding external influences here, since these blessings are about the goodness of the Holy One, may He be blessed.” Here, Lieberman invokes a theological claim in support of his historical argument.8 To discount the close parallels between the Genizah sources and the Greek aphorism, Lieberman dismisses the Genizah texts as “late and unreliable.”9 There is no basis, however, to assume that the tannaitic formulation, as preserved in the canonical rabbinic texts, predates the Palestinian blessings. Once a particular formulation is canonized and widely disseminated as some kind of official text, it surely becomes harder to introduce an entirely

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new arrangement. It is much more plausible that older and more familiar versions of these blessings, honored as historically authentic and authoritative by their users, remained in circulation despite the arrival of a competing, official formula. This would argue, therefore, for the early, rather than late, origins of the nontalmudic Palestinian formulations. In marked contrast to Isaac Weiss, who delights in suggesting that rabbinic Jews were consciously borrowing from Socrates, Lieberman apparently cannot accept the idea of Jews deliberately taking a recognizably foreign formula and recasting it to make it consistent with Jewish theology and teaching. For both Weiss and Lieberman, historiography is informed by other core values and agendas. Historical biases about the influence of non-Jewish sources on Jewish practice aside, Lieberman and Ginzberg share an assumption about the textual history of the talmudic passage that modern scholarship does not. They both posit a single, original formulation that was the foundation point for later elaboration and variation. It is more likely, however, that there never was a single Jewish version—nor, perhaps, a single Greek version—but that these blessings were simultaneously known in a variety of forms from their earliest appearance. Once the baraita was canonized in the Babylonian Talmud, it became the putatively normative formulation for later generations. The Babylonian Talmud’s particular arrangement, however, was neither the original nor the definitive arrangement of these blessings. After the text was established in the Talmud, deviations from the Talmud’s arrangement remained popular, but had to be defended as authentic.10 The question of precisely what was the ur (text)—a question that the Gemara itself poses—remained unresolved and was a point of controversy throughout the medieval period. In fact, there probably never was one. All the same, modern commentators have continued to invoke the putative “original” language in support of their own preferred arrangement.11

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 60b In Babylonia, a second group of blessings connected to the activities of daily life developed independently from the Menahot tradition’s three blessings “to be said daily.” In a section devoted to occasional blessings, the Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 60b, records a series of blessings that is to be said when waking up in the morning and as one prepares for the day. For a variety of actions, from opening the eyes to dressing to walking out the door, the Talmud proposes an appropriate blessing. Each human action is metaphorically linked to an attribute or action of God:

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When one hears the voice of the rooster, one says: “Blessed is the One who gave the sekv the ability to distinguish between day and night.”12 When one opens one’s eyes, one says: “Praised is the One who opens the eyes of the blind.” When one stretches himself and sits up, one says: “Praised [is the One] who frees the captive.” When one dresses, one says: “Praised [is the One] who clothes the naked.” When one draws himself up, one says: “Praised [is the One] who raises the bowed.” When one steps on the ground, one says: “Praised [is the One] who spread the earth upon the waters.”13 When one starts to walk, one says: “Praised [is the One] who makes firm human steps.” When one puts on one’s shoes, one says: “Praised [is the One] who has provided all my needs.” When one fastens one’s belt, one says: “Praised [is the One] who girds Israel with strength.” When one spreads a kerchief over one’s head, one says: “Praised [is the One] who crowns Israel with glory.” [The passage continues with the blessings for tallit, tefillin, and the mitzvah of washing the hands.]14 Over time, the two sets of short blessings for the early morning, one from Tractate Berakhot and one from Tractate Menahot, were combined into a single liturgical unit that was to be recited in the synagogue. The Berakhot set is framed by “concrete” blessings at the beginning and end: for the mitzvah of washing the hands and in praise of the One “who lifts sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids” (although it is not clear what specific action should accompany this blessing).15 The short blessings in between are metaphorically linked to divine action.16 Some are connected to qualities of God: “when opening the eyes, a person says: ‘ . . . who opens the eyes of the blind.’ When stretching out the legs, one says: ‘ .  .  . who frees the captive.’” In the rabbinic imagination, a double identification occurs: one is simultaneously conscious of powerlessness and shares in God’s powerful actions. During the night, the individual has been in each of these states: a person without sight, a captive who cannot move his limbs, and so forth. In the rabbinic imagination, “sleep is one sixtieth of death,” and the first blessing upon rising in the morning gives thanks for the restoration of the soul to the body.17 Accordingly, the rabbis arranged a series of blessings giving thanks for the variety of attributes of life that also have been restored. “Who gives sight to the blind” was not just metaphorical, it was also considered to be physically true. Each of these blessings also invokes an identification with the cosmic scale of divine action. The microcosmic experience of standing up is associated with creation itself and the Creator “who establishes the firmament on the water.” Directly benefiting from divine action, the worshiper becomes conscious of it and shares in the cosmic drama.18

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Although the Talmud declares that both the Berakhot and Menahot blessings are appropriately recited daily, their origins, forms, and early histories are completely separate. Ultimately, regardless of origins, the two sets of blessings were independently transformed from “good counsel for the pious” to statutory parts of the daily synagogue service.19 Their integration into a single liturgical unit was a long and problematic process. Most traditional Jewish commentators consider these prayers to be blessings of thanksgiving and praise, and not linked to the fulfillment of particular religious instructions, mitzvot. Blessings that accompany specific mitzvot refer to the immediate act that follows: “who has commanded us concerning washing the hands” or “to read the Megillah” (the scroll of Esther, read on the holiday of Purim). Many blessings for “the enjoyment of the fruits of creation” are also concrete: “Creator of the fruit of the vine” or “who brings forth bread from the earth.” Categorizing the Berakhot 60b blessings as “generic” statements of praise and thanksgiving, thereby eliminating the necessary links to the specific actions as specified in the Talmud, served to legitimate what became the normative practice of reciting these blessings as a litany.20 The inclusion of all these blessings in the synagogue liturgy was advanced by the later effort, during the geonic period (ca. 600–1038 CE), to explicate another instruction attributed to Rabbi Meir. Immediately preceding the talmudic discussion in Menahot of the “three blessings to be said daily,” another passage appears: It has been taught: R. Meir would say: A person is obligated to recite one hundred blessings [me’ah] every day, as it is said: ‘And now, Israel, what does [mah] the ETERNAL your God require of you (Deut. 10:12).’ On the Sabbath and on festivals R. Hiyya b. R. Avia would go to the trouble of meeting this goal by using spices and delicacies (BT Menahot 43b). The meaning of Meir’s proof text is made explicit in the Palestinian Talmud’s version of the same passage: It was taught in the name of R. Meir: There is no one in Israel who does not fulfill one hundred mitzvot every day. As it is written: ‘And now, Israel, what does Adonai your God require of you.’ Do not read ‘what’ [mah] but ‘one hundred’ [me’ah]—one hundred blessings do I require of you.”21 David, King of Israel, established this. When the residents of Jerusalem informed him that one hundred Israelites were dying each day, he got up and established one hundred blessings.”22

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A Jew, according to this passage, should recite a minimum of 100 blessings daily. Three different talmudic texts speak about “daily blessings”—two from Menahot and one from Berakhot. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b, one should recite 100 blessings every day. This is immediately followed by an example of three blessings that should be recited every day The Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 60b passage describes a series of blessings that should be said daily. In the synagogue liturgy, the combined group of the Menahot and Berakhot blessings—along with other preliminary prayers—became known collectively as the “One Hundred Blessings.”23

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3 From Private Piety to Public Prayer Reconciling Practice with Teaching

During the centuries after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, Babylonia replaced the Land of Israel as the center of Jewish life and religious creativity. The heads of the leading rabbinical academies in the cities of Sura and Pumbedita were the spiritual leaders of the Jewish community in Babylonia and abroad. Beginning during the late sixth century the successors to the rabbis who compiled and edited the Talmud were known as Geonim, and the years of their leadership, 589–1038 CE, are known as the geonic period. The Geonim pioneered the writing of responsa, legal opinions in the form of questions and answers that generated an increasingly large corpus of “case law” explaining and interpreting prior rabbinic teaching. During the geonic period, the three blessings from Menahot, which the Talmud instructs “should be recited daily,” were linked with a group of blessings from Tractate Berakhot. The blessings from Berakhot were prescribed for the various activities of waking and preparing for the day. It is impossible to date precisely when the two sets of blessings were first linked; this began as a Babylonian practice and only later was incorporated into Palestinian–influenced liturgy.1 The geonic sources described in this chapter originated in Babylonia and came from “official” circles; the texts include legal codes and responsa that were deliberately produced for wide distribution, edited over time, and often in multiple editions. In contrast, documents from the Genizah are overwhelmingly fragmentary or, at best, consist of several pages from prayer books that were used in Egypt or

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nearby, and were mostly created for individual or household use. The Genizah texts show wide variation in the mix of blessings and their arrangements; this is consistent with the generally more free-form style of Palestinian liturgy, in contrast to that of Babylonia.2 The early rabbis considered both sets of blessings—combined or not—as private prayers, ideally recited at home.3 Even after they were incorporated into the synagogue service, neither set of blessings was considered part of the formal, communal liturgy; rather, they were included in the prayers that an individual recited in the synagogue before the communal liturgy began.4 (This distinction can still be seen in many synagogues today, where the cantor does not begin leading the service until the “official” morning liturgy, Shaharit, begins. This also explains why the Barchu prayer, the “call to worship,” may occur forty-five minutes after the beginning of the service!) By the tenth century, reciting the entire, combined list in the synagogue had become a common practice. Despite its endorsement by the geonic rabbis, strong objections were later raised in Egypt by Maimonides (1135–1204) and his son Abraham (1186–1237), and in some communities in Europe. As late as the sixteenth century, a Persian Jewish prayer book firmly distinguished between the two sets of blessings.5 The earliest legal source linking the three Menahot blessings with the Berakhot list is in the geonic-era halakhic compendium, Halakhot Gedolot, composed between 750 and 825 CE.6 In Halakhot Gedolot, the Berakhot 60b passage is quoted and immediately followed by a complete excerpt of the Talmud’s Menahot discussion. Although the two sets of blessings are placed side by side in this setting, they are not integrated into a single unit. The first datable usage when the two sets of blessings are presented as a single liturgical unit is in a responsum of the head of the academy in Sura, Gaon Sar Shalom, written between 838 and 848 CE. In a discussion of the Menahot blessing, “who did not make me a woman,” Sar Shalom refers to “Those ‘who gives the sekvi, etc.’ blessings.” The grouping of blessings—and the entire collection of private prayers that precede the formal service—are still nameless.7 Sar Shalom’s successor as Gaon of Sura, Rav Natronai bar Hilai (in office from 853–858 CE), linked the two sets of blessings together in a single liturgical unit in a famous responsum.8 The Jewish community of Lucena, Spain, had written to Natronai, asking how to fulfill the instruction in Menahot to say “one hundred blessings a day.” Natronai set out to enumerate how a Jew could reasonably be expected to do so, effectively creating the first written outline of the prayer book. Exactly what Natronai himself wrote is no longer possible to know with certainty, as many later commentators revised and renumbered his list.9 If the daily recitation of the blessings was not already established in the daily liturgy before this

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time, the wide circulation of the responsum in Natronai Gaon’s name surely led to their general inclusion. Natronai’s responsum also addressed a vexing problem: Is it possible to recite a blessing, invoking the sacred name of God, immediately after waking in the morning, when one might be physically or ritually unclean? Should not a person wait, wash the hands first, and only then bless? Natronai stated that even though the Gemara in Berakhot explicitly linked each blessing to its corresponding action, it is necessary to wait, wash, and then recite the entire sequence of blessings one after another: The sages said in [BT Berakhot 60b]: “At the time one opens one’s eyes, what does one say? When one dresses, what does one say?, etc.” Regarding the blessings of the morning: it is impossible to recite each one in its [proper] time. Because of uncleanness, it is impossible, and the law is thus: From when a person wakes up, it is forbidden to recite a single blessing until one’s hands are washed. . . . One prepares oneself and washes one’s hands, face and feet and blesses according to the order.10 Thus, although the Talmud states that each blessing should be recited at its proper time, Natronai ruled that this was impossible, and taught that the blessings were to be recited in sequence, thereby severing the immediate link between the blessing and the real-time activity to which it corresponded. This decision permitted the ritualization of these blessings and enabled their movement from the privacy of the individual at home to the public space of the synagogue. Subsequent generations were repeatedly troubled by the reversal of the apparently plain instructions of the Talmud and by the transformation of these blessings from moment-specific acknowledgments to more generic blessings of praise. Natronai’s justification for not fulfilling the talmudic dictate was ritual impurity; it is impossible to recite a blessing invoking the name of God until one has washed, but one cannot wash without first getting out of bed!11 Although the three Menahot blessings are not themselves linked to specific actions, their proximity in the Gemara to the injunction to recite 100 blessings reinforced their linkage to the originally act-specific blessings of Berakhot. This change in the usage of the Berakhot blessings served to make them more like the three Menahot blessings and easier to treat them all in the same fashion. In later years, Natronai’s responsum circulated in several versions.12 It was widely quoted in the form in which it appeared in the prayer book arranged by his successor Amram, Gaon of Sura from ca. 858 to ca. 875, Seder Rav Amram.13 Amram opened his discussion of the order of prayers by quoting first the

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Babylonian Talmud, and then the Palestinian Talmud, about the 100 blessings. According to a talmudic legend, it was King David who instituted the recitation of 100 blessings daily. Amram concludes: “It appears that the matter was forgotten until the Tannaim [rabbis from the Mishnaic era before 200 CE] and Amoraim [rabbis from the later talmudic period] came and arranged them.”14 Whenever possible, the rabbis found biblical precedent for their innovations in prayer; in this case, according to Amram, the blessings had been established in ancient Israel and had fallen into disuse until the authoritative generations of the Tannaim and Amoraim restored them.15 This narrative, like so many other rabbinic teachings, maintains the core rabbinic assertion that the rabbis were not introducing a new prayer practice, but merely recovering biblical precedent that had been forgotten. Although the Babylonian Talmud text speaks of “one hundred blessings” and the Palestinian Talmud initially refers to “one hundred mitzvot,” the instruction was consistently understood to refer to blessings. Seder Rav Amram continues: “It is the custom of all of Israel in Sefarad (which is Spain) to do thus: in order to exempt [i.e., fulfill the obligation of ] those who do not know, the cantor (chazzan)16 begins and blesses, as Rav Natronai explained.”17 Although at first glance this passage suggests that by the time of Amram the blessings had become standard synagogue practice in Spain, a careful reading of Amram’s prayer book suggests that the previous quote—including the detailed excerpt from Natronai’s responsum—is a later addition based on Sephardic practice. Although the cantor is mentioned as the one who repeats the blessings—“The cantor begins and blesses”—a later statement in Amram’s prayer book contradicts this first mention of the cantor: “When Israel enters the synagogue . . . the Cantor of the congregation stands and begins ‘Blessed is the One.’”18 Obviously, the cantor cannot begin twice. As this latter blessing is the opening of the preliminary section of the fixed liturgy, it is a much more likely place for the cantor to have begun. Accordingly, it is probable that the reference to the cantor leading the Morning Blessings is a later interpolation.19 If this is the case, then Natronai’s and Amram’s expectations were that the Morning Blessings would be recited by the individual, perhaps at home, or, more probably, silently at the synagogue.20 All the same, Natronai permitted— and Amram’s text popularized—the recitation of these blessings as a unit, whether by an individual at home or as a private, preliminary part of the synagogue ritual. In many sources, the preliminary blessings of the liturgy are called “the One Hundred Blessings.”21 In Siddur Saadia, Saadia Gaon (882–942), Gaon of Sura soon after Amram, instructed that every morning after the blessing for the washing of hands, one should recite the series of blessings from Berakhot 60b, linking each one to its

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corresponding gesture.22 He appended to the list: “Afterwards one says, [ . . . ] who did not make me a gentile, [ . . . ] a woman, [ . . . ] a slave. Most of our colleagues say them together [as a unit] after leaving the privy each morning and do not recite them separately [accompanying each action].”23 According to Saadia, customary practice was still in flux. One should say the blessings in their proper sequence and circumstance, but he acknowledges that “most of our colleagues” did not do so. There was no suggestion here that they were recited in the synagogue. As Babylonian scholars, Amram and Saadia only cited the Babylonian Talmud’s option for the third blessing, “who did not make me a slave,” and did not mention the alternative, preserved in the Tosefta and the Palestinian Talmud, “who did not make me a boor.” Some of the Babylonian Geonim, however, were familiar with the Palestinian tradition, as demonstrated by a fragmentary comment of Hai Gaon (946–1038), who, in a rare move for a Babylonian Jewish leader, quotes the Palestinian Talmud: In the Jerusalem [i.e., Palestinian] Talmud, in Berakhot [is written]: A person is obligated to bless daily “who did not make a gentile,” since the nations (goyim) are as nothing before Him; “who did not make me a boor,” since a boor does not fear sin; “who did not make me a woman,” since she is not obligated to fulfill the mitzvot.24 Although Hai’s personal practice or preference is unknown, his quotation of the Palestinian Talmud demonstrates that the Palestinian formulation of the blessing was known and taught in Babylonia.25 In this area of personal prayer, the canonization process was never completed. Both the Babylonian and the Palestinian versions—along with variations based on them—were known and used throughout the medieval Jewish world. As the status and influence of the Babylonian Talmud grew in succeeding generations, rabbis would wrestle with how to reconcile their local traditions or customs with the apparently contradictory instructions it contained. A Persian manuscript from the sixteenth century is the best surviving witness to early, Babylonian–influenced, post-geonic practice.26 Although the manuscript was written after 1564 and quotes verbatim from Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh (written after 1550), its primary source is the much older Siddur Saadia.27 The scribe copied from an earlier manuscript and included customs from the older text, some of which contradict the interpolated instructions from the Shulhan Aruch.28 This manuscript demonstrates both the enduring loyalty that people had to their inherited practices, and the difficulty of dating specific liturgical customs. It is impossible to know, based on the evidence of this manuscript, the actual practices of the Jews of northern Iran during the

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sixteenth century, let alone in the twelfth. Although most of the differences between the text of the prayers and the Shulhan Arukh passages quoted in the manuscript are only matters of wording, some are more substantial, including a pre-Saadia distinction between the Berakhot and Menahot blessings. A new section of the prayer book, in large letters, begins with the opening lines of Natronai’s responsum: “I shall begin to write [the list of ] one hundred blessings.”29 In normal-size Hebrew characters, the text continues in Farsi:

It is obligatory upon every Israelite to recite during the course of a day [literally, “from time to time”] one hundred blessings. When in the evening he puts on his sleeping clothes, he should say. . . . When in the night [i.e., the morning] he wakes, he turns on to the right side and recites this: “My God, the pure soul which you have given me [the Elohai neshamah prayer]. . . .” When he hears the sound of the rooster calling, he says. . . . When he opens his eyes he says. . . . When he puts on his shirt, he says. . . .30

Most, but not all, of the blessings from Berakhot 60b are included in this list. Following the short blessings taken from Berakhot, the prayer book continues with the blessings before and after using the privy. These are followed by the blessing “for the washing of hands.” Apparently unconcerned with the problem of invoking the name of God with potentially unclean hands, this book preserves the practice of reciting the Berakhot sequence in the order in which the corresponding actions occur. Therefore, in faithfulness to the Talmud’s order, the blessing for the washing of the hands comes at the end of the list. Because each blessing is directly linked to a specific action, there is no occasion to recite the Menahot blessings. The prayer book quotes the final, long blessing from the series in Berakhot 60b and continues: “When he goes to the synagogue, he sits and begins with the reading of [Verses of ] Song. [The opening verses are Nehemiah 9:5–6, which are immediately followed by:] P[raised] . . . who did not make me a gentile. P[raised] . . . who did not make me a slave. P[raised] . . . who did not make me a woman.”31 Despite the linkage of the Berakhot and Menahot blessings in the widely circulated writings of Natronai and Saadia, several hundred years later the compiler of this prayer book faithfully honored the literal reading of the Talmud and preserved an alternative custom in which the two sets of blessings are completely independent of each other. The Menahot blessings are included at the beginning of the synagogue liturgy, although still as a private prayer, with the expectation that the Berakhot blessings had already been recited at home.

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The preliminary service in the synagogue is not labeled as a separate liturgical unit; the “One Hundred Blessings” unit begins with the blessings for nighttime, and the Berakhot blessings are simply listed in the count of blessings a person recites in the morning at home. The first named liturgical unit, “when one goes to the synagogue and sits down . . . ,” is Pesukei d’Zimra (“Passages of Song”), and the Menahot blessings are the second element of this unit.32 Regardless of whether the talmudic rabbis imagined their instructions as exemplary or idealized behavior, later generations took their words as instructions for normative, daily practice. As we have seen, efforts to implement these instructions literally ran up against two consistent problems: ritual uncleanliness and the unreliability of most individuals about reciting the blessings at their proper time. As late as the thirteenth century, two conflicting methods of reciting these blessings were in use in northern Europe, and probably elsewhere as well. All agreed that one should recite the Berakhot blessings at home, immediately before their corresponding action. Some clearly maintained and defended the practice of reciting the Berakhot blessings “at their proper time,” apparently disregarding the concern for ritual uncleanliness, as directed in the Persian prayer book described earlier. The majority preference, already in the geonic period and ultimately a universal normative practice, was to move them to the synagogue. This “routinization” of what was first conceived as a personal act of piety was reinforced by the transformation of Rabbi Meir’s teaching regarding the 100 blessings from an exhortative aphorism to a specific regulation.33 Once the Berakhot blessings were severed from their corresponding actions, they lost their immediacy. Emphatically enumerated in the census of the 100 blessings, their manifest content was subordinated to their structural purpose of helping to make up the requisite number. In this context, it was no longer necessary to have them as the first unit of the synagogue liturgy.34 This movement—from the private to the public sphere—is typical of how rites that have their origins in the personal experience of the individual worshiper become institutionalized and regulated.35 However, more than with other such prayers, the original context of these blessings was never forgotten, and long after the recital in the synagogue had become standardized, commentators again and again felt required to justify a practice that explicitly contradicted an apparently clear talmudic instruction. Because the Talmud mentions the importance of “three” and “one hundred” blessings, substitutions were inserted whenever later questions arose about whether specific individual blessing phrases should be used, with the goal of ensuring that the total number of blessings recited would not vary.36 The transition from private to public prayer is documented in the Persian prayer book that treats the Berakhot and Menahot blessings separately. The

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Berakhot blessings, in accordance with the Talmud’s instructions, were said at home. The Menahot blessings were also recited daily, but because they were not associated with any specific actions, they were included in the “preamble” to the fixed liturgy in the synagogue. Even though the instruction about reciting the blessings in the synagogue was an interpolation of Rav Natronai’s original responsum, the modified version was copied and circulated. With the perceived endorsement of Rav Natronai and the other late Geonim, the Berakhot blessings were moved to the synagogue, too. Initially, both sets of blessings were recited by the individual. Once included in the synagogue’s liturgy, they were transformed from private, personal prayer to shared, public recital.

4 Competitive Traditions Early Palestinian Practice

Beginning in the late tenth century, the Fatamid caliphate established its rule over Egypt. The majority of Jews in Egypt lived in Fustat, just south of Cairo, the new city built by the Fatamids as their capital. The Jewish community of Egypt was well established and included families who had immigrated from, or traced their lineage to, nearby Palestine or to Babylonia. The Jews of Fustat were divided into three social groups: Babylonian and Palestinian Jews, both of which accepted the authority of the postbiblical rabbinic teachers; and Karaites, who did not. Each group had its own customs and rules, and each had its own synagogue. All Jews shared an appreciation of the sacred nature of writings in the Hebrew alphabet, for Hebrew was considered the language of God. Accordingly, any document that was written in Hebrew letters, regardless of subject matter, was carefully preserved. An enormous collection of documents and document fragments from the Fustat community, spanning many centuries, was found and removed during the late eighteenth century from the storerooms, or Genizah, of the synagogues in Fustat. These documents, collectively known as the Cairo Genizah, are the primary witness to the customs and practices of the Palestinian Jewish community and of other communities under its influence. The many liturgical texts and fragments of prayer books found in the Genizah document local practice during the late medieval period. Although the shorter, negatively phrased Babylonian arrangement of the Menahot blessings ultimately became the standard text,

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formulations first popularized in the Land of Israel were in common usage for centuries over a wide geographical area. The Palestinian–style formulation of the blessing sequence was different in structure and language from that of Babylonia. In place of the Talmud’s single, negative phrase: “who did not make me,” the Palestinian blessing structure paralleled the Greek: “who made me [positive] and not [negative].” The Palestinian texts also preserved the use of “boor” (in place of “not a slave”), and many also included the Greek–originated blessing, “who made me a person and not a beast.” Numerous other variants are found in the Palestinian–influenced Genizah sources. It is impossible to speak of “original” Palestinian texts. The concept of an original or authoritative text is inconsistent with ancient Palestinian prayer practice. In many situations, the leader was authorized to create spontaneously an original prayer on a specified theme. Reconstruction of Palestinian liturgy, therefore, is more about rules than about texts. Over time, a prayer leader could draw from a wide range of circulating formulations considered appropriate for particular occasions. In the manner of much nineteenth-century scholarship, the first generation of modern researchers imagined—and tried to reconstruct—the lost original Palestinian rite. Contemporary scholars hold that there never was a single ur (liturgy), but rather that there existed a range of possibilities and prayer-generating syntax from which local or occasional prayers could be created.1 Although the statutory liturgy was increasingly standardized during the Amoraic period (230–500 CE), nonstatutory prayers displayed “a complete lack of uniformity, clarity and precision in matters of form and structure, as well as many deviations from the supposed norm.”2 There is no method for dating the earliest transcriptions, let alone the original composition date, for liturgical fragments from the Genizah.3 Documents were deposited in the Genizah over several hundred years, as early as the ninth century; the large majority of documents are from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, most evidence for Palestinian practice beyond what is documented in the Palestinian Talmud comes from Genizah texts from Egypt. Therefore, the surviving evidence may be of the putative Egyptian rite rather than the Palestinian.4 Rather than trying to trace different practices back to some hypothetical “pure” form, we call all these sources “Palestinian influenced” without further distinction.5 In the Genizah texts, there are examples both of the Menahot set of blessings standing alone and of the Menahot and Berakhot sets integrated together. (The Berakhot set never appears as an independent unit.) In Palestine and nearby, the Menahot blessings initially circulated as an independent liturgical unit, and only later, as the influence of Babylonian practice spread, did the Berakhot blessings become commonly known. This would suggest either that

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the Berakhot blessings were not yet known in Palestinian circles, or that they were recited at home and therefore not included in written liturgies intended for synagogue use.6 One version of the Palestinian Menahot blessings contains five elements, each expressed positively and negatively. The form is a single, run-on blessing, rather than a series of discrete shorter blessings. In the extant manuscripts, the blessing is usually not accompanied by the Berakhot sequence. Praised are You ETERNAL our God King of the Universe who created me a person and not a beast (adam ve-lo behamah) a man and not a woman an Israelite and not a gentile one who circumcises and not uncircumcised7 free and not a slave.8 This text includes all the elements of the tannaitic baraita in its different versions, including “beast” and “slave” (but not “boor”), as well as all the elements from the Greek saying. It also includes the opposition “one who circumcises and not uncircumcised.” These five comparisons, in the form “made me positive and not negative,” reappear widely in the liturgies of early Jewish communities influenced by Palestinian practice. Other prayer book fragments repeat the five blessings listed here and add two more: a parallel repetition of the gender pair, and a new opposition “pure and not impure.” Once again, the verb in the introductory phrase is positively phrased, “You created me,” unlike the two Talmuds’ “who did not make me”: Praised are You ETERNAL our God King of the Universe, for You created me a person and not a beast, a man and not a woman, male and not female, Israelite and not a gentile, one who circumcises and not uncircumcised, free and not a slave, pure and not impure.9 In some Genizah texts and other early sources, the blessing addresses God in the second person (i.e., “You created me .  .  .”) instead of the expected third person. Joseph Heinemann argues that the small difference in the Palestinian Talmud’s language may be significant. Although the Babylonian Talmud has “a person must recite three blessings,” the Palestinian Talmud reads “a person

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must say three things.” Heinemann holds that the Palestinian Talmud’s use of “thing” is specifically intended to allow the three benedictory concepts to be formulated in any arrangement whatsoever, and not necessarily in the standard Baruch atah Adonai (Praised are you ETERNAL .  .  .) format, with its expected third-person predicate.10 Alternatively, perhaps the rules for the creation and editing of prayer texts were not as rigid in Palestinian circles as Heinemann here imagines, and Palestinian prayer syntax did not require that the phrase be stated in the third person. Because Palestinian practice permitted and even encouraged the creation of original prayers, variations on the themes of these blessings appear in different texts. More than one Genizah fragment includes “who has not made me from the peoples of the world (mei umot ha-olam) but from Your people Israel.”11 The Mishnah’s parallel between boor and am ha-aretz (commoner) in Tractate Avot 2:6—“For the boor does not fear sin nor can the am ha-aretz be pious”—is the background for the inclusion in a different manuscript of the blessing “who did not make me an am ha-aretz.”12 Although, according to the Babylonian Talmud, the use of “boor” was offensive and ought to be replaced by “slave,” this objection was never part of the Palestinian tradition, and is absent from the other primary authoritative rabbinic sources, the Tosefta, and the Palestinian Talmud. In communities that did not know about or did not recognize the authority of the Babylonian Talmud, a new blessing based on the use of “boor” could be created. The further inducement to include the blessing “not a boor” was the liturgical use of the midrashic passage, “Let a person always fear heaven in secret, confess the truth, and speak the truth in one’s heart.”13 Although this passage circulated as a free-standing literary unit, and was used as the opening to the next liturgical unit (the affirmation of the covenant and recital of the Shema), a three-part sequence linked with “not a boor” logically suggested itself: who did not make me a boor, because the boor does not fear sin. Let a person always fear heaven. . . .14 Although each of these phrases had a separate origin and all could be used independently in the liturgy, the common words functioned as magnets, drawing them together and generating a new liturgical construction.15 Naphtali Wieder proposed that the original Palestinian blessing consisted of the opening formula followed by pairs of positive and negative oppositions.16 This format closely resembles the Greek sources, which were in the form of

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“made me positive and not negative.” Later, perhaps under the influence of Babylonian practice, this long blessing with a single opening “Praised are You . . .” was divided up into a sequence of smaller blessings, each beginning with the same formula. Wieder suggested that the “original” Palestinian arrangement consisted of three opposing pairs, paralleling the Hellenistic formula, and that it was later augmented by two additional oppositions. He held that “one who circumcises and not an uncircumcised one” was a later addition reflecting the situation in Islamic countries, which knew of two non-Jewish groups: “gentiles/Ishmaelites” and “uncircumcised/Christians.” The addition of “circumciser and not uncircumcised” was intended, therefore, to specifically distinguish Jews from Christians, because “not a gentile” had come to refer to “Moslems.”17 The fifth element, “free and not a slave,” entered into the Palestinian liturgy under the influence of Babylonian practice, which included “who did not make me slave” as one of the primary three blessings.18 Wieder’s putative original Palestinian sequence was: Praised are You ETERNAL our God King of the Universe, for You created me a person and not a beast, a man and not a woman, Israelite and not a gentile. Later, but before any extant manuscript was written down, he proposes that two more comparisons were added: circumcised and not uncircumcised, free and not a slave.19 Although Wieder could be correct, this history may overcomplicate the development of these Palestinian blessing texts to make them conform to a history they never had. Wieder’s interpretation is overdetermined by his commitment to strict historical development. It is not necessary to assume that “originally” there were only three pairs of oppositions in the Palestinian blessings.20 If circumcision was controversial before the first centuries of the common era, and these blessings were part of a Jewish identity polemic, the blessing in praise of circumcision would be perfectly plausible. We need not wait until the eighth century or later to imagine the first use of this blessing by some Jews.21 Furthermore, the New Testament’s Galatians passage demonstrates that the opposition of “free and slave” was already associated with the three-blessing formula in the Land of Israel by the late Second Temple period. Although it is likely that the very earliest

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Jewish adaptations bore a direct correspondence to the Greek model, the elastic structure of the aphorism lent itself to easy expansion and copying. If the statutory sections of the liturgy in the Amoraic period were not fixed beyond their themes and closing eulogies, then certainly there was no legislation or control over the variations in private prayers.22 Although specific Palestinian–influenced versions of the Menahot tradition can be identified, there never was an ur (version) that all subsequent arrangements modified. Instead, multiple versions were known and circulated, influencing each other and generating new permutations.23 (Figure 4.1 illustrates how one sequence of the blessings was modified to bring it into what someone else considered normative.)

FIGURE 4.1. The original Palestinian version is crossed out by a later hand; this was done at the same time as the vocalization marks were added. Another questionable but apparently less objectionable change from the later, Babylonian standard was circled and left without vowels (manuscript Halper 172, 2v). (Courtesy of the Library at the Hebert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania.)

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The Palestinian Talmud makes no mention of the Berakhot blessings. Although some Genizah texts preserve the older Palestinian–influenced service order, which includes the Menahot set alone, others show the introduction of the Berakhot 60b grouping (although not always in the same sequence as in the printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud).24 The sequence and precise wording of these blessings were far from firm, as illustrated by the extensive list of blessings found in a Genizah prayer book (figure 4.2 and table 4.1). This list of blessings is recognizably the same as in Berakhot 60b, but the order here is quite different. The phrasing of several blessings is also different from what later became standard. “Who gives the sekvi insight” [1. 7] is neither at the end of the list nor in its customary place at the beginning; it has been shortened to fit in with its surrounding blessings. The definite article is added in unexpected places [11. 3, 7]. “Who provides for all my needs” [1. 8] is grouped here with the three Menahot blessings [11. 9–11], no doubt because, unlike the more abstract statements of the preceding blessings, this blessing is addressed directly to God by the individual worshiper: “You provide me.  .  .  .” The three expected Menahot blessings follow, and two additional blessings are added: “who did not make me a beast” [1. 12] and the more unusual “who did not make me of the nations of the earth but from Your people Israel” [1. 14].25 This example may reflect an intermediate stage in the development of the statutory liturgy. The earliest Palestinian–informed texts include just the three Menahot blessings, which were recited silently in the synagogue by the individual worshiper.26 The Berakhot sequence, if used at the time in the Palestinian– influenced communities, was recited at home.27 In contrast, the compiler of this example did know the Berakhot blessings and integrated them with the Menahot blessings into a single list. The Babylonian influence is evidenced by the use of the negative formula and by the use of “slave” as the second blessing in the Menahot set [1. 11].28 The order of the Berakhot blessings, however, does not follow the Talmud’s sequence, suggesting that either the sequence was still fluid or that the editor did not feel bound to maintain the received order.29 This liturgy also includes two additional, Palestinian–inspired blessings that were valued by the compiler and, presumably, the local community, but are not known from any talmudic source. Although some medieval commentators go to great lengths to show how the order of the blessings logically corresponds to the sequence of actions that a person performs each morning, the blessings in this passage are a litany organized on stylistic grounds. Here, and in many other places, the blessings are organized by line length, sentence format, and similar

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4.2. Fragmentary Genizah manuscript page shows the combination of the Berakhot and Menahotblessings. The format of the individual blessings is internally inconsistent. The page is missing the first half of the lines in the bottom portion (manuscript Taylor-Schechter NS 230:11). (Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.)

FIGURE

considerations. In this example, the central blessings of the Berakhot 60b set appear first [11. 0–6]. These blessings are the shortest lines, each one consisting of “verb + direct object” and are followed by the sekvi.30 Perhaps the compiler of this liturgy knew the first group of Berakhot blessings as one liturgical unit and the sekvi as another. Because the recital of the blessings was severed from specific actions, and the entire group was collectively considered to be “blessings to be recited in the morning,” the larger group of shorter lines was placed first. The rest of the blessings in this passage are in the second person: first the remaining blessings of the Berakhot set and then the three Menahot blessings. At the end, the compiler added two other blessings that may or may not have been appended to the Menahot unit already.31 This Palestinian-informed text included both the Menahot and Berakhot blessings in a single sequence, but neither the contents nor the order had been standardized. Despite the wide dispersion of Natronai’s responsum, typically as part of manuscripts of Seder Rav Amram or Siddur Saadia, this approach, in which both the sequence and the exact content of these groups

COMPETITIVE TRADITIONS TABLE

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4.1. Extended Blessings in a Genizah Prayer Book

P(raised are) Y(ou) E(TERNAL our) G(od) K(ing of the) U(niverse) who raises the bowed P. Y. E. G. K. U. who frees the captive P.Y. E. G. K. U. who clothes [ha-malbish] the naked. P. Y. E. G. K. U. who establishes the earth upon the water P. Y. E. G. K. U. who strengthens Israel with courage. P. Y. E. G. K. U. who orders human steps. P. Y. E. G. K. U. who gives [ha-notein] the sekvi insight. P. Y. E. G. K. U. for You provided for me all my needs. P. Y. E. G. K. U. for You did not make me a gentile. P. Y. [E. G. K. U. for You did not] make me a slave. [P. Y. E. G. K. U. for You did no]t make me a woman. [P. Y. E. G. K. U. for You did no]t make me a beast. [P. Y. E. G. K. U. for You did not] make me of the peoples [of the earth but from your peop]le Israel. The bottom part of the original is torn and faded. Source: Taylor-Schechter NS 230.11.

of blessings remained fluid, continued until the era of the Shulhan Arukh in the sixteenth century. It did not fully end until the widespread distribution of printed prayer books led to the leveling of local diversity throughout the Jewish world.

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5 Censorship in Medieval and Renaissance Liturgy

Although the physical presence of Jews in medieval and renaissance Christian Europe was tolerated and sometimes even considered religiously necessary, Jewish ideas and Jewish books were inherently offensive and continually suspected of blasphemy. Although Judaism and Christianity each evolved an official theology of begrudging toleration of the other, suspicion and mutual contempt characterized both official and popular Jewish–Christian interactions from medieval through early modern times.1 Jewish books were endangered at the hands of the Church for centuries, susceptible to seizure and burning. Book burning began in France during the first half of the thirteenth century, and was primarily aimed at the Talmud and its commentaries, although non-Hebrew–reading opponents often failed to distinguish between one book and another.2 Among other accusations, the Talmud was charged with blasphemy against Jesus and the Virgin Mary.3 In the Church’s construction of sacred history, God indeed had once revealed truth through the Jewish people, but this period—and therefore the meaningful “history” of Jews and Judaism—ended with the arrival of Jesus. The Talmud, having been compiled after the death of Jesus, presumes a continuing, postbiblical history for the Jews, countermanding Christianity’s succession narrative, in which the New Testament supplants the Torah, Judaism’s older revelation. Accordingly, the Jews’ fealty to the Talmud as their essential text for interpreting and understanding the revealed word of the Hebrew

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Bible was considered a blasphemous assault on a core Christian teaching.4 For the Church, the Talmud was inherently objectionable; the Church also condemned what it considered to be blasphemous and heretical teachings as well as specific comments and words. One outraged Christian investigator declared: “In it are contained so many abusive and wicked things that they are an embarrassment for those who mention them and a horror to those who hear them.”5 Among other complaints, Church authorities interpreted every usage in the Talmud of the word goy as referring to “Christians.”6 Similar charges were extended to prayer books as well. When allowed to respond, Jews insisted that just as the various rabbinic references to a person named “Jesus” were not to the same “Jesus” venerated by the Church, so, too, the goyim mentioned in the Talmud and the Hebrew prayer book were not Christians but other “idolatrous peoples.”7 Despite these protestations, some 12,000 Hebrew books were burned in an auto-da-fé in Paris in February 1241. The Talmud as a religious work, the word Talmud, and certain terms used in it, especially goy, were suspect from this time forward. Beginning in the thirteenth century and for hundreds of years thereafter, Jews engaged in negotiation, bribery, and internal censorship with the goal of preserving their books from confiscation and destruction. In contrast with the public spectacle of burning books in the town square, censorship was a more intimate and negotiated process.8 At various times, but not always, Jews were allowed to remove words or phrases deemed unacceptable to the Church and, after inspection and approval, to keep the precious volumes. Although still painful, costly, and humiliating, the expurgation of words or passages was far preferable to the complete loss of sacred books.9 In the aftermath of the disputation of Barcelona in 1263 between Moses Nachmanides and a Dominican priest before King James I of Aragon, Pope Clement IV ordered a commission to investigate the Talmud and other Jewish books. ADominican priest, Raymond Martini, became the first authorized censor of Hebrew books. Martini, the most accomplished medieval Christian Hebraist, held that there were many passages in the Talmud that, in fact, pointed to the truth of Christianity; therefore, possession of the books should be permitted to the Jews—with the goal that they would eventually understand the Christian truths taught in their own holy books—as long as the offending passages were removed.10 A decree permitting the return of Hebrew books to their owners, following the expurgation of offensive passages, was issued by Pope Clement IV through King James I of Spain in 1263. Objectionable words or phrases were either inked over or revised. A period of negotiation followed James’ initial decree, and eventually an agreement was reached that did not require self-censorship by the Jews, instead allowing them to wait until the Dominican inspectors pointed out the

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objectionable passages. The Jews could then take an oath declaring that they did not interpret the statements in an anti-Christian way.11 Martini’s magnum opus, Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Iudaeos (Dagger of Faith against Moslems and Jews), anthologized a wide range of rabbinic sources, showing both the “pearls” of Christian wisdom hidden in postbiblical Jewish sources and the most potentially embarrassing, perceived anti-Christian passages in these works. Martini’s Latin translation is the only witness to some of the texts that were subsequently edited out of their Hebrew originals.12 At different times and in different cities, the censorship and expurgation process was a “dialogue” between Jews and Christians, a unilateral imposition of authority by the Church, or a voluntary, proactive, internal project of the Jewish community.13 Although formal expurgation and review was rarely practiced for a lengthy period—outright seizure and destruction being far more common—Jews voluntarily chose to censor their own writings and manuscripts with the goal of avoiding provocation or being able to defend their books if they were seized. Early printed editions of Hebrew books omitted the potentially offensive passages that had already been voluntarily expurgated from the manuscripts from which the printers were copying.14 Formal censorship became widespread during the mid sixteenth century with the rise and expansion of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and a more formal internal process of control in the Jewish community. With the advent of the printing press, prepublication censorship was commonly demanded.15 The acceptance of expurgation as a substitute for the complete destruction of an offending book was a continuing point of internal controversy among different elements of the Church and between ecclesiastical and secular authorities. As the regimen of censorship became more formal and regulated during the sixteenth century, repeated petitions by Jews to permit the expurgation of their own books became, in itself, a cause for suspicion.16 Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in 1447 and the rapid growth of printing during the late fifteenth century increased the Church’s concern about the publication of heretical and blasphemous works. In 1516, Pope Leo X ordered all books to be submitted to a censor in advance of publication. This edict ultimately resulted in the production of the first Index of Forbidden Books. The always-endangered Talmud was the only Hebrew book to appear in the initial Latin edition of the Index. The Church’s growing body of legislation and its other institutions of control were not extended to Hebrew books until Pope Julius III issued an edict in 1554. Beginning during the 1550s, the Inquisition carried out searches of synagogues and homes in various Italian cities.17 The Talmud and other Jewish books were frequently seized, and many texts were burned. Pope Julius’ edict,

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which permitted the return of expurgated books to their owners, was the result of lobbying by the Jewish communities of Italy trying to stop further destruction.18 Voluntary self-censorship and cooperation with the Holy Office were far preferable to the total loss of access to postbiblical Jewish literature. In some cases, Jews themselves went to great lengths to blot out objectionable passages and present their books for inspection.19 The general principle that otherwise objectionable books could be printed and owned if their “obnoxious passages” had been expurgated was affirmed in the Index of Trent in 1564.20 Although an authorized, censored edition of the Talmud was issued in 1578 in Basel, many of the changes required by the censor had already been made voluntarily eighty years earlier by Gershom of Soncino in his edition of the Talmud, before any official external censorship had been imposed. Gershom based his printed edition on a manuscript that itself had already been censored by an earlier copyist.21 The Church’s official listing of banned or censored Hebrew books, Sefer ha-Zikkuk, compiled by the convert Domenico Gerosolimitano, was only published in 1596.22 When the liturgy was attacked, the Kol Nidre and Alenu prayers were usually cited. Kol Nidre, the legal formulation forgiving personal vows that is recited on the eve of Yom Kippur, became the basis for the Christian claim that a Jew’s oath could not be relied upon. The Alenu prayer, recited at the end of each daily service, celebrates Jewish election and Jewish worship of the King of Kings, in contrast to the “peoples of the earth [goyai ha-aratzot] . . . for they worship and bow down before emptiness and vanity and pray to gods who cannot save” (see figure 5.1).23 This was considered a blasphemy against Christianity. Originally part of the Rosh Ha-Shanah liturgy, the Alenu was later incorporated into the daily liturgy. The Alenu was attacked in Spain in 1370, and, in 1399, a German convert named Peter (formerly named Pesach) charged that the Alenu contained a hidden slur about Jesus.24 Although, in fact, an esoteric, numerological anti-Christian explanation of the prayer did exist, the Jews successfully refuted this accusation.25 No different than any other social group in history, medieval Jews had “private” interpretations and stories about the majority cultures in which they lived. When confronted by Christian interlocutors, they would strenuously deny any anti-Christian meanings in Jewish texts and practice. Jewish converts to Christianity like Pesach/Peter—who had an interest in portraying the Jews in the worst possible light—were often responsible for informing the Christian authorities about what was previously an internal Jewish joke, narrative, or interpretation.26 When the Inquisition needed censors, it relied on the Hebrew skills of converts, some of whom were no doubt responsible for the expurgation from early printed prayer books of a condemnation of those who converted out of Judaism.27

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5.1. The Alenu prayer with the phrase from Isaiah 45:20 removed. The ink of the original words can be discerned. Christian censors usually used ink to black out forbidden words; Jewish owners would more carefully erase objectionable passages (manuscript HUC 440, 22r). (Courtesy of the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College– Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati.)

FIGURE

Most, but not all, extant medieval Italian prayer book manuscripts preserve evidence of having been reviewed and expurgated by a censor, and many were recensored more than once over the centuries (see figure 5.2; this manuscript was censored on at least four different occasions). Most prayer books removed the word goy in the Menahot blessings and, in the Alenu, the entire sentence “for they worship. . .  .” Usually, the expression goyei ha-aratzot (nations of the earth) in the Alenu was allowed to remain. The papacy ordered the expurgation of Hebrew books being published in Venice in 1548 (without any clear results). Censors’ signatures, affirming their review and expurgation of Hebrew works, date from as early as 1553. The bulk of the Church’s organized censorship activity took place from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries.28 Long before Church authorities formally began expurgating objectionable phrases and words, Jews voluntarily removed some of the most supposedly offensive terms themselves, especially the phrase “who did not make me a gentile.” The objectionable lines of the Alenu were rarely, if ever, removed in Italian prayer book manuscripts before the Church expurgated them, whereas, in contrast, the phrase “not a gentile” was frequently changed.29 Jews’ readiness to change the opening blessing may be attributed to the relative ease of making a single word substitution rather than the wholesale removal of an entire passage. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Jews created a variety of creative euphemisms to avoid the use of goy. These censorship-inspired variations later came to be valued by apologetic nineteenth- and twentieth-century readers as “ancient variants.”30 For the rabbis of late antiquity, the clear intention of the blessing praising God for making one “a Jew and not a gentile” was to emphasize the distinction

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THE THREE BLESSINGS

FIGURE 5.2. The phrase “and not a gentile” has been erased and the censor, Marchion, signed his approval in the margin. The prior line, “who made me [one who is] circumcised and not uncircumcised” was left untouched by Marchion and three subsequent censors, although it was censored out of other manuscripts (see Hirschfield, Catalogue, 68, and manuscript JNUL 80986).(Source: Montefiore 214, 78r.)

between the Jews and everyone else, just as the original Greek “made me a Greek and not a barbarian” emphasized the superiority of Hellenistic culture. Medieval and Renaissance Jews went to great lengths to distance themselves from accusations of anti-Christian hubris by insisting that the distinctions made in the liturgy referred only to long-ago historical events, rather than allowing the language of the prayer book to be construed as an aspersion on their Christian neighbors.31 The Provençal rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri (1249– ca. 1310) was the first of many to insist that the many references to non-Jews in the Talmud and rabbinic literature do not refer to the Christians of his day.32 In 1557, a printer in Cremona, Italy, seeking to avoid having his work censored just as the efforts to control Hebrew publishing were increasing, included a “Note to the Reader” in Or Einayim by Shelomoh ben Abraham Peniel: Every place that you find mentioned in this book the expressions “the nations of the world and enemies of Israel” and similarly “Edom and Ishmael,” this should be understood as the worshippers of idolatry and idols, who certainly are the enemies of God. But those who are not worshippers of idolatry and walk with integrity, of them our Rabbis of blessed memory long ago declared: “The righteous of the nations of the world all have a portion in the world to come.”33 Although unsuccessful in keeping the censors’ hand from this volume, this explanatory note was included in other Hebrew books printed in Christian countries and, in 1731, was used in a petition by Roman Jews requesting that their seized books be returned to them.34

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In the Morning Blessings, three different approaches were used to replace goy, the word that was most offensive to the Church: (1) a euphemism was inserted in its place, resulting in, for example, “who made me an Israelite and not a Kuti” or “who did not make me a Kuti”35; (2) the phrase was transformed from the negative, “who did not make me a gentile,” into the affirmative statement, she-asani Yisrael, “who made me an Israelite” (or, in some cases, “made me a Jew”; and (3) the blessing was skipped completely, resulting in a unit of only two elements (see figure 5.3).36 The most common replacement in Italian prayer book manuscripts is “who made me an Israelite.” Although this expression is a shortened version of the older Palestinian blessing, “who made me an Israelite and not a gentile,” it never appears in this shorter form in the Genizah texts. The longer, Palestinian formulation of the blessings is included in many Italian prayer books, but there are no cases of the parallel shortening of the other Palestinian blessings to the positive term alone without the contrasting element—for example, “who made me a man [and not a woman]” or “who made me a person [and not a beast].” When these positive phrases do appear in the Italian prayer books, they are always paired with the negative elements. The physical evidence of the manuscripts themselves bears witness to the different periods in their usage. One such example is an Italian prayer book from the fourteenth or fifteenth century (more precise dating is not possible). The original copyist wrote the blessing “who did not make me a gentile.” At an unknown later date, the words not and gentile were erased; the manuscript has spaces where these words once appeared. What was left at this point was “Praised are You. . . . Who did ____ make me ____.” Confronting this altered page, a later hand—the amateur lettering is a marked contrast to the professional scribe’s careful

FIGURE 5.3. “Who made me a Jew” was substituted by the original copyist for “who did not make me a gentile” (manuscript HUC 336, 2v). (Courtesy of the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati.)

52

THE THREE BLESSINGS

shapes—inserted the word Israelite to make the blessing coherent and conform to then-current practice (see figure 5.4). Although the replacement language, “who made me an Israelite,” resonated with the earlier Palestinian liturgical tradition, it also changed the structure of the first blessing from negative to positive. The alternative, the substitution of an acceptable euphemism in place of goy, required the least change in the rhythm and flow of the liturgy. Besides the commonly used kuti, replacements included oved elilim, “worshipers of idols,” or aku’m, an acronym for “oved kokavim ve’mazalot, worshiper of stars and planets,” or even “not an Aramean” or “not an Ishmaelite.” In a pattern that was to be repeated again and again in the centuries that followed, Jews chose euphemistic terms that identified themselves with the Christian majority against the idolatrous “other” who was distanced in time, like the Kuthites or Arameans, or in space, substituting “Ishmaelite” in place of goy (see figure 5.4).37 In some cases, as seen in the previous example, the original reading was erased, and then a later hand inserted a corrected reading. In some manuscripts, “Jew/not a gentle” was replaced with “circumcised/not uncircumcised,” although this perhaps-too-obvious replacement did not necessarily get past the censor.38 The only known occurrence of the phrase “made me an Israelite and not an Ishmaelite” is in an Italian prayer

5.4. Following the opening formula, Praised are You . . . , a blank space is left and then followed by who made me an Israelite. Yisrael (Israelite) is written in a different hand and without vowels. The letters extend into the margin. The blessing “who did not make me a slave” is missing and no room is left for its inclusion (manuscript Parma 1789, 2r). (Courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Italy.)

FIGURE

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book, in which “not an Ishmaelite” is written in the margin, perhaps by a later hand after the original text has been erased (figure 5.5).39 This expression was not the product of Jews in Muslim countries trying to distinguish themselves from those around them, but rather was the work of Jews in Christian countries seeking to pacify their immediate neighbors. Although the Church often portrayed Jews and Muslims together as blasphemers against the Church, and internal Jewish discussion set Jews apart from both “Christians and Muslims,” Jews (in Christian lands) sought to present themselves as allies with the Christians against the Muslim/infidel “other,” hoping to avoid being lumped in along with other “enemies of Christ”40 Another internal Jewish resolution was the complete removal of the objectionable line. Censors rarely removed an entire line of text; typically, only the individual objectionable word was rubbed out or written over. In some manuscripts, a space is left where the missing text belonged; in others, it is completely omitted. Manuscripts with the blank space do not show evidence of something having been written that was later erased.41 All these voluntary solutions were in use at the same time. The work of a single Renaissance Jew demonstrates the variety of responses to the threat of censorship and the many different arrangements of these blessings during the late fifteenth century, sometimes in the same communities.42 Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol was born in Avignon in 1452, but spent most of his life in or near the Italian cultural centers of Ferrara, Mantua, and Florence.43 Farissol worked as a cantor and copyist, and was selected by the Jewish community of Ferrara to represent it in a dispute with Christian theologians before the local duke. As a religious and political leader, Farissol was in the mainstream of the Jewish culture of his day. Of forty-one extant manuscripts copied by Farissol, seventeen are prayer books, and eleven of these contain the Morning Blessings

FIGURE 5.5. In a bid to avoid censorship, in place of the expected “who did not make me a gentile,” the copyist, Abraham Farissol, wrote “who did not make me an Aramean.” This manuscript was written in 1478, long before formal, organized censorship of Hebrew books (manuscript British Library Add 18692, 6r). (©The British Library Board.)

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THE THREE BLESSINGS

FIGURE 5.6. The original “not a gentile” is replaced with “not an Ishmaelite.” The longer phrase extends up into the side margin (manuscript Parma 1765, 17r). (Courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Italy.)

(see table 5.1).44 These eleven books, copied between 1478 and 1528, contain ten different arrangements of the three Menahot blessings. Only one of these ten places the sequence in what was already the “normative” Italian order—“slave, gentile, woman”—and several of the arrangements are unique to Farissol. The phrase “not a gentile” appears in only three of the eleven manuscripts. Others in its place include “who did not make me a Kuthite” twice; the only known usage of “who did not make me an Aramean”; and, once, the affirmative “who made me an Israelite.”45 In three manuscripts, the blessing is missing completely. The remarkable lack of consistency in these prayer books demonstrates that Farissol felt no compulsion to standardize this section of the liturgy in the books he copied.46 Rather, he either made an exact copy of whatever he was copying from, or he continually adjusted his work to conform to the requests of

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5.7. A blank space is left for an entire line. There is no indication that something was once present and erased. Later defacement of the manuscript was avoided whereas the blank space suggested to a reader that something should be inserted (manuscript Modena Estense γ.F.7.14). (Courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Italy.) FIGURE

his patrons or the political moment. The many accommodations made by Farissol were surely voluntary rather than legislated. In 1552, twenty years after Farissol’s death, Jews in Ferrara printed a Judeo-Spanish prayer book, in Latin characters—and therefore open to scrutiny by many—with the reading “que no me hizo gentío.”47 There are few extant copies of Spanish prayer books compared with the array of Italian prayer books. The substitution of “made me an Israelite” for “not a gentile,” so common in the Italian prayer books, also appears in a JudeoSpanish prayer book copied sometime during the fifteenth century before the expulsion of 1492.48 Written in Hebrew characters, the text was intended for the private use of a woman at home.49 The first of the three Menahot blessings is que me crió en su judezmo, “who created me in His Judaism.”50 It is unclear whether this neologism was the Judeo-Spanish translator’s original interpretation of “who made me an Israelite” or was the translation of a variant Hebrew version of this blessing. Did Jews say precisely what was written in their books? Or did they perhaps recognize the euphemism and say the original words that had been displaced?

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5.1. The Three Blessings in Prayer Books Copied by Abraham Farissol, 1478–1528

Ruderman’s Numbers*

12

13

15

18

20

22

25

26

31

32

40

Manuscript

Brit. Lib. Add 18692

JTSA 8255

Jerusalem JNUL 8o5492

Brit. Lib. Add 27072

Cincinnati HUC 331

Parma 1776

Modena Estense γ.F.7.14

JTSA 4653

Brit. Lib. Add 27029

Parma 1909

JTSA 8257

Year

1478

1478

1480

1481

1484

1487

1491

1492

1501

1515

1528

not . . . a woman

who made me a woman and not a man

not . . . a maidservant

not . . . a sectarian

not . . . a slave

not . . . a gentile

not . . . a woman

not . . . a slave

not . . . a slave

not . . . a slave

not . . . a slave

not . . . a slave

not . . . a maidservant or a slave

woman and not a man

not . . . a slave

not . . . a sectarian

not . . . a woman

not . . . a slave

made me an Israelite†

not . . . a woman

not . . . a gentile

not . . . a woman

not . . . an Aramean

‡

not . . . a gentile

not . . . a woman

not . . . a woman

not . . . a slave

not . . . a woman

not . . . a woman

*Ruderman (1981, app. II, pp. 157–160). †In this case, the copyist wrote out asher (who has) in asher asani Yisrael (who has made me an Israelite) so that the line would have the same length as the lines that began she lo asatani (who has not made me). In common usage, the word asher is abbreviated to she (one letter instead of three). ‡“Not a gentile” or a replacement is missing in four manuscripts. In this case, not just the objectionable term but the entire line is missing. It is impossible to tell whether the line was present and later erased, or, as it might appear, was intentionally left blank. See Popper, Censorship, 29.

THE THREE BLESSINGS

TABLE

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It is impossible to reconstruct what fifteenth-century Jews actually said. Considering their experience and memory of books being destroyed, alongside their voluntary cooperation in projects of expurgation and prepublication censorship, it is doubtful that Jews said aloud the prohibited words or expressions. On the other hand, many went to lengths to indicate that something was missing from the page. A variety of techniques denoted the absence of missing words, ranging from printing the vowels but not the consonants to leaving a large or small blank space to indicate where something had been left out.51 Another, more dangerous action was the substitution of an even more insulting word in place of the censored one, but a word that was apparently not in the lexicon of prohibited phrases. In the elaborately illustrated Rothschild Mahzor, written in Florence in 1492, “not a gentile” is replaced by “not a boor.” No Jew looking at this prayer book could have missed the intent of this correction, but the substitution was never censored.52 The most creative euphemistic resolution is found in three Italian prayer book manuscripts that, in place of “not a gentile,” have the expression balti m’daber, “one who does not speak.”53 Although this expression does not appear elsewhere in Hebrew religious literature, it immediately suggests the medieval idiom chai m’daber, “a living thing that speaks” (in other words, a human being, distinguished from the animals). Balti m’daber, “one who does not speak,” was, therefore, a euphemistic neologism for “animals.”54 These three prayer books recall, in a roundabout way, the ancient—but clearly not forgotten—blessing, “who did not make me a beast” (figure 5.8). This exceptional language, however, is more than simply a variant of the blessing “who did not make me a beast.” The usage in these early Renaissance prayer books is not a borrowing from an older form. Every manuscript containing the Palestinian formula, “who made me a person and did not make me a beast,” also has other Palestinian–style blessings, and all also contain “who made me an Israelite and not a gentile.”55 Among the three manuscripts with the variant “one who does not speak,” each contains two of the three blessings in the shorter, Babylonian style, and, in all three cases, this new blessing replaces the expected “Israelite and not a gentile.” Examination of the manuscripts clearly shows that the new phrase has been added by a later hand.56 A parallel case is another manuscript that shows evidence of an original term (presumably goy) having been erased and the word beast put in its place.57 In addition to seeing to the expurgation of their own books, rabbis and learned Jews also worked closely with the official censor, sometimes in a paid capacity.58 In situations when critical and careful editing of the text was taking place, equal attention was no doubt given to a consistent “cleaning” of the text so that the printed edition would be sure to pass the inquisitor’s scrutiny.

58

THE THREE BLESSINGS

5.8. The original phrase “[not] a gentile” has been erased; what may be a censor’s mark is in the margin. A later hand inserted, into the now blank space, “[not] an unspeaking beast (balti m’daber).” The new language is in an amateur hand and extends out into the margin of the page (manuscript British Library Add 18681, 4r). (©The British Library Board.)

FIGURE

In other cases, the paid Jewish assistant to the inquisitor was careless and inconsistent in what was permitted.59 The three prayer books that replace the censored “not a gentile” with “one who does not speak” represent yet a different type of response to the demands of the Inquisition. These prayer books were submitted for expurgation and returned with the objectionable phrases erased and nothing put in their place.60 At some later time, a replacement phrase was inserted to fill the blank created by the earlier removal. If the spaces had been left blank, it would be impossible to fulfill Rabbi Meir’s requirement that “there are three blessings which a person is obligated to say daily.” However, the replacement term inserted here was not an approved euphemism for the objectionable word, like nokhri (stranger) or kuti, as are found in the majority of prayer books, nor was an alternative taken from the existing liturgical lexicon.61 A new phrase was coined that resonated with the blessing “who did not make me a beast,” but that would not appear in any index of “objectionable” words and would certainly not be in the limited Hebrew vocabulary of Christian inquisitors. The time of these insertions is impossible to establish; it is obvious from the handwriting of the corrections that they were made by an amateur, not a professional, scribe. If the Inquisition censored Hebrew prayer books by removing the blessing “who did not make me a gentile,” some Jews retaliated by creating a new form of the ancient blessing “who did not make me

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a [dumb] beast.” Surely present in their consciousness was the object of this comparison, the gentiles who were now called “speechless (beasts).”62 If the effect of censorship and expurgation was to muzzle Jewish religious speech, this blessing was an act of spiritual resistance and identity formation that reasserted the superiority of the Jews over the gentile oppressors, who could be considered less than human.63 In printed editions of Italian prayer books, the replacement formula “who made me a Jew” was commonly used. Other printed prayer books in communities subject to censorship, or whose own books may have been influenced by censored books, had the reading, “who made me an Israelite” or “who did not make me a foreigner (nokhri).” Many books, however, kept the original reading, “who did not make me a gentile.” Although later generations of Jews often knew that the alternate readings were the result of censorship, the question of what was, in fact, the correct text was raised repeatedly.64 At the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, modernizing Jews once again replaced what they considered to be inflammatory words—“who did not make me a gentile”— with potentially less offensive language. Some editors during the nineteenth century, as well as during the contemporary period, justified their own usage of “who made me a Jew” by appealing to the historical authenticity of the alternative reading, “who made me an Israelite.65 Although these editors are correct that this reading was used by Jews in the past, the language that is most consistent with contemporary Jews’ liturgical and political aesthetics was originally inserted to avoid censorship or destruction of books containing what had been until then the original “authentic” usage.

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6 Women, Slaves, Boors, and Beasts

Rabbi Jacob ben Judah Landau, writing in Germany in about 1487, complained, “I have seen in the Italian and Catalonian prayer books and amongst the Sephardim many blessings that are not mentioned in the Gemara [i.e., the Talmud] and not in the poskim [later rabbinic decisors] and they have no basis or authority.”1 By Landau’s day, the authority of the Talmud was long established; in theory, any authorized prayer was described in the Talmud or at least in the legal writings of some early, authoritative source.2 As a kabbalist, Landau was particularly concerned about accuracy in the recitation of prayer; if the letters and vowels of the prayers hold hidden meanings, then even tiny superficial changes might be of enormous import. Despite the efforts of many rabbinic authorities to regulate and standardize prayers and prayer behavior, variant versions of the Menahot and Berakhot blessings were preserved and passed on for centuries, despite their lack of talmudic precedent. The imposition of censorship on Hebrew books, which began formally during the first half of the sixteenth century but was already underway haphazardly a century or more before, further confused efforts to standardize the language of the prayer book. The literary survival of variant blessings in prayer books does not necessarily tell what Jews actually did in any particular time or place; rather, these passages only record what the compiler or copyist of a particular text wrote down. Although someone clearly thought that these various texts belonged in the prayer book, this is not proof

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THE THREE BLESSINGS

of their ongoing use. (Similarly, the censorship of a written text does not prove that the original, uncensored passage was never recited silently in the synagogue or at home.) In addition to prayer books, three other kinds of texts are valuable sources of information: halakhic codes, legal responsa, and guides to customs and practices. These texts, too, are not necessarily reliable indicators of what Jews did. The halakhic texts are prescriptive, describing what the authors thought people should do, whereas descriptive texts often describe only the practice of a particular rabbi or family.3 Collectively, these texts show how the rabbinic elite understood the proper form and religious significance of these blessings. By and large, these authors do not report the diversity of blessing formulations that is found in southern European manuscripts. Questions were repeatedly raised, however, of whether the blessings were obligatory, whether new blessings could be added, and how and when to recite them were. The legal texts also explain the reasons for the blessings and their sequence. Every aspect of the Menahot blessings was still debated through the time of the Renaissance.

Beast Versus Boor Versus Slave The widely recognized, authoritative sources for the correct language of the Hebrew prayer book were the editions of Rav Amram and Rav Saadia Gaon, both of whom, as ninth- and tenth-century Babylonian rabbis, relied heavily on the Babylonian Talmud. Despite their clear support for the Talmud’s resolution in favor of “who did not make a slave,” the question of whether to recite “who did not make me a boor” remained unresolved for centuries. Although the Talmud explicitly and firmly prefers “not a slave,” the older, Palestinian tradition of “not a boor” was never forgotten. When Jewish legal decisors cannot resolve a situation in which the older authorities are in conflict, or their intentions are not clear, a common halakhic solution is to include both alternatives—one of which, presumably at least, will be correct.4 In this case, instead of three blessings, some therefore chose to recite four, including both “not a slave” and “not a boor.”5 One midrash, the ninth-century Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh, rewrites the Talmud’s baraita as if it has had four elements all along: “A person is obligated to say four things daily: ‘women are exempt from the mitzvot,’ ‘not a slave,’ since slaves are considered as beasts, ‘who did not make me a gentile (goy)’ since ‘the nations (goyim) are as nothing before Him.’”6 All three of the tannaitic sources begin with “three blessings/things.” The editor of Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh may have collected or found the same core story in slightly different versions, totaling four blessings, and conflated them. This

W OMEN, SLAVES, BOORS, AND BEASTS

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unified, even if newly created, text was then presented as an authentic ancient source from the prethird-century tannaitic period. In this passage, the four distinctions are mentioned first and are then followed by a series of proof texts in inverse order. One possible explanation for this unusual structure is that the proof text phrase, “the boor does not fear sin” (Mishnah, Avot 2:5), was consistently transmitted with the blessing language itself, so that the gloss and the liturgical language traveled as a unit: “Not a boor because ‘the boor does not fear sin.’” In many Genizah fragments and European prayer book manuscripts, the three authorized blessings are followed immediately by “who did not make me a boor, since a ‘boor does not fear sin’” when no proof texts for the other attributes are brought.7 In the Tosefta, the collection of second-century Mishnah–era rabbinic teachings, “a boor does not fear sin” is the proof text offered in support of why one should say the blessing “who did not make me a boor.” This idea is also found in the Mishnah itself, in the widely studied Tractate Pirkei Avot. Because of the Gemara’s criticism of the blessing “not a boor,” those who used it may have felt compelled to justify their practice. The editor of Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh perhaps combined two independent textual traditions—one consisting of the three blessings, “not a gentile, . . . slave, . . . woman,” and a separate literary tradition of “not a boor for ‘the boor does not fear sin’”—and linked them together. The other proof texts were then added, generating the chiastic arrangement. The editor invokes “slave,” “boor,” and “beast” in the proof texts, although in this midrash, “beast” is not an attribute, but instead is part of the explanation for why “not a slave” is included.8 Despite efforts to make local practice conform to the Talmud’s authorized version, alternative formulations of the Menahot blessings were preserved and transmitted for centuries. Thus, even though the widely copied Mahzor Vitri (late eleventh century) and other northern European authorities declared that “whoever blesses ‘who did not make me a boor’ has not done according to the halakha,”9 numerous subsequent Italian and French manuscripts add “who did not make a boor” to the three “talmudically” approved terms.10 Menahem ben Solomon Meiri (1249–1306) notes that this practice is known in Spain, referring to those “who bless ‘who did not make me a boor’ daily.”11 In his Beit haBehira, Meiri comments on the practice of reciting both “not a beast” and “not a slave,” as described in Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh, explaining: “In the Tosefta ‘[not a] slave’ was excluded and ‘boor’ included . . . and thus many are in the custom [of reciting all] four of them.”12 (This sequence is the reverse of the account of the history of the blessings given in the Babylonian Talmud.) The same formulation as found in Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh appears in Israel ben Joseph AlNakawa’s (Spain, ca. 1335–1391) Menorat ha-Meor.13 The enduring strength of this tradition is illustrated by the appearance of all four terms, including the proof text for “not a boor,” in a Romanian rite prayer book copied in 1529.14

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THE THREE BLESSINGS

Slave The recommended talmudic replacement for “not a boor” was “not a slave.” The Hebrew word “eved” is used throughout most of premodern Jewish history to mean “servant,” “serf,” or “slave” (all three words share the same English etymology). The recitation of this blessing by medieval Jews may have created dissonance, because their own legal status was sometimes identified by the Church as “slaves” or “serfs.”15 According to medieval Church teaching, the Jews were destined to perpetual bondage as punishment for crucifying Christ.16 This theological doctrine was expressed from the twelfth century onward by declaring Jews, in their person and their property, as servi regis or servi camarae nostrae, “in the service/serfs of the king” or “in service/serfs of the (royal) treasury.”17 Did the recitation of a blessing proclaiming that one was “not a slave” constitute a “blessing in vain”? This dissonance was resolved by one of two solutions: eliminating the word “slave” via erasure or substitution, or expanding the phrase “who did not make me a slave” into the more precise “not a slave of humans (eved la-briot).”18 This locution was intended, according to Naphtali Wieder, to distinguish between being the slave of a commoner and the real benefits to the Jews of being the property—and, therefore, under the protection—of the princes “and thereby saved from private slavery. Servants of the king—yes; servants of people—no.”19 Two Spanish medieval commentators spoke positively of the benefits of this position, and saw the fact that the Jews enjoyed royal protection and were not slaves to commoners as proof of divine providence.20 Although theological clarity and consistency may have prompted textual emendation, it is also possible that stylistic concerns were the original motivation. The longer, Palestinian–influenced form “who made me free and not a slave” is found in Genizah texts and in early Italian prayer books.21 The phrase “who did not make me a slave to created beings” could have easily been a stylistic change made to generate a longer phrase that would scan better with the longer lines preceding it.22 Another possibility is that these texts seek to distinguish between earthly service (eved la-briot) and the service of heaven. The root e-v-d simultaneously denotes both servitude and divine service, as in the biblical expression ivdei Adonai, “worshippers/servants of God.”23 If the goal of this modification is to avoid blessing in vain—which is to say, giving thanks for untrue circumstances—this seems more likely. Of the four examples where this blessing is used, two also provide a gloss on the first blessing, “not a goy,” making clear that the word here refers to the other “nations of the earth.”24 Medieval commentators, such as Rabbi Abraham bar Nathan of Lunel (twelfth century) imagined the disabilities of being such a slave:

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We bless . . . “who did not make me a slave to humans” since slavery keeps a person from understanding and from the knowledge of his Creator.25 Further, the slave is not commanded to fulfill positive time-bound commandments, does not enjoy the merit of the ancestors since his ancestors did not stand at Mt. Sinai, and, further, he is not considered trustworthy, as it is written: “The more slaves, the more theft.”26 Rabbi Abraham’s near contemporary Yehuda bar Yakar (died ca. 1210) explained that one should be grateful even for not being an Israelite slave: “Even an Israelite slave, since he does not have the capacity to fulfill the mitzvot as is proper, since he is burdened all day doing his assigned tasks.”27 As it does for Jewish women, Jewish law excuses slaves from the obligation to fulfill all commandments that must be fulfilled at a specific time of day on the presumption that they are too busy doing their required labors. Most commentators explained that “slave” in this blessing means a non-Hebrew (literally, “Canaanite”) slave who is part of a biblical-era Israelite household: “who did not make me a slave” means: “a Canaanite slave,” although he is better than the idolater, since he is commanded regarding all the commandments which a woman is obligated in. . . . Nonetheless, he is very despised for he does not have the merit of the ancestors and is forbidden to marry a daughter of Israel and the other matters of lowliness which attach to him.28 Sometimes “who did not make me a slave” was replaced or accompanied in medieval prayer manuscripts by one or both of the older blessings that it had allegedly replaced: “not a boor” and “not a beast.” These two blessings were preserved for entirely different reasons. The usage “who did not make me a boor” was supported by a known, shared literary tradition with a tannaitic pedigree. It was never given an esoteric interpretation beyond its obvious meaning. In contrast, the blessing “who did not make me a beast” is an example of a liturgical tradition with language that remained constant but with a meaning that changed throughout the centuries. Although both “not a boor” and “not a slave” were substituted by some Babylonian rabbis for the Greek prayer’s original “a person and not a beast,” the Jewish version of the Greek blessing, “who made me a person and not a beast,” was used only in Palestinian–influenced liturgy. In addition to the Genizah texts, this blessing also appeared frequently in early Italian prayer book manuscripts. Even in communities where it was not the practice to say the blessing, it was nonetheless known and its omission noteworthy. Thus, Rabbi Asher of Lunel wrote in his Sefer ha-Minhagot (composed about 1220):

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Some ask: “Why do we not say ‘who did not make a beast’?” [We do not] since we have already given thanks for this in the blessing “the soul you have given me [Elohai neshama]” and “who has created man with wisdom,” since when all the souls were created the souls of cattle were not created, and a beast does not have a soul.29 The critical distinction between humans and beasts, in rabbinic and kabbalistic thought, is that beasts do not have souls.30 Having already given thanks for the uniqueness of the human soul in the prayer Elohai neshama (“The soul you have given me is a pure one”), the inclusion of “who did not make me a beast” would therefore be redundant. Rabbi Asher further cites another blessing that a person would be expected to have already said daily, the blessing for relieving oneself, which praises God “who created the human with wisdom.” The common understanding of “wisdom” in this blessing is that it refers to God’s wisdom in creating the human form artfully. In Rabbi Asher’s unusual reading of the blessing, “wisdom” becomes a human attribute that distinguishes humanity from the beasts.31 This explanation of the blessing, affirming the contrast between the essential nature of humanity, endowed with both soul and intellect, in contrast with “dumb beasts” who lack these gifts, was surely a continuation of the common understanding of this blessing since its first usage in antique Hellenistic circles.

“According to His Will” Women are simultaneously “the other” (not a man) and invisible (without agency) in the early history of these blessings. Concern for an alternative blessing for women to recite instead of the blessing “who did not make me a woman” begins only during the medieval period. The only earlier reference to the matter is in a Babylonian responsum by Sar Shalom, Gaon of Sura, written ca. 840, and only serves to reinforce women’s invisibility, in the context of Sar Shalom’s answer to a general question about what blessings women should and should not recite. Women are excused from ritual responsibilities that are connected to a specific time, because the rabbis presumed that household and family duties did not allow them freedom over their schedules. However, because the meal had already been served, Sar Shalom permitted women to recite the Grace After Meals, Birkhat ha-Mazon. The second paragraph thanks God for the promise of the Land of Israel, for the liberation from Egypt, and for “the covenant which you sealed in our flesh [i.e., circumcision].” Sar Shalom proposed that women simply skip over its reference to circumcision. Similarly,

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he wrote: “A woman is obligated to recite those ‘who gives the sekvi,’ etc., blessings but she should skip over ‘who did not make me a woman.’”32 The first explicit description of a special women’s blessing is in the Arba Turim of Jacob ben Asher (Spain, 1269–ca. 1340); it also appears (and was presumably known to readers) in a poem written in about 1322.33 Jacob ben Asher describes what has clearly already been an existing practice: “Women customarily bless ‘who made me according to His will’ and it is possible that they do this like one who accepts the justice of the harsh [decree].”34 This call for acquiescence to the justice of God’s decree hints of the blessing recited when hearing of a death, called tziduk ha-din, “the justice of the decree.” Although later apologists go to great lengths to defend this blessing, Jacob ben Asher understood it as a statement of faith and resignation by women to their secondary status; their situation—not being a man—is clearly “harsh,” but it is in accordance with God’s will. This explanation for the custom was repeated by David Abudarham (Spain, fourteenth century), and other later commentators.35 The impetus for creating a different blessing for women may have originated in part from the concern that the minimum 100 daily blessings or the Menahot series of three not be diminished. If there was a specific list of blessings that had to be said—and, ever since Natronai’s initial list, numerous catalogs had been made—then a specific blessing must be inserted to take the place of the one being skipped.36 Even if women did not ultimately recite all 100 blessings daily, this new blessing, “who made me according to His will,” affirmed the social order as theological construct and entered into the common culture.37 Throughout subsequent generations, some questioned whether this was the appropriate blessing for women, whereas others wondered whether the authority existed to create new blessings at all. Unlike “who did not make me a beast,” there was no received tradition for the blessing “who made me according to His will.” Some suggested that a new blessing without talmudic warrants should not be recited, and others ruled that it should be said but without the introductory formula invoking God’s name.38 Under the influence of Joseph Karo (1488–1575) and his Shulhan Arukh, the inclusion of this blessing became universal practice, although to this day some Orthodox authorities still do not permit women to use the authoritative, talmudic blessing formula, invoking the Divine Name, and instead recommend a modified blessing format. Some Jews argued that the appropriate replacement blessing for women to say was “who did not make me a beast.” This blessing, which has roots in Greek sources and appears in the Genizah texts, appears in kabbalistic discussions about the transmigration of souls. The thirteenth-century Italian kabbalist, Menahem Recanati (died ca. 1290) wrote in his Torah commentary, “Our rabbis of blessed memory disputed in Menahot whether to bless ‘who did not

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make me a beast.’”39 There is no such reference in the Talmud itself, and later commentators assumed that this comment about the text of the Talmud was somehow in error.40 Recanati, they presumed, was familiar with a tradition that the blessing “who did not make me a beast” could be said instead of “who did not make me a boor” or “not a slave.” But the Italian manuscripts that preserve this blessing do not use this blessing in place of one of the others; it always appears in addition to “not a gentile, woman nor slave.” Rather than a copying error, Recanati’s reference may refer to an esoteric tradition that women should recite “who did not make me a beast.” In his commentary to Exodus 22:17, he noted the proximity of the verse about a female sorceress (v. 17) to the verse about one who has intercourse with a beast (v. 18): “You shall not permit a sorceress to live. Any who lies with a beast shall be put to death.” If a male penetrates with the organ of the covenant the genitals of an animal with the consequence that impure magical powers are thereby drawn into the soul, the offender may assume the soul of a beast. There are amongst the wise of the Kabbalah who esoterically explained (amru b’sod) “And the beast you shall kill” since it was deserving of this for violating one of the prohibited sexual relations. And thus it is written regarding the prohibited sexual relations: “And it is cut off from its people” since it is no longer recognized amongst its people but only among the beasts, and thus “and the beast shall be put to death”. . . . And further, they said that ultimately “the beast” [i.e., the one who has had intercourse with an animal] is punished by becoming a bat (atlef) since he wrapped himself (nitatef) in transgression and especially so in a case where he did not turn in repentance.41 . . . Perhaps for this reason did our rabbis of blessed memory dispute in Menahot as to whether one should recite: “who did not make me a beast.” Understand this.42 Recanati certainly knew about the blessing “who did not make me a beast” and perhaps even knew about centuries-old disputes regarding the correct text of the Talmud. He hints (“Understand this”) at an esoteric explanation for why this blessing might be said. It is a blessing about avoiding improper sexual relations and the consequent transmigration of the soul. This may be his explanation of the rabbinic dispute about the correct blessing language. Those who believed in the transmigration of human souls into an animal encouraged the recitation of “who did not make me a beast,” whereas those who did not, did not endorse the recital of this blessing. The daily recital of “who did not make me a beast” does not refer to the initial creation or essential nature of the

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human soul—as Rabbi Asher of Lunel understood—but rather the daily renewal of the unity of body and soul each morning.43 The fragility and transient quality of the soul, ever at risk of being transformed, is a key theme in the Jewish mystical imagination. For the kabbalists, therefore, the reality of having been made by God as one is (and not as something else) is not a one-time occurrence, but rather a daily affirmative act of renewal on the part of God and of gratitude on the part of the worshiper. The transformation of God’s “(not) making” from a singular event to a daily recurrence became key to the mystical interpretation of the entire Menahot blessing sequence. This destabilization of the human soul has the interrelated dual consequences of increasing anxiety about one’s nature—if maleness, Jewishness, and humanness are nonessential qualities— and therefore of enhancing the passion and depth of the daily worship. Recanati does not explicitly refer to women reciting the blessing “who did not make me a beast.” It appears specifically as a blessing for women in Joseph ben Moses’ Leket Yosher, written ca. 1450 to 1480. Leket Yosher is a detailed report of the teachings and practices of his rabbi, Israel Isserlein (1390–1460): A woman says, in place of “who did not make me a woman,” “who did not make me a beast.” But I heard from a woman who says in place of “who did not make me a woman,” “who made me according to His will.” It appears to me that the Gaon of blessed memory would not approve of her, since the holy mother of the Gaon of blessed memory would say “who did not make me a beast.”44 Joseph ben Moses was writing in Bavaria almost 200 years after Recanati. Although there was agreement that women should insert a replacement blessing, the content of the replacement was debated: “according to His will” or “not a beast.” Leket Yosher reports that the revered rabbi’s mother’s practice was to recite “who did not make me a beast.”45 This is the only reference to this blessing being specifically for women, although the Palestinian form “who made me a person and not a beast” was still in circulation in Italian manuscripts intended for general use.46 The blessing may have been preserved in two formats and in two differing contexts. In some places, it remained one of the group of blessings that was preserved in their Palestinian form and used to expand the Menahot set beyond the “plain” three blessings. Motivation for preserving the alternative blessings may have come from a local tradition, preserving an earlier memory of the dispute about which blessings were authoritative, or simply because adding additional blessings was considered appropriate to ensure the full complement of 100.47 In its shorter, Babylonian–style form, the blessing may have become an esoteric tradition used by women in kabbalistic circles. If the total number of

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blessings recited was important, but the manifest content of the second blessing, “who did not make me a woman,” was clearly inappropriate for women to say, there was dispute regarding what women should say in its place. This would explain the debate recorded in Leket Yosher.48 This could also account for Recanati’s statement about “the Rabbis.” It is quite possible that a medieval kabbalist imagined that an esoteric dispute in his own generation was already a matter of concern for the Tannaim, the rabbis of the Talmud who lived 1000 years previously, but, who in the eyes of the later kabbalists, were themselves all kabbalists who shared the same worldview as their spiritual descendents. Missing from the record here, as in so many other places, are the voices of Jewish women. Considering the data from a feminist historical perspective raises the possibility that women themselves initiated the recitation of the special blessing. None of the rabbinic authorities attribute the authorship of this blessing to a particular source, and early sources emphasize that it is “the women’s custom” to recite this blessing, not that women were instructed to do so. Although the manifest content of this blessing—and its interpretation by male authorities—may be seen as contributing to the social and religious oppression of women, its creation and entrance into the liturgy may also be an example of medieval Jewish women’s agency and assertiveness. In place of being rendered invisible, as in Sar Shalom’s responsum, women inscribed themselves into the liturgy. The widespread acknowledgment of women’s use of this blessing suggests that at least some women were praying in Hebrew and were invested in their own visibility in the prayer book. The evidence of Jewish women who were scribes or authors or otherwise engaged in literary activity in medieval Europe suggests that this blessing could have been authored by or generated among women.49 Some women recited a direct reply to the man’s blessing, “who did not make me a woman.” Three Renaissance manuscripts preserve two different formulas of a blessing that begins “Praised . . . who made me a woman” or “did not make me a man.” All three of these prayer books were written for women in southern Europe during the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. One is a translation of the daily prayer book into Shuadit, the Judeo-Provençal vernacular. This prayer book may have been a wedding present from a family member to a sister.50 Like many vernacular prayer books, it was written in Hebrew characters: Benedich Tu Sant Benezet nostre Diew rey dal segle ke non fis mi serventa. Benedich Tu Sant Benezet nostre Diew rey dal segle ke non fis mi goya. Benedich Tu Sant Benezet nostre Diew rey dal segle ke fis mi fena.51

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The use of feminine forms of “slave” and “gentile,” and the sequence “slave, gentile, woman” is typical of Italian prayer books from this period. In Hebrew–language Italian prayer books, goy (gentile) and eved (slave) are often followed by goyah (gentile, f.) and shifcha (female servant), respectively.52 The word order of the Judeo-Provençal suggests that the text was translated literally “word for word” from a Hebrew source.53 The second two examples were copied by the cantor and scribe, Abraham Farissol, in Ferrara in 1478 and in Mantua in 1480.54 In both cases, the name of the patron who commissioned the prayer book was later erased. One copy was requested by a man for his wife, and the second was a commission by the woman herself. These two prayer books do not have the same sequence or wording as the Menahot blessings. The Judeo-Provençal prayer book substitutes the affirmative reading “who made me a woman” in place of the expected “who made me according to His will.” Otherwise, the sequence and content of the Menahot blessings are normative. Against the rabbis’ interpretation of “according to His will” as the action of one “who accepts the harsh decree,” this text asserts that being a woman is, in itself, worthy of thanksgiving. The two prayer books copied by Farissol have even stronger language (see table 6.1). All three of the Menahot blessings are irregular. In one manuscript, the woman’s blessing is the first in the sequence, emphasizing its importance. The blessing adapts the Palestinian style, as often found in Italian prayer books, but reverses the usual sequence: “who made me a woman and not a man” (see figure 6.1). This blessing is beyond the pale of what any rabbinic figure of the day could have accepted. The second blessing is also unique to this prayer book: “who did not make me a maidservant or a slave (amah v’shifchah).” The addition of the second term serves to lengthen this line, making it equal in length to the one that precedes it. Because these prayer books were intended for upperclass Jewish women, the additional emphasis on class rank may have suggested itself. In place of goya (gentile, f.), this prayer book has analternative reading, nokhrit (foreigner, f.). Although this usage is found in other Italian prayer TABLE

6.1. Renaissance Prayer Books for Women Copied by Abraham Farissol

Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, manuscript 805492

Jewish Theological Seminary of America, manuscript 8255

Shelo asitani amah

Who did not make me a maidservant

Sheasitani ishah v’lo ish

Who made me a woman and not a man

Sheasitani ishah v’lo ish

Who made me a woman and not a man

Shelo asitani amah v’shifchah

Who did not make me a maidservant or a slave

Shelo asitani goyah

Who did not make me a gentile (fem.)

Shelo asitani nokhrit

Who did not make me a foreigner (fem.)

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6.1. A Renaissance prayer book for a woman copied by Abraham Farissol in 1478, with the affirmative blessing “who made me a woman and not a man.” The other blessings are also modified to be spoken by a woman (manuscript JTSA 8255, 5v). (Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.)

FIGURE

books, these variations are further evidence that the writer of these books did not feel bound to follow the putatively “authorized text” of the blessings (compare figure 6.2).55 Farissol was a cantor and active Jewish leader who publicly debated on behalf of Judaism. However, he was neither a halakhist nor a kabbalist, either of which might have made him more concerned to uphold the “normative” text. Was the wording of the blessings a gift to the patrons by the copyist? A request by the patrons? An alternative to the still-circulating “who

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6.2. A Renaissance prayer book for a woman copied by Abraham Farissol in 1480, with the affirmative blessing “who made me a woman and not a man.” The word goya (gentile, f.) has been erased (manuscript Jerusalem 805492.) (Courtesy of the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.) FIGURE

did not make me a beast?” Perhaps variations were inserted into these books, designed for women’s private use, with the expectation that men—or at least rabbis—would not read them.56 If, as is probable, the Shuadit prayer book was copied directly from a Hebrew original, there were other prayer books circulating with this feminist variation.57 The Farissol prayer books were not the source for the Shuadit text. Regardless of whether women in other locales recited or even imagined blessings like these, the only evidence we have for these protofeminist texts is these three Italian–influenced prayer books. Can we not also imagine that women may have had their own oral traditions that were not widely recorded or preserved in the written record? These texts do not prove that the life of wealthy Renaissance Jewish women was qualitatively different from that of other Jewish women of the time; however, they do suggest that not all women experienced their lot as being as the outcome of a “harsh decree” from on high, as characterized by many later commentators. These books were intended for women of privilege, one of whom was in a position to commission the copying of a book herself. Actual Jewish women’s practice during the late medieval period is clearly not represented by the descriptions found in halakhic codes, responsa, or minhag (local customs) books written by rabbinic men, as seen in the women’s prayer books in figures 6.3 and 6.4. The idea that men should give praise “for not making me a woman” originated in ancient Greek culture and was paralleled in late Second Temple and early rabbinic Jewish culture. This statement about the patriarchal social hierarchy did not require translation. Although the expression of male privilege was different in the two cultures, the relative social position of men and women was the same.58 In rabbinic Judaism, the higher status of men is linked to the fulfillment of mitzvot, which in turn is the route to closeness with God, as the

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6.3. A traditional prayer book adapted for use by a woman, with the feminine forms added in the margin by two different hands (manuscript HUC 436, 2r). (Courtesy of the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati.)

FIGURE

Tosefta explains: “‘who did not make me a woman’ for women are not commanded to fulfill [all] the mitzvot.” This explanation is the normative interpretation for this blessing throughout its entire history, and is repeated by the medieval halakhic authorities in virtually every prayer book that has a commentary and in modern apologetic literature. Less common, but still found in many medieval commentaries, is a paraphrase of Jacob ben Asher’s comment about why women say “according to His will.” Although the original gloss was equivocal—“[I]t is possible that they do this like one who accepts the justice of the harsh [decree]”—the later commentators, such as Mordechai Jaffe (ca. 1525– 1612), were firm: “She is like one who accepts the justice of the harsh decree.”59 Earlier, Yehuda bar Yakar explained why men say their blessing and the “harsh decree” with a combination of realistic observations about the powerlessness of women and misogynistic statements from the rabbinic tradition60: For she is not obligated to fulfill all of the commandments. And the fear of her husband is upon her and she cannot execute even those commandments about which she is obligated. . . . Also she does not have sufficient means at hand to fulfill [the mitzvah] of honoring father and mother! And she does not have enough money to give charitable donations. . . . And further, in Genesis Rabbah: “No one is desired before the Holy One except the male,”61 and thus in the Tractate Three Things: “Three things a man does not want, but the world cannot exist without them: vinegar in his wine, a female among his children, grass in his cornfield.”62 Therefore woe to him whose children are daughters.63

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6.4. Italian rite prayer book written for a woman’s exclusive use, with the Menahot blessings in the format used by Italian Jewish women (manuscript Parma 1743, 2v). (Courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Italy.)

FIGURE

Several medieval commentators are puzzled about the rationale for saying the two blessings, not a slave and not a woman, because their status is in many ways alike. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, France, 1040–1105) commented that “a wife is a shifcha (female slave) to her husband, like a slave is to its owner.”64 Regarding the time-bound commandments, Rashi notes, women and slaves share the same status.65 Others create a progressive hierarchy in which slave is superior to gentile, woman superior to slave, and, of course, man superior to woman. Jaffe wrote:

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There are an additional three blessings that each son of Israel must bless and they are [1] “who made me an Israelite”—in order to give praise and thanks to the One who made him from amongst the people of Israel, who chose us from all the idolaters and brought us close to his service in order to fulfill his commandments. [2] Afterwards, “ . . . who did not make me a slave”—which is to say not a Canaanite slave, for . . . he is better than the idolater. . . . In any event, he is very despised since he does not have the relationships nor the merit of the ancestors and is forbidden to marry a daughter of Israel and the other matters of baseness which are associated with him. [3] Afterwards, one recites “who did not make me a woman” for even though she is better and far superior to the slave, she is nonetheless not as important as males in Israel, for she is not obligated by all the mitzvot for she is excused from mitzvot which are time-specific and “greater is the one who is commanded and fulfills than one who is not commanded and does.”66 A woman blesses: “who made me according to His will” in place of “who did not make me a woman,” and she is like one who accepts the harsh decree.67 This complex of blessings served as an affirmation and generation of the halakhic worldview. But the cultural statement, adapted from its Hellenistic origins, also must conform to the grammar of the halakhic system, which requires a unique purpose for each blessing, lest it be “a blessing in vain.” This is Rashi’s concern. If, functionally, the slave and the woman are the same (for Rashi, there was no distinction between woman and wife), what basis is there for separate blessings? In the rabbinic and medieval Jewish worldview, the category of “Israelite” was ultimately superior and elevated the Jewish woman above the non-Jewish male, even though the texts also hurried to assert that the Jewish woman’s status remained significantly below that of the Jewish male. Despite the efforts by rabbinic leaders to establish the correct language for these blessings, alternative readings remained in circulation for hundreds of years. The appearance or persistence of variant readings need not be explained by theological or political circumstances; just as plausibly, they may reflect the endurance of textual traditions and local customs. If this is so, then the text’s claim of authenticity was as significant as its content. The special blessing for women, used to complete the requirement for three blessings to be said daily, was both a vehicle for reinforcement of the patriarchal religious and social order, and the route to certain forms of “resistance.” The blessing may have

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originated as a creative act by women to inscribe themselves in the liturgy where they had been invisible. Although later rabbinic figures overcame their initial resistance and soon embraced the blessing, explaining it within the rabbinic worldview, some Jewish women—and their allies—composed and recited a definitive alternative. The blessing “who made me a woman and not a man” is to the original it replaces as the early “Jew and not a gentile” was to the Greek slogan it echoed.

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7 Material and Mystical Worldviews

Rabbinic commentators repeatedly debated not only the correct formulation of the blessings, but also when and how to say them. The conflicting directives that emerged throughout the centuries among various authorities reflect, in part, the continuing challenge of reconciling what people did, or could be reasonably expected to do, against what appeared to be the explicit instructions of the Talmud. Against this background goal of honoring continuity with talmudic and halakhic teaching, rabbis taught practices and meanings in accordance with and in support of their overall religious perspective. Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) and Moses Cordovero (1522–1570) exemplify the opposing perspectives of rationalists and mystics. Because the Talmud’s style rarely makes its final decision obvious, later rabbis sought to anthologize the Talmud’s decisions in easily accessible codes. The most influential early such work was the Hilkhot ha-Rif of Isaac Alfasi (1013–1103). Alfasi, who was born in North Africa and died in Spain, systematically filtered out all the legendary material in the Talmud and only cited legal material that was relevant to his community in the Diaspora, omitting everything that pertained exclusively to the Land of Israel. Manuscripts of his code are a valuable source for the history of the Talmud’s text, because he includes large excerpts from the Gemara, but these quotes are often not in the same recension as that found in the printed edition. In his section on the Morning Blessings, Alfasi first copies a lengthy passage from Berakhot 60b and then appends

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a section of Menahot 43b, including the baraita about the requirement to recite 100 blessings daily. Thus, the instruction to recite 100 blessings daily is surrounded by the Berakhot and Menahot blessings on either side, but nowhere does Alfasi explicitly state that the need to reach the round number is why these blessings are recited. Commentators have observed that his listing of the Berakhot blessings varies from the order that was later canonized, demonstrating that the talmudic text was still not fixed in the eleventh century. Alfasi’s list is a plausible sequence of the actions that a person might reasonably carry out in the morning, especially compared with the order found in the printed Talmud. Alfasi may have received the list in this sequence or even rearranged the order himself to create a more functional list, allowing each blessing to be recited at the time of its corresponding action.1 There is no suggestion that these blessings were recited in the synagogue. Although Natronai Gaon’s famous responsum from the ninth century justified the practice of reciting the entire set of Berakhot and Menahot blessings as a single unit, Maimonides (1135–1204) and his son Abraham (1186–1237) insisted that the blessings should only be recited at the time a person was performing the corresponding action; to do otherwise would constitute a “blessing in vain.” In the Mishneh Torah’s “Laws of Prayer,” Maimonides explains that one need not recite the blessings in the order that the Talmud specifies but in accordance with what one is doing: When he belts his belt, he recites [the blessing] “who girds Israel with glory”; when he puts on his shoes, he recites “who provides for all my needs.” When he sets out on the road, he recites “prepares a person’s steps.” And a person should bless every day the blessings: P[raised] . . . who did not make me a gentile; P[raised] . . . who did not make me a woman; P[raised] . . . who did not make me a slave. These eighteen blessings have no particular order; rather one recites each one at the appropriate time. How? For example if one fastens his belt and he is still on his bed, he should bless “who girds Israel with glory.” . . . Any blessing which one is not obligated to recite one should not recite. It is the custom of the populace in most of our cities to recite these blessings one after the other in the synagogue regardless of whether one is obligated or not. This is a mistake and it is not proper to do. One should not recite a blessing unless one is specifically obliged to do so.2 For Maimonides, there is apparently no question about which blessings are in the set; he alludes to eighteen without enumerating them. He acknowledges

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but disapproves of “the custom of the populace in most of our cities” to recite these blessings in the synagogue. His citation of the Berakhot and Menahot sets together as a single law shows that, although he knew that they had separate origins, he considers them as a unit. Maimonides considers the blessings to be in the category of “blessings for things enjoyed,” rather than generic “blessings of praise,” and therefore they should be recited immediately adjacent to the action or benefit they recognize. What, then, of the Menahot blessings? To what immediate, daily action do they correspond? Following his father’s method, Maimonides’ son, Rabbi Abraham, attributed to Maimonides the radical claim that the Menahot blessings, too, should relate to actual daily experiences, just like the talmudic instructions for the Berakhot blessings: It appears from the intention of my father, my teacher of blessed memory, in the [Mishneh Torah,] Laws of Prayer, that the three blessings [named] “gentile,” “slave” and “woman”3 should be recited daily whether or not one has seen one; and thus it is in the laws of Rabbi Isaac [Alfasi]. . . .4 And he said to me [that] someone had seen an old text of the Talmud and it was written there: “When one sees a gentile person, recite the blessing; and thus for a slave and a woman.”5 And it appears that this is the correct text and the truth is with it, and so we find in the prayer book of Rabbi Amram ben Sheshna of blessed memory.6 Maimonides apparently agreed with the prevailing custom that the three blessings should be recited daily. This conflicts, however, with the principle that no blessing should be said without an immediate cause, a point he himself emphasized two paragraphs later (Hilchot Tefilah 7:9, see p. XXX). His son, Rabbi Abraham, known for his insistence on strict and precise observance of the law, tells a story about his father having known someone who once saw an old copy of the Talmud. Although Rabbi Abraham was obviously trying to find a talmudic foundation for his claim, this chain of evidence surely sounded as questionable a thousand years ago as it does today. Abraham further claims that Amram wrote instructions in his prayer book to recite the blessings in the way that Rabbi Abraham described. Although the majority of Amram manuscripts do not have this passage, many additions and changes were made in the siddur ascribed to Amram and continued to circulate in his name.7 Two extant manuscripts of Amram’s prayer book integrate the Menahot blessings after the Berakhot set with the addition of the introductory formula adapted from BT Berakhot, “when one sees,” preceding each of the Menahot blessings. “When one sees a gentile, one recites the blessing: ‘Praised . . . who did not make me a gentile.’ When one sees a slave,

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one recites the blessing: ‘Praised . . . who did not make me a slave.’ When one sees a woman, one recites the blessing: ‘Praised . . . who did not make me a woman.’”8 Of course, it is impossible to know today which came first, the responsum from Rabbi Abraham or the prayer book manuscripts that document his position. In a legal responsum to the Jews of Yemen about prayer practices, Rabbi Abraham indicated that the custom of reciting the blessings in the synagogue remained a common practice and that he, like his father, objected to this practice. The blessings are described as a set but do not have a name: You mentioned that your long-standing custom is to recite the authorized blessings like “who frees the captive” and “opens the eyes” and the rest early, daily in the synagogue. . . . We note that you are not the only ones who err in this matter; most places we have heard of do thus, i.e., they say these blessings all at once in public in the synagogue before the Pesukei D’Zimra, and thus they did in Egypt until we stopped this practice. . . .9 What you must know is that even though Rabbi Hai of blessed memory and Rabbi Saadia Gaon of blessed memory taught as they did, the truth, which is supported by the language of the Gemara and the analogy as a whole, is the opposite of the custom which has become popular in this matter: one should not bless a blessing except at its proper time, when it is required. These blessings were not established by our scholars of blessed memory as an obligation to be said daily like the recitation of the Eighteen Blessings of the Tefilla (lit. the Prayer, i.e., the eighteen blessings of the daily statutory service), [these blessings] were instituted to accompany actions and gestures. There is no call for saying them in public in the synagogue separate from their actions and gestures. . . . In conclusion, on most occasions the serial recitation of most of these blessings in the synagogue in sequence, as has become customary, is in vain and is forbidden; and one must turn away from this error, as my father and teacher of blessed memory clarified in Chapter Nine of his Laws of Prayer: “One does not recite a blessing except in its proper time, when it is obligatory. . . .” It is forbidden to say [new blessings] beyond those found in the Talmud. And the recitation in the plural of those [ found in the Talmud], such as “who did not make us gentiles” and the like, is forbidden, since this is a change in the language of the blessing. Rabbi Abraham objects that what began as a demonstration of exemplary behavior has been liturgically transformed into ritualized practice.10 He tries to

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recover the “original intent” of the tannaitic rabbis and to restore them to their organic locations: “There is no call for saying them in public in the synagogue separate from their actions and gestures.” He is frustrated by the later Geonic subversion of the tannaitic intent, but nonetheless cites Hai Gaon and Saadia Gaon’s teachings. Despite his strongly worded protests, it is clear that the custom was far too widespread for his efforts to be successful. Although successive commentators note his protests, by and large they also ignore them. Rabbi Abraham also objected to changing the language of the blessings from the singular to the plural. When these blessings moved from private prayer at home to the synagogue liturgy, some people changed them into the plural, because, as a general rule, Jewish public prayers are in the plural. Treating the talmudic text as inspiration, but not as canon, the blessings in certain communities had been reworded in the plural, as evidenced by some Genizah and other prayer book manuscripts.11 However, because the text of the blessings had been established according to tannaitic authority, it was privileged in Rabbi Abraham’s eyes. Isolated examples of the Menahot blessings in the plural are preserved in some manuscripts, although it is not possible to tell whether these texts inspired Rabbi Abraham’s protests or were produced despite them.12

Hasidei Ashkenaz, Germany, Thirteenth Century Although the recitation of the blessings in the synagogue was also a common practice in Germany by the twelfth century, some encouraged their recitation at home as part of individuals’ daily morning activities. The Hasidei Ashkenaz, a pietistic, mystical community in Germany, believed that every religious action has deep theological and theurgical significance when properly performed. Solomon ben Samson of Worms (ca. 1200), a disciple of the pietist leader Rabbi Eliezar of Worms (1176–1238), describes in his prayer book precisely how to recite the Morning Blessings. Writing for a community that highly valued personal piety, he not surprisingly assigns these blessings to the home: After one wakes up and hears the rooster but before opening his eyes, they established that one recites the blessing “who gave the sekvi discernment.” Sekvi is a rooster (tarnegol) and so they arranged it after the blessing [Elohai] Neshama (who has made my soul pure . . .). Since one has begun with the blessing for discernment, one immediately blesses “who did not make me a gentile, a woman and a slave” [since they] do not know to distinguish between good and evil; and one should know that Israel has a greater reward than a gentile, a

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woman or a slave. . . . And these blessings are taught in Menahot. . . . Taught Rabbi Judah: three blessings must a person recite each day: . . . “who did not make me a gentile,” since the mitzvot (commandments) do not pertain to him at all, and he has no reward for his work; but I do have a reward, and “who did not make me a woman,” since she does not have all the mitzvot, and so does not have as much of a reward; and “who did not make me a slave,” even though the slave has as many mitzvot as the woman, it is included that he [i.e., her husband] should not despise her. . . . Afterwards, one returns to the first blessings after one has awoken. . . . After opening one’s eyes, one blesses: “who opens the eyes.”13 This prayer book inserts the Menahot blessings immediately after the sekvi blessing, the arrangement that later became standard Ashkenazic practice. Rabbi Solomon is aware that the Menahot blessings are an insertion into the longer sequence of prayers from Berakhot, and his directions do not exactly correspond to the Talmud’s instructions. He links the blessing for the rooster, the blessing for the soul (Elohai neshama), and the three Menahot blessings together through the common theme of “discernment.” These prayers call the worshipper’s attention to the distinction of being a human being and, most especially, a male Israelite. If these blessings were to precede the blessing for “giving sight to the blind,” then they logically must be recited before a person opens his eyes, and Rabbi Solomon instructs accordingly. For Rabbi Solomon, these blessings are appropriate to recite as one returns to awareness and “settles oneself” for the new day; they are to be included in the routine of thinking as a person wakes up and therefore should be recited before opening the eyes. For Rabbi Abraham in Egypt, in contrast, these blessings corresponded to lived experience, and one should not recite them, he taught, until one has the specific occasion. If a person did not go out of the house and therefore did not encounter a gentile, that particular blessing would not be recited on the given day. For Maimonides and other rationalists, the Menahot blessings refer to the material body that acts in the world. Maimonides’ disciple, Manoah Bedarshi, justifies reciting the blessings each morning, because “after one goes out to attend to business, it is impossible not to meet a gentile or a slave or a woman” walking about in the street, and these blessings should be recited as a consciousness-raising exercise, cautioning against improper contact or behavior.14 In the Kabbalah, the hierarchical oppositions in the Menahot blessings reflect the geography of the supernal world. The kabbalists taught that these blessings reflected a deeper reality about the essence of the soul and were

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therefore true on a more esoteric plane. The kabbalistic interpretation of the meaning of the Menahot blessings generated a new interpretive problem; its resolution, in turn, reinforced the internal logic of the Kabbalah and how these blessings and other aspects of normative Jewish practice cohered within the kabbalistic worldview. In halakhic texts, the hierarchy of men over women and Jews over gentiles is organized according to responsibility for fulfillment of the mitzvot (commandments). The more mitzvot one is commanded to fulfill, the more significant and honored one’s place. In “kabbalistically” informed texts, the hierarchy that is articulated through access to the mitzvot is rooted in the Kabbalah’s doctrine about origins of the various human souls. The souls themselves are qualitatively different and hierarchically ranked. An early fourteenth-century Spanish kabbalist, Joshua ibn Shuab, explained in a Sabbath sermon: [All of the souls were created before the world was created] and therefore do we bless daily “who did not make me a gentile, who did not make me a slave, who did not make me a woman.” All of the souls were created before anything else and they are not all alike; they are ranked, and they are not all in a single place. For the souls of Israel are holier than those of the nations, than the lesser ones of the Canaanite slaves, and even than those of the [Jewish] women, for even if the mitzvot pertain to them and they are of the seed of Israel, their souls are not like the souls of the male, which pertains to all of the mitzvot, positive and negative.15 The mitzvah privilege of the Jewish male is here enshrined not because the halakha teaches this; rather, the Torah’s teaching reflects an ontological reality that antedates creation itself. If these blessings are about the nature of the human soul, then a new difficulty arises: Why should they be recited daily? If they are about the nature of the soul when it was first assigned to a particular body, would it not be sufficient to recite each one just once in an entire lifetime?16 The first written mention of both question and answer—although this may be only the first literary record of an older esoteric teaching—is in the Tola’at Yaakov of the Spanish kabbalist Rabbi Meir ben Ezekiel Ibn Gabbai (1480–ca. 1540).17 The answer, according to Ibn Gabbai, is because the soul is reincarnated anew each morning. Ibn Gabbai’s explanation was taken up and expanded by the Safed kabbalist Moses Cordovero and printed in some prayer books.18 In the rabbinic imagination, sleep is “a sixtieth part of death.”19 If sleep is like death, then wakening is like resurrection—rebirth after death. The kabbalists bring the drama of ultimate judgment from the future, when the messiah

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comes, into a nightly occurrence. As at death, the soul is temporarily separated from the body and ascends to heaven, where it is judged; if one is righteous, body and soul are reunited. Similarly, each night the soul ascends to heaven and reports about the person’s actions during the day.20 This nightly drama is described in two different places in the Zohar: Man’s soul leaves him when he goes to bed; and it ascends on high. . . . And it has to go up through many different levels. It moves and is then confronted by the deceiving lights21 of uncleanness. If it is pure, and was not defiled during the day, it ascends to the higher realms. But if it is not pure, it is defiled among them, and it is joined to them, and does not rise further. . . . When those who are not defiled go to bed, their souls ascend and come first of all to all these levels [i.e., the levels of uncleanness, where the demons reign] but they [i.e., the souls] continue to ascend and do not join them. . . . The soul that has earned the right to ascend then appears in the presence of [the Ancient of ] Days and cleaves to the desire to show itself in its great yearning to see the delight of the King and to visit His palace. This is the man who has a continual share in the world to come, and this is the soul whose yearning during its ascent is perpetually for the Holy One, blessed be He, and which does not join those kinds of alien fires, but follows the holy kind, and pursues the place from which it came. When men are asleep and experience the taste of death and the soul ascends to the higher regions, it stands in the place that it occupies [according to its merits] and the deeds that it performed during the day are examined, and they are written on a tablet. Why is this? Because the soul ascends and gives an account of the man’s deeds and of every word that passes his lips.22 Ibn Gabbai had the previous passages from the Zohar in mind when he composed his influential commentary on the prayer book. He explains the entire complex of Morning Blessings in light of the soul’s nocturnal journey and emphasizes how the diurnal journey of death and rebirth rehearses ultimate death and resurrection. The Zohar only speaks in general terms of the different levels to which the soul can ascend; Ibn Gabbai identifies specific places for the slave, the gentile, and the woman: Who did not make me a gentile. You need to consider the hidden secret in this blessing. All the blessings which we mentioned above [the Berakhot list] according to law must be recited daily, but this blessing

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should be recited just once since the day one was born—and similarly for “who did not make me a slave” and also for “who did not make me a woman.” But the secret in this is connected to the ascent of the soul at night to the supernal world. If one is righteous, some of the heavenly agents take hold of it [i.e., the soul] and seat it in the place it deserves. But if it is evil, some of the angels of destruction come forward to greet it and declare, “‘There is no peace,’ says the ETERNAL to the evildoers,” and put [the soul] in the unclean and sullied place of the gentile or the slave who is shunted to the [place of the] Temurot (demonic forces)23 or [the place of ] the woman. But when a man rises from his bed, if he knows within that he is righteous, he blesses “who did not make me a gentile,” whose meaning is: that they did not put him in the place of the gentile, for whoever inhabits the realm of the gentile is like one who performs idolatrous worship.24 The influential kabbalist Moses Cordovero (1522–1570) probably was familiar with Ibn Gabbai’s commentary when he wrote his own a generation later. Cordovero built upon the earlier descriptions of the soul’s nightly journey to detail a much more elaborate heavenly geography, with an emphasis on the rigid assignment of each soul to its proper place and level. The earthly gentile, slave, and woman each correspond to a place in the supernal structure, and their relative place and holiness below corresponds to their locations’ nearness or distance from the Divine Throne above. Cordovero begins: What the commentators [i.e., Ibn Gabbai] explained about this blessing is a beautiful and reasonable thing: the soul ascends each night when it leaves the body in order to give an accounting before the Creator. And thus it is explained in the Zohar, Parshat Lech, and Parshat Naso: “And she proves to be displeasing in the eyes of her master. . . .” (Ex. 21:8). She [i.e., the soul] was expelled from before Him to [a place] amongst the shards, according to her [i.e., the soul’s] deeds, sometimes actually to the place of the gentiles, sometimes to the place of the slaves, which is an intermediate place, and sometimes to the place of holiness but not at the height of the place of the males [i.e., the place of Jewish women]. Accordingly, when the soul returns to him, they established this [recitation of the appropriate] blessing, for the fearers of God and those who contemplate his Name, [in thanks] that their souls only ascended to a holy place. But there still is something of a difficulty here, since it would be proper that only “the remnant whom the ETERNAL calls”

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(Joel 3:5) [i.e., the kabbalistic elite who can safely engage in such soul travel] should say this blessing.25 In Cordovero’s description, the soul that has done evil during the day is not allowed to ascend to the holy place near the Divine Presence. Depending on its transgression, it is relegated to one of the three lesser places. The heavenly realm has a clear hierarchy. The place of the gentiles is the worst, for it is completely impure. The place of the slaves is “intermediate,” because slaves are allowed some interactions with Israelites, but it is still far from true holiness.26 Cordovero’s language is not as strong as Ibn Gabbai’s, but the concepts are parallel. The place of the Jewish women cannot be described as “impure,” because these women’s souls are of the stock of Israel. Although they are considered holy, they are definitely “not at the height of the place of the males.” In Cordovero’s teaching, the sacred geography of the supernal world affirms the social order below. Cordovero’s commentary on the first blessing continues: Therefore we say that these blessings were established to be said when a person comes to pray and engage in Torah study. For these [ from whom the blessings distinguish the speaker] are excused from the mitzvot (commandments), and at least from the positive commandments which are time-bound like tefillin (phylacteries), tzitzit (ritual fringes), recitation of the Shema and the like. Therefore, when a man wakes from sleep, and he comes to engage in these mitzvot [i.e., those mitzvot from which women and slaves are specifically excluded], it is seemly to give praise to his Maker over this matter, that the emanation of his soul was to a holy place, to which mitzvot pertain and not in the external places which have no mitzvah (commandment, i.e., reward for the fulfillment). . . . And the external forces in the shards have no mitzvah.27 Once again, the mitzvah system is both the source of sacred validation and its reflection. These blessings were ordained to be recited, Cordovero notes, in the synagogue, the quintessential male space. When the men assemble daily in the synagogue—a place where women customarily do not come on a daily basis—they celebrate their privilege by engaging in precisely those activities that are their exclusive domain and express thanks for the order of the universe that has so enabled this privilege.28 He explains the meaning of the second and third blessings similarly, integrating the esoteric geography of the sefirot (emanations from the Godhead) into the halakhic rules: And further, he should praise his Creator that his soul was not made into a Canaanite slave. [His soul] is a thin shard which approaches

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close to look at the light, looks and does not look; therefore he is not among those to whom the mitzvot pertain, but [the slave] has a bit of holiness about him. And also that he is not in the place of the woman, which is below. . . .29 Accordingly, they are obligated in positive mitzvot which are not time bound, these belong to Malkhut (Shekhinah, the last of the ten sefirot) below, while that which is time bound, is the place of the male . . . and women are excused.30 Indeed, everything is in the secret of Malkhut, but these are in the time frame of the male31 and they are the obligation of the male, while those which are not time bound are the obligation of women as well.32 Having explained that this blessing is about the nightly ascent of the soul and the affirmation of the lower social order as a mirror of the supernal structure, Cordovero is still troubled by the call to recite these blessings daily. Why is it not sufficient to say them just once, perhaps at the age of religious majority, when a child assumes responsibility for the fulfillment of the mitzvot? Nonetheless, one difficulty remains: it still might make sense to say this blessing [who has not made me a gentile] just once in a lifetime. When? When he gets old enough for education in the mitzvot or to thirteen years and one day for a boy or twelve for a girl. Therefore, it is said that when the idolaters pray, they also pray and bless and the like, everything according to the secret of the unity of the Temurot (demonic forces), heaven forbid!33 Accordingly, about them it is said that they pray to “vanity and emptiness” (hevel va’rik, Isaiah 30:7). They seek to unite hevel (vanity) with rik (emptiness), which are two bad forces, and nothing comes of it, as it is written: “And they bow down,” which means, “they turn to a god who does not redeem,” for their goodness is not in their hands.34 Accordingly, when a man gets up to unite with his Maker, he blesses “who did not make me an idolater” who has no unity in the externals at all.35 The idolater seeks to unify the forces of evil no less than the Jew seeks to unite the Sefirot. Idolatrous prayer, however, is a pale imitation of authentic prayer. The idolater prays just like the Jew does, but the unity of the demonic forces proves impossible because these forces do not have sufficient power. Through his properly directed prayer, the Jew strengthens the sefirotic realm and does not give strength to the temurot. The woman and the slave may pray as well, but their prayers only reach to their respective levels in the supernal geography; true prayer is the privilege of the male. Daily prayer is of ultimate importance. It is the world-sustaining responsibility of the male and the unique privilege that,

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through his participation, he reaffirms. Even though each one may recite the same words, the destinations of the prayers of men and women are different: And so the slave in this way, his attraction is to the place of the slave and the woman below in the female, and no one is worthy of uniting everything completely except the male whom God has favored with a pure soul from the place of the male whose unity is above. Therefore, these blessings are like a form of introduction, for each to know his place in his prayer, for even if they are equal by virtue of identical words, the direction (kavannah) is not one [i.e., the same], since the female is in the place of the female and the male is above.36 Beyond the contribution that one’s prayer makes to the struggle between the sefirot and the demonic forces, these blessings also have a talismanic function. After first establishing the importance and world-sustaining task of a man’s daily prayer, Cordovero also expresses deep fear about the possibility that a man’s soul will be exchanged for that of a woman, a slave, or a foreigner. He puts forward a mystical psychology, explaining socially inappropriate behavior as the consequence of such a transmigration. The soul is threatened daily and only the proper concentration on and recitation of these blessings guards against the violation of the male Jewish soul’s purity and integrity: One may also explain that during a man’s lifetime it is possible for a person to be transmigrated into that which is not appropriate to him,37 for example as a woman a number of times. The discerning one who pays attention to these matters will find some people whose deeds change—sometimes in the qualities of women, sometimes as men, sometimes serving people like a slave; for the inner shows its workings in the external, and sometimes one will look upon ugliness, as foreigners [do].38 Therefore, when the soul of a man returns to him, and he looks at himself well39 in preparation for blessing of his Maker, he should bless his Rock for the goodness which He has shown him and made [of him] a proper unity. This matter is renewed daily for a person, and so he blesses daily. “The one who fears the word of the ETERNAL” (Ex. 9:20), when he hears this will cling to it completely and not be weakened. and not pay heed to lying words and no matter which is improper will be upon him (heaven forbid!). He should concentrate on these three blessings to annul every transfiguration40 as an idolater, transfiguration as a slave, transfiguration as a woman. He should purify himself through the secret of these three blessings from any admixture or bad transfiguration.41

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The Geonic authorities, beginning with Natronai, did not conform to the Talmud’s instructions to recite each blessing in conjunction with corresponding action and instead instituted the practice of reciting the Berakhot blessings, and their companion Menahot set, as a group. Most later commentators—with the notable exception of Maimonides and his son Abraham—defended the Geonic innovation. In addition to citing the pragmatic problem of ritual uncleanness and popular ignorance, these rabbis redefined these blessings as blessings of praise, and not as blessings for specific sensual pleasures that take place in real time. Only Maimonides’ son, Rabbi Abraham, used an opposite strategy. He proposed not only that the Berakhot blessings be considered as blessings for pleasures enjoyed—and therefore only recited in conjunction with the experience of their specific theme—but that the Menahot blessings are of this type, too. Accordingly, one should only recite these blessings when one encounters a person who fits the description. A thirteenth-century follower of Maimonides, Manoah Bedarshi tried to hold on to these two conflicting interpretations by proposing that because one will surely meet a person from each of these groups during the course of the day, one can say the blessings before heading out the door! These strategies were the outcome of the process of transforming the Berakhot blessings, and the Menahot set that had become attached to them, from private prayers that were recited occasionally, into public, fixed prayers that were recited daily at the same time. To effect this transformation, these blessings had to be recategorized from “context-specific” blessings to more generalized “blessings of praise.” The explicit talmudic instructions of Berakhot 60b could only be trumped by an older (albeit mythical) authority—in this case, the Leaders of the Great Assembly who, in the rabbinic imagination, preceded the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud. According to Rabbi Asher of Lunel (ca. 1250–1327), the Men of the Great Assembly first ordained the sequence of 100 blessings of which Rabbi Meir speaks in Menahot, and the set of blessings they established included those of Berakhot and Menahot. The extant sources cannot confirm when these blessings were transferred to the synagogue. Although the origin of the blessings themselves is assigned by the medieval commentators to an early date, their movement to the synagogue—which all agreed was necessary—was uniformly considered a “recent” innovation. Although the description of this Spanish practice in Rav Natronai’s tenth-century responsum is most likely a later insertion, it may have already been common practice soon thereafter. The recital of these blessings in the synagogue was considered proper and important for a variety of overlapping reasons. Because it was clear from Berakhot 60b that the original intention was for blessings to accompany the actions

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of a person waking, there was a continuing need to defend their movement to the synagogue. The most commonly cited reason, that upon waking the hands are unclean, is consistent with a general halakhic sensibility that prior generations were more pious than the current one. This category functions simultaneously as a critique of the spiritual failings of the current community and a rationale to justify changing practices that are no longer observed in the way they once were. The second explanation offered is that they are recited in the synagogue to ensure that anyone who does not know how to recite them on his own would have the opportunity to say “amen” and fulfill his prayer obligations. The recital of the Menahot blessings in the synagogue was also part of the daily re-creation of the social reality of the individual.42 The external boundaries that set the Jew apart from the “other” are restated in the public space that belongs to the male Jew. Thus, not only was his own daily existence and identity renewed, but the social setting where this identity was privileged was renewed as well. In the Kabbalah, the boundaries between the self and the three dimensions of the other are threatened nightly as the soul ascends and returns. The daily recital of these blessings renews the distinctions between the self and the other that were threatened. As Jew, as gendered person, and as spiritually and socially free, the deepest statements of core identity were publicly stated and affirmed.

8 Recasting Boundaries and Identity in Nineteenth-Century European Prayer Books

To enjoy emancipation from their historical disabilities, early modern Jews had to persuade the governments and citizenry of the states in which they lived to stop considering Jews as “others,” or, at a minimum, to see Jews as people whose differences could be tolerated by the state and society. Emancipation proceeded in fits and starts. In France, for example, only Sephardic Jews were awarded full citizenship after a debate in the National Assembly in 1790; Ashkenazic Jews had to wait more than a decade.1 Modernizing Jews sought to demonstrate that Judaism was not hostile to non-Jewish cultures or to the state. Convinced that their relationships with their neighbors had entered a new epoch, early modern Jews removed passages from the liturgy that they found incompatible with their new or desired status, or that they feared might be misunderstood. Although government censorship of Jewish texts lasted in some German communities through the middle of the nineteenth century, and into the early twentieth in Russia, many Jews voluntarily changed the language of their prayer texts to reflect the new reality they saw.2 Rabbi Leopold Stein (1810–1882) taught that it was “appropriate to eliminate those passages in the prayer book that spoke of the separation between Israel and the nations. Such texts [are] inappropriate in an era of emancipation and civic equality between Jew and gentile.”3 Although much of the debate in nineteenth-century European prayer books and commentaries about the correct language of the blessing “who did not make me a gentile”

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was ostensibly about grammar or lexical precision, deeper issues often motivated the debate. As European Jews increasingly interacted with the wider, modern culture of Europe, they looked with varying degrees of affection and criticism on their religious heritage and its practices. On the one hand, ancient Israel was older than ancient Rome or Greece, and the claim of being directly linked to a great ancient civilization was a source of pride; on the other hand, much of what was normative Jewish practice was critiqued as “medieval.” Although the traditional prayer book had long been available in a variety of Yiddish editions, translation into other European languages began to appear only during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, the format and content of the synagogue service were areas of great controversy, as modernizers and defenders of traditional practice disputed what was authentic and appropriate. As the struggle for civil emancipation slowly advanced, Jewish scholars sought to demonstrate that Jewish cultural and literal creativity did not end with the Bible, and to bring modern critical methods of scholarship to bear upon historical Jewish texts. Thus, their movement was called Wissenschaft des Judentums, the science of Judaism. Wissenschaft scholars edited and published critical and corrected editions of the Jewish literary corpus, including the prayer book. The rapid spread of the printing press, starting in the sixteenth century, had made possible mass production of standardized prayer books. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the small variations that had characterized many local liturgical rites were lost in favor of conformity to the more widely published and therefore increasingly dominant Ashkenazic, Sephardic, or Italian rites. Beginning in the last decades of the eighteenth century, two new types of prayer books began to appear: vernacular translations in European languages and, under the influence of Wissenschaft scholarship, critical editions of the traditional prayer book.4 Wolf Heidenheim (1757–1832) edited and published numerous prayer books for ordinary use that were reproduced in many editions and formats. Seligman Isaac Baer’s Avodat Yisrael (1868) was the first critical edition of the Ashkenazic prayer book with an extensive commentary.5 Establishing a precise and accurate text of “ancient literary sources” was an important enterprise and value for nineteenth-century editors of Hebrew prayer books and myriad other kinds of works. No line of the prayer book was as disputed as “who did not make me a gentile.” Despite the importance placed on reciting the authorized and correct language, premodern prayer books were not known for their accuracy.6 Prayer texts and commentaries that had been written for different editions were commonly reprinted together, resulting in

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the text of the prayer book having one reading (e.g., “not a gentile”) and its commentary another (e.g., “made me an Israelite”).7 Nineteenth-century defenders of the traditional prayer book were distressed to learn that Rabbi Elijah, known as the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) and a leading traditional figure in his own day and after, apparently endorsed saying “who made me an Israelite,” although his commentary to the prayer book (compiled by his students) makes no mention of this comment.8 Subsequent editors, whether traditionalists or reformers, cited the Vilna Gaon in support of their own positions favoring the emendation. The new practice of printing a vernacular translation on a facing page permitted the preservation of the traditional reading in the Hebrew text while clarifying the intention or meaning in the vernacular; thus, the traditionally minded Isaac Mannheimer (1793–1865) kept “not a gentile” in Hebrew, but wrote “made me an Israelite” in his German translation.9 Wissenschaft scholar and Italian Jewish leader Samuel David Luzzatto’s Italian translation put “who did not make me an idolator” across from an original Hebrew composition, “who did not make me an idol-worshipping gentile (goy oved elilim),” successfully preserving the historical Hebrew text while avoiding any possible contemporary misinterpretation.10 One problem with the talmudic language of the blessings was the change in meaning of the word goy from biblical to rabbinic Hebrew. Already in the thirteenth century, the grammarian David Kimhi (ca. 1160–ca. 1235) had noted the change from the generic biblical meaning of goy as “nation”—including Israel— and the later rabbinic usage of goy as non-Jew.11 Citing Kimhi as evidence, some nineteenth-century Orthodox scholars objected to the blessing “who did not make me a gentile” on halakhic grounds; if goy, in accordance with biblical usage, meant “Israel,” reciting the blessing could be considered a “blessing in vain.” This halakhic objection, however, was never raised before 1800.12 A solution acceptable to some traditionalists, which clarified the meaning of the usage without changing the existing language of the prayer, was to extend it by three words: “who did not make me a goy (gentile) like the “goyai ha-artzot [gentile] nations of the earth).”13 Varying according to their commitment to upholding the received text or their openness to change, nineteenth-century prayer book editors used a variety of strategies to resolve the discomfort generated by the Menahot blessings. These ranged from the less intrusive, such as keeping the text unchanged but inserting an apologetic note in the commentary or inserting clarifying words to the traditional blessing, to substituting a euphemism or omitting the translation. As part of more radical revisions, some eliminated these blessings entirely or eliminated the entire preliminary service from the liturgy. Although a variety of substitutions were used, the replacement of choice for “who did not make me a goy” became “who did not make me a nokhri

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(a foreigner or a stranger).” This emendation was endorsed by traditionalists and reformers alike, beginning with Isaac Satanow in his 1785 grammatical commentary on the prayer book Ve-ye’etar Yitzak.14 In his influential critical edition of the traditional prayer book, Avodat Yisrael (1863), Seligman Isaac Baer endorsed this change. Like many, he suggested that the motivation for the change was clarity of language: This is a proper correction; for even if our rabbis of blessed memory customarily used goy to refer to a non-Jew . . . nokhri is the correct word if the intention is to refer to a person who is not of the seed of Israel, and we are obligated to arrange our prayers in clear language.15 The use of nokhri in the many editions of the traditional prayer book edited by Wolf Heidenheim in the early 1800s, as well as in Baer’s later volume, resulted in its becoming the normative usage in later modern Orthodox and proto-Conservative prayer books.16 The substitution of nokhri was endorsed, on the basis of its biblical roots, in a lengthy responsum by Joseph Zehariah Stern (1830–1903).17 Although the frequently repeated lexical claims were entirely sincere, an additional goal of the substitution, according to Jacob Tzvi Meklenburg (1785–1865), was to silence “the mouths of our slanderers amongst the nations over this blessing.”18 In his commentary to the traditional prayer book, Meklenburg devotes almost two pages to an explanation of his preference for nokhri. Meklenburg’s lengthy note illustrates the nineteenth-century effort among modernizing Orthodox rabbis to recast Jewish teaching about the status of the non-Jew in Judaism. A Jew gives thanks that he is not a nokhri, for a nokhri is “only commanded regarding the seven Noahide laws” (the seven laws that God, according to rabbinic teaching, gave to Noah and all humanity).19 This explanation is a parallel explanation to the apologetic defense of why men thank God that “You did not make me a woman. Because only (Jewish) men are allowed to fulfill all of the Torah’s commandments—thereby doing God’s will and coming closer to the sacred—men are thankful for the extra privilege to which they are entitled. Until emancipation, the standard explanation for the daily recitation of the blessing “not a gentile” was because the gentile had no share in the commandments and therefore no reward in heaven, whereas the Jew enjoyed both. Meklenburg maintains the traditional negative phrasing of the blessing, while attempting to alter radically the interpretation and associations conveyed by it. The non-Jew is still theoretically distinguished from the Jew, but, like the Jew, the non-Jew does have a relation to God and the commandments. According to Jewish teaching, keeping the seven Noahide laws is what is required of the

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non-Jew to earn divine favor and a place in heaven. Jews and “those peoples in whose shadow we dwell,” Meklenburg writes, share a common faith in divinity and divine providence.20 This commentary, written in Hebrew, was not aimed at satisfying a gentile censor; it was part of an internal effort to provide Jews with a narrative about the Jewish tradition’s relationship with gentiles that would be appropriate to the Jew’s new (or at least, desired) station. The transformation of the non-Jew’s fate in the world to come, from completely opposite that of the Jews to “basically the same, only a little less,” mirrors the yearnings of these Jews to have their own, this-worldly relationships with the gentiles transformed in an identical fashion. The root of nokhri, Meklenburg explains, bringing a variety of biblical proof texts, conveys the dual meanings of recognition and denial, varying according to the preposition that accompanies it. Ultimately, nokhri means anyone who “rejects the truth of the reality of God”21: There is no distinction in this between an Israelite and a nonIsraelite, all who deny the truth of His reality (may He be blessed!) are called nokhri. . . . There is no geographic, temporal or personal distinction, and therefore there is no opening [ for offense] in the blessing “who did not make me a nokhri” for any of the peoples whom we dwell among, for all confess the truth of His reality and those who reject this are also despised in their [i.e., the non-Jews’] eyes.22 Having begun with a substitute interpretation for the common Jewish explanation of the original blessing, the commentary now turns to the biblical proof text from Isaiah 40:17, “All the nations are as nothing before Him,” which is used often in the classical rabbinic sources to explain the blessing “who did not make me a gentile.” Meklenburg explains: “Our rabbis of blessed memory taught that this blessing was only established regarding those ancient wild and forest-dwelling peoples who denied divinity, denied the immortality of the soul and did not establish justice in cases of theft since everything was permitted to them.”23 Striving to achieve political and social equality, nineteenth-century Jews like Meklenburg continually sought to identify themselves with European civilization against the uncivilized, far-off savage. Meklenburg emphasizes the unity between Jews and their hosts and the spiritual worthiness of the nonJewish world. Just like the fifteenth-century Jews who fought to keep their books from the censors’ hands, nineteenth-century Jewish religious leaders sought to identify themselves with the Christian majority against the idolatrous and now uncivilized other. The nokhri was either an ancient pre-Christian or a

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far-off savage; in either case, Jews sought to locate themselves—and, more important, to be viewed—as generic, civilized Europeans. Using the same tone and similar arguments as Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph of Paris invoked during the first medieval disputation in 1240, Meklenburg repudiates the verse from Isaiah24: This verse applies according to our rabbis only to those ancient peoples [who do not observe the Noahide laws]. It is only about peoples like these that this blessing was established. Indeed regarding the peoples under whose shadow we live, who acknowledge the reality and providence of divinity, who believe in the eternality of the soul, haters of robbery and violence, who establish proper justice for thefts and murder, who seek good for25 the people who dwell among them without distinction between Jew and nonJew—regarding nations like these our rabbis said: “The nokhri who engages in Torah (i.e., fulfills their seven [Noahide] commandments) is considered as a high priest. There is an element of hopeful petition in this passage. Prior enumerations of the seven Noahide laws never included nondiscrimination. Meklenburg goes on to criticize at length the use of goy on lexical grounds. After invoking the most traditional authority imaginable—the Vilna Gaon’s alleged preference for “who made me an Israelite”—Meklenburg concludes: “And with this will be silenced the mouths of our slanderers amongst the nations over this blessing.”26 A younger French contemporary of Meklenburg, Rabbi Aaron Worms (1754–1836) was a member of Napoleon’s Sanhedrin as well as head of the yeshiva and chief rabbi of Metz; he later became chief rabbi of France.27 Napoleon had summoned an Assembly of Jewish Leaders to answer anti-Semitic charges and to affirm their loyalty to the French state. This gathering was considered to be the reconstitution of the ancient rabbinic legislative assembly, the Sanhedrin. One of the questions Napoleon addressed to the Sanhedrin was the status of the non-Jew in Jewish teaching. Worms stated that the rabbinic term Aku’m (worshippers of stars and planets), which indeed had a historical antiChristian interpretation, did not apply to the non-Jews of the present day.28 Worms polemicized in favor of the positive reading “Who made me an Israelite,” which he described as being found “in all the prayer books and old versions.” In his 1818 book Be’er Sheva, he repeatedly appeals to the authority of Jacob ben Asher’s thirteenth-century reading of “made me an Israelite,” although he no doubt knew that the version in the printed edition of Asher’s classic halakhic code, known as the Tur, was the product of earlier censorship.29

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After rejecting the use of goy on lexical grounds, he calls nokhri “better, but still incorrect.”30 Nokhri, he holds, specifically means “a stranger who comes from a foreign land.” He goes on to reject “did not make me a worshipper of idols,” because this would not exclude Muslims, as well as “did not make me uncircumcised.” These blessings may have once been acceptable in private, declared Worms, but they are not appropriate for public recitation: “The recitation in public of the blessing ‘who did not make me a goy’ has a hint of hatred.”31 In place of the first blessing, Worms advocated the affirmative “she-asani Yisrael (who made me an Israelite).” This formulation was already known from its usage in the Italian rite, and was also found in some Ashkenazic prayer books. Although most older rabbinic authorities had objected to the replacement of the negative phrase with the inclusive, positive one, holding that it would render the second and third blessings superfluous, some rabbinic authorities had endorsed its use.32 The insertion of “who made me an Israelite,” which could be defended as historically rooted, was a popular resolution of this problem among the editors of the many new, non-Orthodox prayer books printed during the nineteenth century.33 This solution for the Hebrew text, however, was not necessarily satisfactory for the vernacular. Regardless of what was written in Hebrew, both goy and nokhri were almost universally translated as Heide, “heathen” in German, and by similar cognates in other languages. This translation of the Hebrew goy was not a recent innovation; Martin Luther had already rendered the term in this way in 1543.34 The translation of goy as “heathen” did not keep goy, however, from being understood as a pejorative reference to all non-Jews, as Meklenburg’s commentary demonstrates. Only one German prayer book editor rendered nokhri as its original context would suggest: “Nichtisraeliten.”35 Although eliminating distinctions between Jew and non-Jew was an important value for all the nineteenth-century German modernizers, a new problem was immediately created: If the prior distinctions between Jew and gentile were no longer meaningful, what reason remained for a separate Jewish identity? In theology and in liturgy, the election and special mission of Israel became central themes for non-Orthodox Judaism.36 Nineteenth-century non-Orthodox prayer books simultaneously deemphasized Jewish social and communal separateness, while celebrating the special religious calling of Israel. Most rabbis in Germany were appointed to serve an entire community, and the liturgies they created had to serve a broad spectrum of the community. Any innovations introduced to attract more reform-inclined Jews also had to accommodate the needs and values of the traditionally observant members of the community. The full articulation of the values of the early Reform rabbis had to be moderated in prayer books intended for general use as a replacement for the

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traditional prayer book in a community synagogue, and sometimes ended up being much more traditional than the editors themselves would have personally chosen.37 In most of these books, it was assumed that the traditionally minded were reading the Hebrew; accordingly, minimal changes were made to the Hebrew text, and the structure of the traditional service was usually retained. The majority of the congregation was expected to read the nonliteral translation in German.38 In 1848, in an effort to bridge the gap between modern sensibilities and the historical text, Rabbi Joseph Maier published Israelitisches Gebet und Andachtsbuch, a Reform–oriented companion to the traditional prayer book. Maier intended for his book to be read silently in the synagogue as a companion to the traditional, public liturgy; it was not intended for public congregational use.39 Maier’s solution to problematic texts was to delete or paraphrase them, or to create a German–language replacement. Later editors printed these and similar alternative vernacular texts, which had been originally printed in separate volumes, in a single book with the minimally changed Hebrew original on the facing page.40 This style of presentation is an important feature of the most recent edition of the American Reform prayer book Mishkan Tefilah (2008). A prime complaint that motivated European synagogue reformers of all kinds was the excessive length of the worship service. The simplest and first reform of the liturgy was limited to reducing the number of piyyutim (liturgical poems) included in the traditional service.41 In Germany, the more radical reformers removed or abridged entire sections of the liturgy. Because the introductory section was not part of the statutory liturgy, and was considered to have been intended originally for private devotion, it was eliminated from most of the abbreviated rites.42 A single reading or a small selection from the traditional texts was used instead as the introduction to the liturgy. The first liturgy created exclusively for the use of a like-minded Reform community was the Hamburg Temple prayer book of 1818.43 The books prepared specifically for Reform congregations are shorter, mostly in the vernacular, and often show little concern for maintaining the structure and rubrics of the traditional liturgy.44 The volumes intended for more general use sometimes kept the sections of the liturgy describing the sacrificial cult, services for the second day of the festivals, and the like—although not always providing a translation.45 Particularly discomforting passages that the editor did not feel could be removed were put in parentheses, printed in a smaller typeface, or left untranslated; sometimes, all three techniques were used simultaneously.46 Not surprisingly, not a single nineteenth-century European liberal prayer book includes “did not make me a gentile” in Hebrew, let alone in the vernacular.47 In only three of thirty-three prayer books was nokhri printed in Hebrew.48

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The majority of the texts that have some form of the blessing use the affirmative “made me an Israelite.” In England in 1841, the layman D. W. Marks composed a new Hebrew blessing: “who has chosen us to be unto Thee a peculiar people (asher bachar banu lehi’ot lo le-am segulah).”49 The new blessing replaced all three of the Menahot blessings. Marks modifies a familiar liturgical phrase—“who has chosen us from all other peoples”—and combines it with a well-known biblical description of the Jewish people from Deuteronomy: “The LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself.”50 Thirteen years later, Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), one of the founders of the Reform movement in Germany, also composed a new blessing to replace the three traditional blessings. Geiger also emphasized election, but changed the emphasis away from the collective election of Israel in favor of the individual’s summons to service. Opposing the idea of Jewish particularism, Geiger’s blessing is entirely private: “who made me for His service (she’asani l’avdo).”51 In his first prayer book, published in 1854, Geiger included the entire set of Berakhot blessings; in the 1870 edition, Geiger trimmed the Berakhot and Menahot blessings down to four of the traditional lines. Collectively, they emphasize God’s care for the individual, while eliminating all mention of Israel or election52: . . . who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids. . . . who gives strength to the weary. . . . who makes firm human steps. . . . who provides for all my needs. For Geiger and many of his contemporaries, the vernacular translation was the most important part of the printed liturgy. David Ellenson’s appreciation of Geiger’s use of translation also applies to other early modern liturgies: [A] highlight of [Geiger’s ] liturgy is its non-literal translation of many of its Hebrew texts. Indeed this technique of non-literal translation became a major vehicle . . . for preserving the symbolic associations and manifest structure of the traditional Jewish worship service while, simultaneously, altering the service’s manifest content.53 In place of word-for-word or literal renditions, editors composed free interpretations based on their understanding of the theme or message of the traditional text. Notwithstanding his editing of the Hebrew, Geiger wrote a completely new paragraph for the German translation that bears no connection to the form, and only a vague relation to the content, of the blessings it represented. Geiger’s opening lines for this section were widely copied:“With each new morning, you show us your goodness. When our eyes are closed, you do

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not slumber. With each morning, our sight greets the light of day. You are praised, O God!” Although many Reform prayer book editors substituted she-asani yisrael (who made me an Israelite) for the three Hebrew Menahot blessings, only a few found this acceptable in translation.54 Taking Geiger’s approach, Rabbi Joseph Maier published a companion prayer book for silent reading by worshipers during the course of the Hebrew service. Geiger’s translation is an extreme example of casting the relationship with God as entirely personal and private, ignoring the communal and national relationship entirely.55 Manuel Joel (1826–1890) blurred this point, linking the individual to the collective without suggesting that the reference was to the Jewish people: “Praised are You God, who has made me worthy that I should belong to those who confess your Holy Name.”56 The most neutral of the translations in the Reform prayer books is that of Joseph Maier: “Praised are You, ETERNAL our God, King of the world, who has made me born to the faith of Israel and into a state of freedom; who makes the blind see, the naked clothed.”57 Most editors chose to emphasize, like Marks, Israel’s summons to service, thereby simultaneously erasing the comparison between Jew and gentile while affirming the mission of Israel: I praise and thank you, O God, for having given humans the ability to distinguish between day and night, who has called Israel to your service . . . (Aub, 1866)58 I praise you and thank You, O God, for having given humans the ability to know You and for having called Israel to your service. (1889)59 Praised are you, Lord, our God, who for the love of humanity has called forth justice and freedom. Praised are you, Lord, our God, who has made Israel the guardian, proclaimer and custodian of your teaching and your love. (Phillipson, 1864)60

Changing the Women’s Blessing Just as the conflict over the blessing “who did not make me a gentile” reflected Jewish anxiety about relations between Jews and gentiles, changing attitudes about the role and status of women shaped the treatment of the blessing “who did not make me a woman.” Traditional prayer books, especially those printed only in Hebrew characters, left the traditional text unchanged. Some books

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targeted at a modernizing audience kept the traditional language but printed an apologetic or defensive note.61 Isaac Euchel (1756–1804), a leader of the Jewish haskalah (enlightenment) in Germany, published a German translation of the prayer book in Königsberg in 1786.62 Although the original and 1799 editions have all three of the Menahot blessings: “not born a heathen . . . not born a slave . . . not made me a woman,” the 1815 version (modified by a later editor) eliminated “not made me a woman.”63 French rabbinic leader Rabbi Aaron Worms objected to the recital of the traditional blessing as “a public embarrassment of women.”64 The status of women in Jewish life, and their absence from the synagogue, was a concern of the Reformers and other modernizing nineteenth-century German Jews. Before they could address halakhic issues of women’s status, Reformers used a variety of strategies to remove this clearly objectionable blessing from the liturgy.65 Leopold Stein, upon becoming rabbi at the community synagogue in Frankfurt, made removal of this prayer from the daily liturgy one of his first reforms.66 None of the German Reform prayer books included the blessing “who did not make me a woman” in German, and only two reluctantly kept it in the Hebrew.67 If “made me an Israelite” was included in Hebrew, the next two blessings were usually left out.68 Two editors used the traditional blessing that women say, “who made me according to His will” in Hebrew for both men and women.69 Some editors eliminated all reference to the Menahot set.70 In their translations, the Reform prayer books paraphrased or overlooked the blessing “who did not make me a woman,” as in Joseph Maier’s “[W]ho has made me born in the faith of Israel and in a state of freedom.” The line-for-line translations, like that by Ben Israel (Coblenz, 1850) included “who did not make me a heathen . . . who did not make me a slave,” but politely skipped over this blessing.71 This change in the historical liturgy was not accomplished without controversy. After the liberal rabbi in Mannheim, Moses Präger, was ordered by the Supreme Jewish Council to restore the blessing “who did not make me a woman,” a group of local women organized a petition opposing its reintroduction; the record is not clear whether they prevailed.72 Reform of the liturgy was of concern for virtually all Jews in Germany during the nineteenth century. Modern Orthodox editors, under the influence of Wissenschaft scholarship, produced carefully edited editions of the prayer book. For them, the preservation of the structure of the received liturgy was a central value; the replacement of goy with nokhri was defensible on scientific grounds while avoiding offense. For the early Reformers, the meaning of the traditional liturgy was bound up in its structure. Minimal change in content was made, whereas the accompanying translations varied freely in form and content from

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the Hebrew text. Within the Reform prayer books, there was universal agreement about being called to a special mission. For the most radical, though, this summons was entirely individual and was therefore severed from its identification with the nation. Although the Orthodox were prepared to redefine the status of the non-Jew, Reformers were torn between their yearning to erase all differences and their faithfulness to a distinct Jewish mission and purpose. Meanwhile, the objectionable sexist blessing was assigned to the “oriental” past and was either overlooked or, whenever possible, deleted.

9 Identity and the Creation of Community in Modern American Liturgy

Jews began to arrive in North America, both as individuals and small groups, beginning in 1654, and such Jewish immigration continued at a trickle for the next century and a half. Large-scale immigration from German–speaking countries began in about 1820; by 1880, approximately 150,000 Jews had emigrated to America. German Jews, influenced by the reforms to traditional practice already widely debated in Europe, or sharing the values of the European reformers, founded the American Reform movement. As mass immigration from eastern Europe began during the late nineteenth century, the American Conservative movement emerged as a less radical route to mediating the claims of tradition and the needs of immigrant American Jews.1 In Germany, would-be reformers had to contend with government intervention, an entrenched rabbinic establishment, and the demand that they work within existing institutions and communal structures.2 Most early Reform prayer books in Europe were designed as companions to the traditional liturgy or were intended to serve the entire community; in America, however, the editors of the first Reform prayer books felt no such constraints. The first Reform–inspired prayer book published in America was edited by Leo Merzbacher (1809–1856), the first rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of New York. Opening from right-to-left with facing Hebrew and English pages, Merzbacher’s 1855 Order of Prayer was, in most respects, an abridged version of the traditional service (with English

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translation and directions) without significant changes in the content of the traditional prayers that he did include.3 In Merzbacher’s volume, the morning service begins with “Psalms,” but this section consists only of Psalm 100. This single psalm, probably sung by the choir, replaced the entirety of the traditional liturgy’s Morning Blessings and Pesukei d’Zimra (Songs of Praise). Although not theologically radical, Merzbacher’s editing resulted in a drastic streamlining of the worship service. Psalm 100 is immediately followed by “Benedictions” (i.e., the Shema and its blessings, the first unit of the statutory liturgy).4 Most editors retained a small selection of the traditional texts from the opening sections of the liturgy, arranging them in a format appropriate for choral presentation or public reading in English or German.5 These selections reflect the Reform interest in remaking the experience of worship from a lengthy recitation of prayers to a spiritually uplifting experience of devotion, parallel to Protestant practice and piety of the period.6 In 1857, Isaac Mayer Wise published the first of many editions of Minhag America—literally, the American Rite. Wise set out to create a middle-of-theroad prayer book that could serve the needs of the entire American Jewish community. He hoped Minhag America would replace the German, Polish, and other European rites that the immigrants had brought with them.7 In contrast to David Einhorn’s more radical Reform prayer book Olat Tamid published in 1858, Wise kept much of the structure of the traditional service. Although his book was theoretically available to any congregation, Wise was attacked from both right and left for his idiosyncratic editorial choices. Wise used the Menahot and Berakhot blessings as a setting for the preliminary service’s recital of the Shema. To make the transition between Hebrew and English convenient, Wise was careful to lay out the page so that liturgical units did not extend from one page to the next. The first grouping abridges the two sets of blessings, focusing on God’s care for the individual8: . . . who made me an Israelite. . . . who did not make me a slave. . . . Who heals the sick. . . . who gives strength to the weary. On the facing English page, the blessings are rendered as a single long blessing: Baruch—“Praise be rendered unto Thee, O God, our Lord, universal king, who hast deigned me to be an Israelite; not to be a slave; who healest the sick, and bestowest renewed strength on the feeble one.”9 The next page adds a single blessing that serves as a coda to the unit:

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Baruch—“Praise be rendered unto Thee, O God, our Lord, universal king, who crownest Israel with the majesty of truth.” “Therefore we rise early in the morning and wake till late in the evening, and evening and morning, twice every day we proclaim: “Hear Israel! God is our Lord, God is One!” Notably, by the time of the post-Civil War revised edition in 1872, Wise had edited out the blessing “who did not make me a slave.”10 There is no sign of the Menahot or Berakhot blessings in David Einhorn’s Olat Tamid (1856) nor in the authorized Reform Union Prayer Book published in 1892, edited by Isaac Moses, and largely based on Olat Tamid.11 The blessings do not appear in authorized American Reform liturgies until Gates of Prayer was printed in 1975. In non-Reform congregations, protoConservative prayer books like Benjamin Szold and Marcus Jastrow’s Avodat Yisrael increasingly replaced the Orthodox siddur during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.12 Szold edited a German–Hebrew prayer book, Hegyon Lev, in Baltimore in 1867. Like similar books from Germany of the same period, he replaced the three Menahot blessings with the single blessing, “who made me an Israelite” in Hebrew and German. Hegyon Lev was the basis for Avodat Yisrael, which was revised and then translated into English by Marcus Jastrow in 1873. The Hebrew text is identical in the two books, but the English translation emphasizes the mission and election of Israel by expanding the interpretation of the two Berakhot blessings that mention Israel: “who girds Israel with strength” and “who crowns Israel with glory.” The first blessing is translated, “who didst grant me the privilege of being born in the faith of Israel” and, following an abridged group of the Berakhot blessings, the last two included are rendered: “who girdest Israel with the strength of faith. . .  . Who crownest Israel with the diadem of their priestly mission.”13 Nineteenth-century American prayer book editors used the same strategies as their European counterparts. Like Avodat Yisrael, many American prayer books were directly based on German models; in other cases, rabbis who began their careers in Germany emigrated to America. Most of the Reform prayer books produced in America had, in comparative terms, very abbreviated liturgies, and the introductory sections of the service were among the first to be eliminated. The two instances of inclusion of the Menahot blessings in English–language non-Orthodox prayer books abridge parts and freely expand the translation to emphasize the mission and election of Israel. No comparison is made with non-Jews, and, as noted earlier, Wise drops the blessing “who did not make me a slave” between the 1866 and 1872 printings of his prayer books.

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The blessing “who did not make me a woman” was a subject of public dispute during this period; not surprisingly, just like in Germany, it does not appear in these modern-minded texts.14

Twentieth Century Prayer Books Throughout most of the twentieth century, Reform and Conservative Jewish congregations overwhelmingly used the official prayer book of their respective movement. Although there was never a definitively recognized American Orthodox prayer book, the British modern Orthodox prayer book was commonly found in Orthodox congregations. During the last quarter of the century, a wide variety of alternative liturgies were created and published for use by individual congregations and groups or for the smaller movements. Similar challenges as those that had faced earlier generations of editors needed to be resolved in the context of evolving Jewish self-understanding and relationships to the wider culture. The standard modern Orthodox prayer book for most of the latter half of the twentieth century was the Authorized Daily Prayer Book edited by Joseph Hertz (1872–1946), for many years the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.15 The prayer book includes an elaborate, apologetic commentary. First published in England during the early 1940s, it was published in the United States in 1948. Under the newly created rubric “Early Morning Blessings,” the Menahot blessings are included, although the blessing “who made me according to Your will” is in smaller type. Hertz substitutes nokhri for goy in the first blessing, translating it as “who hast not made me a heathen.” In his commentary, Hertz defends at length the place of all three of these blessings:

Heb. goy. In Scripture this word means “nation,” but in later Hebrew, “heathen.” In recent times, goy has been changed in many editions of the Prayer Book to nokhri, lit. “a foreigner.” In the Talmud, we find the blessing worded in a positive form, “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast (made) me an Israelite. . . . It is still so worded to-day in the Italian Rite, as well as in many of the old Ashkenazi Prayer Books. . . . But however expressed, grateful consciousness of the privilege of having been born in the Faith of Israel is essential. He who would serve humanity, must first of all to himself be true.16

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Hertz, following the pattern of all modern Orthodox prayer books, changes goy in Hebrew and in translation. Not willing to change the received text as he knows it, he approvingly identifies in his commentary “from the Talmud,” although he surely knew that the talmudic text was the result of censorship. Reading Hertz’s commentary, one could easily conclude that the so-called “talmudic” text is the original, and the version he uses, the more recent. He also does not explain why his text does not use the “talmudic” version of the blessing. Later, he quotes enthusiastically from nineteenth-century German scholar Abraham Berliner’s proposal to replace all three of the Menahot blessings with the single “who hast made me an Israelite.”17 Although Berliner “rightly maintained” that the “present negative formula” is not as clear an expression of the mission of Israel as the positive alternative, Hertz keeps innovation in the notes and out of the prayers. Hertz gallantly tries to explain that the blessing “not made me a woman . . . implies no derogation of woman.” The meaning of the blessing, he explains, is merely that men should say a blessing thanking God “who has set upon me the obligations of a man.” Hertz may have yearned to emend the text to this positive formulation, but, like his proposed changes to the first blessing, it remains in the notes. Hertz explains the “true spirit” of “who hast made me according to thy will” through a “homiletical expansion by a contemporary, modern Orthodox writer: ‘who hast made me a woman, to win hearts for Thee by motherly love or wifely devotion; and to lead souls to Thee, by daughter’s care or sisterly tenderness and loyalty.’”18 Like Hertz’s interpretation of “not a heathen,” this passage emphasizes Israel’s special mission and women’s election by God for their task. In this instance, the blessing women recite is not “an acceptance of the (divine) decree,” as the medieval commentators explained, but an uplifting call to duty. Hertz’s maintenance of the tradition and apologetic defense of it in the face of modern criticism epitomizes “modern Orthodox” style. Hertz declines to make more than the single, small change in the Hebrew, with the result that neither the translation nor the commentary is entirely comfortable with the Hebrew text. The commentary is a combination of pious defenses of the traditional text’s nobility and suggestions for how it might be satisfactorily changed. Recent Orthodox prayer books, as typified by the ArtScroll series by Mesorah publications, are far less concerned than Hertz and the first generation of modern Orthodox leaders with non-Jewish sensibilities, and many have brought back “who did not make me a gentile” in Hebrew and in English. Although the commentary to the ArtScroll prayer book makes the same claims as Hertz does, the editors do not quote Shakespeare or other non-Jewish sources; instead, they present a robust and traditionally pious synthesis of historical Jewish teaching:

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The Torah assigns missions to respective groups of people. Within Israel, for example, the Davidic family, Kohanim, and Levites are set apart by virtue of their particular callings, in addition to their shared mission as Jews. All such missions carry extra responsibilities. . . . Women . . . both historically and because of their nature, are the guardians of tradition, the molders of character, children and family. Furthermore, women have often been the protectors of Judaism when the impetuosity of and aggressiveness of the male nature led the men astray.19 The unapologetic defense of traditional gender roles and the wisdom of the received religious tradition is a Jewish parallel to the conservative thread in American popular culture. Despite criticism that they reflect a premodern sensibility in a contemporary package, the ArtScroll series of prayer books and other publications has been widely successful and increasingly influential.20 For contemporary Orthodox women, reciting the blessing “who made me according to His will” while men say “who did not make me a woman” can be both a source of pain and of pride. (Some rabbinic authorities still question whether the blessing “according to His will” is authorized, and recommend saying it without the full blessing formula.21) Some identify women’s freedom from obligation to fulfill as many mitzvot not as a marker of second-class status, but as a sign of women’s spiritual superiority over men, because “women are closer to God.”22 Women are excused because the Torah “has greater faith in her Jewish destiny and fears less for temptation in her sphere of activity.”23 These essentialist claims about women’s spiritual superiority—and their consequent lack of “need” for the mitzvot—conflict with the normative halakhic teaching that engagement with mitzvot is the ideal route to closeness with God. What to do about “the maximum sexist expression of Judaism” has been a topic of continuing dialogue among Orthodox Jewish feminists and their allies.24 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Rabbi Aaron Worms argued for replacing all three of the blessings with the positive “who made me a Jew” (literally, “an Israelite”), calling the man’s blessing “a public embarrassment of women.”25 Some contemporary Orthodox women have embraced this suggestion anew, especially if, following the example of the Italian rite, women and men could each use the appropriate term.26 Unwilling to endorse a nontalmudic alternative or change received practice, several contemporary rabbinic teachers endorse Worms’ suggestion to recite the blessings in a whisper or, because these are not a part of the statutory service, not say them at all.27 In 1946, the American Conservative movement published the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, edited by Morris Silverman, which introduced a new

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formulation of the Menahot blessings that has since become standard American non-Orthodox practice28: . . . who hast made me in Thine image. . . . who hast made me free. . . . who hast made me an Israelite.

. . . She-asani b’tzalmo. . . . Sheasani ben-chorin. . . . She-asani Yisrael.29

In an article written forty years after their introduction, Robert Gordis, chair of the committee that prepared the prayer book, explained the origin of this arrangement of the blessings.30 His explanation illustrates the modern transformation in the interpretation of the Menahot blessings and the ahistorical invocation of the history of censorship. Gordis begins by justifying the historical blessings as intended to “emphasize the high sense of privilege that the male Jew feels in having a greater number of mitzvot to observe than the non-Jew, the slave or the woman. . .  . Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the negative form . . . has been, at the very least, unfortunate.” Despite this official meaning, Gordis acknowledges a popular meaning, insofar as “the masses of the people . . . regarded (the blessings) as establishing an invidious contrast, validating a sense of superiority by the Jew over the gentile, the freeman over the slave and the man over the woman.”31 In light of this “unfortunate misunderstanding,” Gordis appears to express gratitude to “the Christian censor (who) came to the aid of printers of Jewish books.” In turn, the corrected reading, she-asani Yisrael, was preferred by “several prayer books and important traditional authorities.”32 The portrayal of the Inquisition’s authorities as coming “to the aid of printers” of Jewish books is hardly how the contemporary Jewish chronicles described their experiences. Gordis’ footnote, citing the “several early siddurim” that include the altered reading, neglects to point out that all the books he mentions were themselves subject to censorship. The authorities he cites are modern Orthodox commentators from the nineteenth century, including Jacob Tzvi Meklenburg, Israel Abrahams and Abraham Berliner. Gordis does not justify the emendation on its own grounds, but insists on its prior historical authority. Although he is correct that there is a history of using this form of the blessing, the sources he cites as the textual basis for his change are themselves the product of censorship. We do not know what the editors of these prayer books would have chosen had they been free to publish without constraint.33 When the Jewish community’s relationship with the society around it began to change during the nineteenth century, it perceived the historical text of the blessing as inappropriate or embarrassing; however, for the most part, these were not considered acceptable reasons for changing what had been authorized and honored

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by long tradition. Instead, the emendation (she-asani Yisrael) was repeatedly justified through appeals to its history as a legitimate, older traditional variant. The blessing “who did not make me a woman” proved more problematic for Gordis’ committee: The sources do not report female resentment over (their) subordinate position, (but) it undoubtedly existed in some quarters. . . . For those concerned with women’s equality, the Preliminary Blessings have seemed to be an expression of male domination which has characterized all civilization through the ages, Judaism included. While this situation is now crying out for redress, it in turn creates new problems that need to be faced.34 What are these “new problems?” Gordis does not specify. It appears, however, that the concern is about changing the outward form of the liturgy. The committee felt that “deleting the three Preliminary Blessings was unsatisfactory because they contain significant religious values that should be preserved.”35 These important religious values are also not explained; a footnote merely refers to how the texts are treated in modern Orthodox prayer books. What the committee clearly did not want to do was to delete the traditional blessings without replacing them with three satisfactory alternatives. Less traditionally concerned editors, such as Abraham Geiger, had done just that; but for the Conservative rabbis, maintaining the forms and structure of the liturgy was critical.36 In fact, however, despite the claim that these blessings “contain significant religious values that should be preserved,” it is not the historical religious values associated with the official meaning of these blessings that are preserved; rather, the form of the historical text becomes the vehicle for articulating a new set of meanings. Maintaining the structure of the received liturgy while changing the language often serves to preserve “the symbolic associations and manifest structure of the traditional Jewish worship service while, simultaneously, altering the service’s manifest content.”37 Gordis describes the emendations as minor: One had only to adopt she-asani Yisrael for the first blessing and to formulate the second in the positive, she-asani ben-chorin “who made me free.” In its new form, the blessing “who made me free” expresses the basic conviction that freedom is not a gift conferred to human beings by governmental fiat and therefore liable to be restricted or removed at the pleasure of the ruler or the desire of the majority. Freedom is the inalienable right of every human being, deriving from his estate as a creature fashioned in the image of God.38

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Although the readers of Isaac Mayer Wise’s Minhag America (published in 1866) may have understood “who did not make me a slave” in the literal way it was no doubt first intended (Wise removed it in subsequent editions), twentiethcentury American Jews did not. In Gordis’ interpretation, this blessing invokes a theological grounding for civil rights. His invocation of the language of American political discourse—later in the article, he quotes the Declaration of Independence—is consistent with the Conservative movement’s mid-century effort to make itself into a variety of American civil religion.39 Gordis credits Rabbi Max Gelb with proposing to replace “who did not make me a woman” with “she-asani b’tzalmo, who has made me in His image.”40 This change, he recognizes, does introduce a new religious value into the liturgy: “[Beyond eliminating] a difficulty in the existing text, [it] added a new and fundamental dimension to the content of the Prayer Book, the concept that each human being is endowed by God with an innate and inviolable dignity and responsibility.”41 A halakhic objection to the use of “who made me an Israelite” as a positive statement in the first blessing was that it would obviate the need for the second and third blessings. In the sequence introduced in the Conservative prayer book, the three affirmative blessings move from the general to the specific, and “who made me an Israelite” is the last, thereby resolving this legal concern. Although in origin there is a one-to-one correspondence with the blessings they have replaced, in their new arrangement the newly created blessings resonate with each other far more than they resonate with their predecessors. The rewording of the blessings—and the new meanings their new language invokes—became the customary usage for non-Orthodox liturgy during the latter half of the twentieth century. The most recent Conservative prayer book, Sim Shalom (1985), follows this usage.42 The much beloved Union Prayer Book, the official prayer book of the Reform movement for most of the twentieth century, had no trace of the Morning Blessings. Its 1975 successor, Gates of Prayer, was a radical break with earlier American Reform liturgy. Major new features of Gates of Prayer were the inclusion of Hebrew throughout, longer services, and the restoration of many traditional rubrics that had been either deleted or reduced to a single sentence in the Union Prayer Book. The compilers of the new prayer book, however, did not assume that Reform congregations would restore the traditional service. Rather, they designed the book so that the rabbi or service leaders could not only pick and choose from different services, but also making a selection of which elements to include within a service.43 Thus, the Morning Blessings only appear in two out of seven Sabbath morning services, and even in the context of the most traditional service in the book, there is a presumption that these

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blessings will typically not be included in the liturgy: “The Morning Blessings might be used for private prayer. In the synagogue, all or part may be read or sung. The ‘public’ service may begin .  .  . with the reading or chanting of selected .  .  . Poems of Praise.”44 Coming full circle, the blessings have been restored to their status before Natronai Gaon’s responsum in the tenth century: They are private blessings recited either at home or at the synagogue. Although Gates of Prayer is presented as a series of options, the usage guidelines recommend the blessings as private, rather than public, prayers.45 An edited sequence of the Menahot and Berakhot blessings is grouped under the rubric “Miracles of Daily Life.”46 Only two of the three Menahot blessings are included in Gates of Prayer: Blessed is the ETERNAL our God . . . who has made me a Jew. Blessed is the ETERNAL our God . . . who has made me to be free.47 Like many post-1800 prayer books, Gates of Prayer replaces “not a gentile” with “who has made me a Jew,” but, unconcerned by the halakhic objections that informed the Conservative prayer book’s editors, does not rearrange the sequence.48 Gates of Prayer follows the example of the earlier Conservative liturgy by transforming “who did not make me a slave” into “who has made me to be free.” The expression “made me to be free” is awkward; clearly the authors sought to avoid the direct opposite of “not a slave” (i.e., who made me “a freeman”). In Hebrew, the association is more direct: she-asani ben-chorin recalls the language of the Passover Haggadah: “Once we were slaves, now we are free (b’nai chorin).” The force of the English usage is left ambiguous. Missing completely in Gates of Prayer is the second Menahot blessing, “who did not make me a woman.” Because the praying community of the Reform movement was unfamiliar with the original blessings, the compilers, feeling no obligation to keep the historical number of blessings, simply removed it. In Hertz’s Orthodox prayer book, the resolution for an uncomfortable passage in the traditional text was to include the text but to add an apology in the notes; in that book, less concerned about fealty to both the language and the structure of the received text, the indigestible is resolved through deletion and reversal.49 Two other examples illustrate how the theological goals of a gathered community can be mapped onto historical texts to generate new liturgical forms. When a radical interpretation of the Menahot blessing was promulgated by the sixteenth-century kabbalists, the liturgical text was untouched, but the new meanings were explained in the commentary and, presumably, known and taught. Although early reformers did rewrite and amend texts,

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mostly they abridged or eliminated the received liturgy. Non-halakhic modern Jews are more comfortable with reclaiming—and reimagining—the historical liturgy. Congregation Sha’ar Zahav of San Francisco was founded in 1977 as a Reform congregation with a special outreach to gay and lesbian Jews. The congregation self-published its high holiday prayer book, Machzor U’vecharta Bachaiyim, in 1982. As in most new congregations, early ritual leadership defaulted to those who were presumed to “know the most.” At Sha’ar Zahav, this group was a combination of men who had grown up Orthodox, and welleducated others from Reform and Conservative backgrounds. Different from other synagogues, however, was Sha’ar Zahav’s strong commitment to feminism, a commitment shared even by the most traditionally educated among its leaders.50 This commitment was expressed in “affirmative action” guidelines for women’s visibility, including a rule requiring that services always be jointly led by a woman and a man, and degenderizing the liturgy long before this practice became popular elsewhere. Seeing itself as a Jewish liberation, self-empowerment institution, the congregation initially avoided having a rabbi, and when it first hired one, strictly limited his hours and range of authority. Although the congregation joined the Reform movement in 1981, it did not have any particularly loyalty to, or history of, praying with authorized Reform texts. The “default” liturgical choices of the congregation were grounded in American Orthodox and Conservative practice, filtered through egalitarian, feminist, and gay-affirmative lenses. Because the members of the Ritual Committee were not formally trained, they brought with them the private and shared meanings of the liturgy with which they had grown up. As the authority figures for the congregation, and the trainers of new ritual leaders, they successfully transformed their private and popular interpretations into official meanings for the congregation.51 These influences can be clearly discerned in the congregation’s mahzor (high holiday prayer book) and its use. Piyyutim (rhymed poetic hymns) were included or discarded on the basis of whether anyone on the Ritual Committee knew an appropriate melody. Although the congregation generally followed Reform standards for the number of services, the mahzor includes a Musaf (additional) service for the High Holidays, in part because Ritual Committee members knew how to lead important sections of the service. The Morning Blessings are included in the Sha’ar Zahav mahzor in English translation only.52 The section begins with an English translation of Elohai neshama. In a new paragraph, a questioning dialogue begins, which is interspersed with the translations of the blessings:

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Blessed are You, God, who restores my soul in the morning, that I may awaken to the light of a new day. Beautiful words. The prayers of this service filled the souls of our ancestors with exaltation. Blessed be You God, who has given the rooster intelligence to distinguish between day and night.53 Blessed be You God, who has led me to my Jewish heritage. Blessed be You God, who has made each of us unique, and all of us according to Your will. But it was easier to believe then. Faith came as naturally as slipping on one’s clothes. Only saints and sages challenged You, questioned You, doubted You. . . . Blessed be You God who gives strength to the weary. Maybe there is no harmony in the universe. And yet there are times when it all begins to make sense. In a lover’s touch, in beautiful music, in the rough familiar caring of two elderly people: in all of these we see what the world could be if we would make it so. Blessed be You God, our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates beauty and hope. In place of “who made me a Jew,” this mahzor offers “who has led me to my Jewish heritage.” What kept the editors from using the more common affirmative language “who made me a Jew?” For a congregation in which a significant portion of the membership may not be Jewish, this historical solution was probably seen as potentially exclusionary and alienating. A key ideological principle of the congregation was always to keep its barriers to membership— whether financial, ideological, or religious—as low as possible. The members of the congregation had all experienced discrimination and rejection, and the membership and leadership was determined to make sure that no one was now left out. The expression “who made me a Jew” was therefore rejected as divisive. A further objection was that the traditional blessing did not accurately reflect the Jewish biographies of the majority of congregants. Whether they had grown up in a Jewish–identified household, most of the members of the congregation had experienced a period of alienation and separation from Judaism before turning to it through Sha’ar Zahav. The new blessing, “who has led me to my Jewish heritage,” accurately described the experience of return that the leaders and active members felt, and it spoke to visitors who were more ambivalent about their Jewish connection. “Led me to my Jewish heritage” does not demand or create any expectation of Jewish commitment on the part of the speaker. As such, it resonated with the deep stream of ambivalence that runs

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throughout this prayer book, as epitomized in the counterdialogue surrounding these blessings. These most unusual insertions come a scant page after the congregation has sung the mystical, anthropomorphic hymn Anim Zemirot. The hymn, by its very obscurity, is not heard as a literal statement. The blessings, because they are accessible in English, are taken seriously and questioned. In Gates of Prayer, one of the eleven Shabbat evening services was designed to be equivocal.54 In this prayer book, the doubt is brought into the open and integrated into the liturgy proper. By making the theological questioning explicit, this text gives permission to the questioning or doubting individual to participate in the service. A more eloquent affirmation of doubt opens the “Invocation” in the evening service of the Sha’ar Zahav mahzor. Although explicitly proclaiming the master narrative of the congregation, God’s love for “each of us as we are created”: Hinei Mah Tov! How good it is to gather, in a rainbow of affections and sexualities, in the house of a God who loves each of us as we are created. . . . How fine it is to gather, people with firm beliefs together with people with questions in our hearts, in the house of a God who values deeds of caring and justice far above the recitation of creeds.55 In contrast with most modern prayer books, which completely dropped “who did not make me a woman” but sometimes adapted “who did not make me a slave,” this prayer book drops “not a slave” and modifies the traditional woman’s response “who made me according to His will.” The third blessing may not have been omitted at Sha’ar Zahav for theological reasons; the blessings are set in groups of three with the theological challenges placed between each group. “The rooster” and the three Menahot blessings make four, so the fourth blessing, which was not ideologically charged, was probably dropped. In place of “who did not make me a woman,” this prayer book has “Who has made each of us unique, and all of us according to Your will.” This version of the blessing is key to the master narrative of the prayer book and the community that produced it. The most important word throughout both volumes of the mahzor is “unique.” Over and over again, the liturgy emphasizes the singular importance of each individual in the eyes of God. This theme is continued in the silent prayer that immediately follows the blessings: My God, I thank you for my life and my soul and my body; for my name, for my sexual and affectional [sic] nature, for my way of thinking and talking. Help me realize that in my qualities I am unique in the world, and that no one like me has ever lived; for if

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there had ever before been someone like me, I would not have needed to exist. Help me become perfect in my own ways of loving and caring, that by becoming perfect in my own way, I can honor Your name, and bring about the coming of the Messiah.56 The basic text is an adaptation of an aphorism of Martin Buber about the uniqueness of each person in Israel. On one hand, a very traditional theology is assumed: the goal is to “bring about the coming of the Messiah.” However, the radical theological vision is stated in the first sentence and repeated again and again: “My God, I thank You . . . for my sexual and affectional [sic] nature.” Never explicitly identified in this passage, nor almost anywhere else in the prayer book, is the congregation to whom this liturgy is addressed: gay and lesbian Jews who have been told, or have internalized a message, that they are rejected by God and by Judaism. Like other “heretical” groups, this congregation’s liturgists have taken the basis of their rejection by the normative body and transformed it into the highest value. According to the silent prayer, not only is each person “unique in the world,” but each person is charged with becoming “perfect in my own ways of love and caring.” The “love that dare not speak its name” is unmentioned, but is characterized as a route to spiritual perfection. Rather than undermining the religious system, the worshiper is urged to “(become) perfect in my own way . . . and bring about the coming of the Messiah.” Immediately after this silent prayer, the prayer book includes a portion of the Ashreinu prayer: “How happy we are!/How good is our portion,/ And how fine our inheritance!” In the traditional liturgy, these sentences are an introduction to the Shema. Here, they close the Morning Blessings section of the liturgy. The Ashreinu in this liturgy is a final comment about the silent prayer; “How happy are we! How good is our portion” refers back to “my life and my soul and my body.” The contextual force of the second Menahot blessing “who has made each of us unique, and all of us according to Your will” is now clear. In this prayer book, “each of us is unique” is a repeated allusion to the theological master narrative of the congregation: Homosexuality is part of God’s plan for creation. The second part of the blessing recovers and transvalues the traditional blessing that women say: “who made me according to His will.” In the traditional prayer book, this is the women’s alternative, whereas men praise God “who did not make me a woman.” In U’vecharta Bachaiyim, it becomes “who has made . . . all of us according to Your will.” Complementing the prior assertion of uniqueness, this second phrase restates and furthers the theological claim: each person is made “according to Your will.”57

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In their original Jewish setting, the Menahot blessings were polemic and used to assert Jewish identity in a multicultural, Greek–dominated world. In this setting, the Menahot blessings are once again being used polemically to assert Jewish faith statements. Now, however, the “other” is the wider Jewish community and the Jewish religious tradition itself. Because the halakhic tradition is unequivocal in its opposition to homosexuality, the liturgy appeals to God through creative emendations and glosses of the historical prayers. Although these new formulations of the blessings might, for the traditionally aware, resonate with the prayers from which they were adapted, they do not have prior associations for most users of this prayer book.58 Building upon the high holiday theme of acceptance, the mahzor returns in a variety of places to the theme of self-acceptance and rejection of prejudice. In a free translation of one of the closing prayers of Yom Kippur, the motif reappears: As we see the light fade into darkness, at the precise time You ordain, so let us see how we are ordained as part of Your plan. Strengthen our faith that You created us for good, and not for evil; . . . that our hearts and the way they move us to love—that all these come from You. . . . At this moment, we reject the lie that a portion of Your handiwork is degenerate or cast out from Your love.59 This prayer book is an extreme example of what Lawrence Hoffman calls liturgical “censoring in”—proactively choosing language that is inclusive for group insiders and serves to affirm their identity to the exclusion of others.60 Although this setting of the Menahot blessings assumes agnosticism on the part of the worshipers, the overall liturgical language of the prayer book appeals to God as the ultimate ground of value who “transcends human power and judgments.”61 If these blessings were once used to represent core themes of rabbinic Judaism’s master narrative, here they introduce a narrative about the acceptability of this community and its members as legitimate inheritors of the Jewish religious tradition. During the mid 1980s, leaders of the Jewish renewal movement began work on a new prayer book. Jewish renewal, both an approach to Judaism and a loosely organized network, seeks to add personal meaning and spiritual depth to Jewish practice through the inclusion and integration of Jewish and nonJewish resources. Renewal liturgy and worship during the last quarter of the twentieth century was characterized by its readiness to include traditional and neo-Hasidic Jewish texts and customs, along with freely embracing new and alternative rites and practices, often inspired by New Age and eastern teachings. Personal meaningfulness, rather than revealed authority, historical practice, or theological unity, is the prime criterion for Renewal practice. The 1989

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draft edition of Or Hadash, the Renewal movement’s prayer book, reflects the movement’s complicated relationship with the received text.62 The Menahot blessings are printed in Hebrew, with transliteration and an English translation. The Hebrew parallels the version included in the Conservative Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, but both divinity and humanity are referred to by using feminine gender. A special blessing for women follows the first three. The blessings are translated: . . . You make my form in Your image. . . . You encourage me to wrestle with my faith. . . . You birth me in freedom. Women say: . . . You created me a woman. Like early Reformers trying to serve a mixed congregation of the observant and the alienated, this prayer book keeps the manifest text of the specific blessings within the tradition with which its users are most likely to be familiar; the sequence and content of the Hebrew is taken directly from the Conservative liturgy. However, the formal structure of the blessings is radically altered. The formulaic expression of God’s name and sovereignty—the essence of the legitimate and properly formulated rabbinic blessing—is changed, and the blessings are recited using feminine Hebrew. Although some of the early Reformers kept the external structure of the prayers while changing the internal language, here the traditional language is made acceptable by changing the theological and formulaic structures that contain it.63 The English translation begins with a literal translation of the first blessing. As is now customary, the third-person Hebrew is translated in the second person to resolve the problem of gendered pronouns in English. The second blessing is translated as “You encourage me to wrestle with my faith.” The theme of wrestling with faith is common in Renewal circles.64 This is immediately recognizable as an allusion to Jacob’s name change after his night of struggle with the divine being, and the biblical folk etymology for the name Israel.65 Completely removed in this translation is any association with the people of Israel; to be a Jew, this blessing suggests, is to struggle with one’s personal faith. For the reader who is not familiar with this classic biblical story, the blessing has no links at all to its historical roots. In the 1946 Conservative prayer book, these three blessings were arranged to replace the separate blessings for women and men. Although the original blessing that demanded a separate blessing for women is absent, this prayer book nonetheless adds a special blessing for women, in Hebrew and in English,

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“who made me a woman.” In the Renewal setting, the positive statement may have been included as a form of affirmative action to help women overcome hostility or discomfort about the historical texts.66 The theology of the interim edition of Or Hadash is one of extreme intimacy. Although struggling with one’s faith is encouraged, the impetus for the struggle is rooted in the divine itself. The original language of the Menahot blessings fostered the creation of an affirmative identity in opposition to the “other.” During the nineteenth century, prayer book editors sought to phrase the blessings as positive identity statements that affirmed mission, whether as part of the nation (made me an Israelite) or as an individual (called me to His service). In this liturgy, the relationship does not extend beyond the private connection. The public meaning of these blessings is the affirmation of intimacy and connection between the worshiper and God.67 In marked contrast, the most recent major American prayer book, the Reform movement’s Mishkan Tefilah, places renewed emphasis on Jewish peoplehood and Jewish identity.68 Breaking with prior practice, the three Menahot blessings are inserted into the end of the Berakhot list, creating a new, thematic series of three blessings focused on the self as a member of the Jewish people: PRAISE TO YOU, Adonai our God Sovereign of the universe, who made me in the image of God. . . . who has made me free. . . . who has made me a Jew. . . . who girds Israel with strength. . . . who crowns Israel with splendor. To avoid gendered pronouns, the first blessing (which is absent in Gates of Prayer) is now modified in Hebrew and in English to “the image of God”—in lieu of the more common b’tzalmo, “in His image” or, in English, “in the divine image.” The third blessing, “who has made me a Jew,” is followed by the two blessings from the Berakhot set. In the Talmud, these are, like the others in this group, linked to a part of a person’s daily morning routine: “When one fastens one’s belt, one says: ‘Praised [is the One] who girds Israel with strength.’ When one spreads a kerchief over one’s head, one says: ‘Praised [is the One] who crowns Israel with glory.’” The entire section is labeled “NISIM B’CHOL YOM—FOR DAILY MIRACLES” and each blessing is also given a framing phrase or kavvanah in the margin: “For being in the image of God . . . For Being a free person . . . For being a Jew . . . For purpose . . . For harmony.” These English titles are unique in the prayer book; elsewhere in this volume, the Hebrew titles of individual prayers are transliterated

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into English. As we have seen, neither set of blessings was ever given a name before Gates of Prayer. Here, for the first time since the Talmud, a particular “theme” is assigned to each individual blessing, although as a group there is no identifiable progression or consistency among the themes.69 In an effort to generate new meanings for the historical blessings, the editor of Mishkan Tefilah freely rearranged them into a new order not previously known. Mishkan Tefilah’s renewed emphasis on Jewish identity—in marked contrast to the universalizing trends among earlier generations of Reform Jews—is, ironically, effected at the cost of creating a new discontinuity with the historical liturgy and with normative language elsewhere in the Jewish community. In recent years, the desire to present an authentic text has resulted in the reintroduction of language long abandoned. Because editors and users often believe that the oldest historical text is the most “correct” and its use a sign of Jewish freedom and autonomy, Jews need not concern themselves with accusations of chauvinism. In most Jewish communities, the internal sensibilities of the worshipping community and the influence of the wider cultural moment together have informed the search for alternative language and formats that are rooted in historical sources, but are also consistent with the core values and newly framed narrative of Jewish spirituality and practice. For many, the extent to which these historical sources were marginal or not widely known in their own day only adds to their appeal.

Conclusion

The Jewish religious tradition, like many others, has always sought to legitimate its practices through teachings that validate their authenticity and historical authority. The strongest claim that the Jewish tradition makes is that a teaching or practice was initiated by one of the patriarchs, like the institution of three daily prayer services, or learned “from Moses at Mt. Sinai.”1 It is, therefore, unsurprising that later commentators related the custom to “recite one hundred blessings daily” to an event in the life of King David, and their specific language to the (ahistorical) leaders of the Great Assembly. Traditional sources almost never explicitly acknowledge how Jewish texts or practices have been shaped by—or in competition with— alternative teaching, practice, or text from the surrounding culture. Thus, although we can imagine these blessings emerging independently in Jewish circles during the late Second Temple period, it is likely that they were first said in social contexts when members of other groups were making similar comments about themselves. Before they were known as “blessings” per se, some version of these words may have functioned as an identifying slogan or folk aphorism. In a famous passage in The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz defines a religion as a “cultural system,” a multidimensional phenomenon existing within, and helping to maintain, a culture as a whole. He describes religion as “a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and

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motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with an aura of factuality such that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”2 The function of religion, according to Geertz, is to create and maintain a worldview. Geertz’s definition calls for an interpretation of religion that moves beyond the static description of text, rite, hierarchy, and theology to explain how the individual aspects and the system as a whole provide meaning (i.e. “a general order of existence).” Peter Berger’s writings have demonstrated Geertz’s idea of such a “general order of existence,” further arguing that what differentiates the post-Reformation European world from other civilizations is the absence of a coherent, shared religious worldview.3 When such entire systems existed, they created for individuals “the possibility of not picking and choosing” between conflicting systems of belief; individuals “could simply surrender to the taken-for-granted consensus that surrounded them on all sides.”4 The construction of a world of religious certainty was perhaps more conscious in the premodern world than was once imagined. It has now become commonplace (at least within the academy) to speak about the “Judaisms” of late antiquity. This language imagines not just a marketplace of competing systems between pagan, early Christian, and Jewish religions, but a spectrum of Jewish religious systems as well. Instead of a stark contrast between premodern and modern systems, the construction of premodern worldviews in multicultural communities may be better imagined as a continuum between Geertz’s closed “system of symbols . . . with an aura of factuality that . . . seem[s] uniquely realistic” and Berger’s self-conscious modern system that retains “the memory of the deliberate construction of a community of consent.” The deliberate expression of variations in the same basic aphorism by Hellenistic, rabbinic Jewish, and early Christian polemicists demonstrates that the explicit assertion of group maintenance and identity was already a function of religious rites in the premodern world. All enacted cultural rites, by their nature, “generate and regenerate the very subjectivity they pretend only to display.”5 The origin of what later became “the three blessings” was a declaration of cultural and communal chauvinism. The original was not subtle; we do not need to probe deeply to discern the cultural values that it asserts. The explicit articulation of the status and class distinctions of the Hellenistic worldview were given ultimate authority, however, by their attribution to “the gods” or “fate.” The identity assigned to a person was therefore unchangeable, with an implicit presumption of similar permanence in the hierarchical oppositions that the aphorism describes. The contrast with the barbarian “other” resolves the potential dissonance of encountering an alternative worldview by subsuming the entirety of the potential threat within the primary narrative of the

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original culture. The reality of the “barbarian culture” is acknowledged and assigned an inferior status to that of Hellenistic culture. The parallel Jewish saying changed the Hellenistic formula in two ways: by switching the primary social identity from “Greek” to “Jew” and by transforming the recipient of the praise from the Greek gods or fate to the God of Israel. The Hellenistic expression was effectively transformed into a slogan that articulated key ideas of the rabbinic Jewish master narrative. The privileges enjoyed by men over women and by free people over slaves in Hellenistic and rabbinic Jewish culture were not entirely congruent, but the values statement carried over effortlessly nonetheless. The key transformation in translating the saying from Hellenistic to Jewish culture was not the substitution of “Jew” for “Greek,” but the reassignment of the ultimate basis for the ordering of the world from the Greek gods to the God of Israel. The apostle Paul, in turn, restates the Jewish and Hellenistic slogans in a new arrangement in support of a master narrative that informed the life of the early Church. Interpretations of the “meaning” of this text must incorporate, in addition to the ostensible meaning of the predicate words, the contextual meaning conveyed through setting these words in a linguistic or performative context that in itself is a prime message of the cultural system. If these statements circulated in popular usage before they were framed in a prayer formula, any invocation of “the ETERNAL, our God,” regardless of the manifest content that followed, was a legitimization of the Jewish religious worldview. Once ascribed to a leading early rabbinic teacher, the blessings concept took on a Jewish life of its own, and developed organically as part of the Jewish spiritual tradition. What began as a private, spontaneous statement became regularized, shared, and public. This transformation occurred, in part, by virtue of the physical proximity in the Talmud of the baraita about these three blessings and the instruction to recite 100 blessings daily. Thus, these blessings became closely associated with the goal of reciting the daily quota of 100 blessings. Succeeding generations were consistently troubled when the textual traditions they inherited came into conflict with other received or contemporaneous teachings. Although authoritative teachings were often prescriptive, the actual texts that preserve what the copyist thought was appropriate often reflect synthesis or variation. For example, many Genizah texts contain the three blessings in the Palestinian style, “who made me an Israelite and not a gentile,” and then add, in the shorter Babylonian style, a fourth line “who did not make me a boor.” The mix-and-match nature of so many of these early texts is the historical equivalent of the experimentation and variation that characterized many nineteenth-century Reform prayer books and the mimeographed prayer

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services produced in youth groups and camp settings beginning in the 1970s. In all three situations, local variation and creativity was possible in the absence of strong centralized leadership with the ability to impose an authorized text. Ultimately, it was the invention of the printing press that created both the capacity to standardize a work definitively and to impose preproduction approval over its contents.6 The loosening of centralized authority as Germany modernized permitted the reemergence of significant variation in prayer and, a century later, access to a hand-cranked mimeograph machine that enabled the proliferation of “local” prayer books. The institutionalization of personal prayer was a central aspect of the Geonic period. It was under Geonic influence that the series of blessings from Berakhot 60b, which were also originally private, were assimilated into the liturgy of the synagogue. The recitation of these blessings was a daily affirmation of the primary values of rabbinic Jewish ideology. Their privileged recitation by men in the synagogue, the quintessential male and Jewish space, along with the interpretation of the significance of the blessings as being about the privileged status of Jewish men, contributed to and helped maintain the strength and boundaries of the religious–cultural system. Later kabbalistic interpretation, like most mystical reconceptualizations of Jewish practice, honored and reinforced normative acts while adding a new level of significance to the daily recitation of the three blessings. Although Rabbi Abraham cautioned against reciting the blessings without having first encountered the other-who-one-was-not, the kabbalists imagined the possibility of the soul becoming the other each night, and with relief and joy reaffirmed their own integrity and identity every morning. Beginning with medieval investigations of the Talmud, Jews became increasingly aware of how their literature and teachings were subject to investigation and scrutiny by the Church and its officials. As a minority community dependent on the goodwill of rulers and ecclesiastical authorities, Jews had strong motivation to present themselves and their religious teachings as not being hostile or critical of Christianity. Yet the truth claims of the historical Jewish religious tradition are inimical to Christianity, and, on a popular level, Jews and Christians took deep pleasure in making fun of the religious and social practices of the other. The ostensible goal of ecclesiastical censorship was to suppress statements that contradicted the majority culture’s master narrative about the superiority of the Church. Although certainly central, beyond the fact of the erasures and emendations themselves, the regime of control and supervision also served to reinforce and remind the Jews of their dependent and inferior status. In response, Jews used a variety of strategies to undermine or respond to the censorship. In late medieval manuscripts and in some early printed books, a blank space was sometimes left where a word or phrase had

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been censored. At least for the first generations after the erasures had been made, most Jews no doubt knew what the missing words were.7 In addition to generating a creative set of noncontroversial euphemistic replacements, some Jews used “linguistic resistance” to circumvent the intentions of the censors and to reassert their own identity by euphemistically referring to the non-Jews as boors, animals, or unspeaking beings. The objectionable terms, whether goy or aku’m, carried esoteric meanings within the Jewish community. Thus, although a public interpretation was offered, explaining first goy and then aku’m as only referring to long-disappeared, biblical-era idolaters, an esoteric interpretation circulated simultaneously, identifying the original and replacement terms with the contemporary oppressors. The private Jewish meaning was not so esoteric as to be known only to a small circle; it was shared widely enough to be reported by Jewish apostates to the authorities. However, written explanations of this meaning were edited out of manuscripts of Hebrew books. For subsequent generations, the textual history of the three blessings—how the text was recited in the past, and whether changes in the received text were imposed from within or without—became increasingly significant in defending the legitimacy of the version of the blessings for their own day. As Jews integrated into the modern world, they have been as embarrassed as their medieval and Renaissance predecessors about public discussion of the depth of anti-Christian polemic in Jewish religious works, and sometimes have expressed gratitude that problematic texts were revised long ago. Amnon RazKrakotzkin argues that the Church’s censorship was not as traumatic as many have asserted. The censor’s actions were not only acts of destruction; he was also a cocreator with premodern Jews, Raz-Krakotzkin claims, in their reconception of Jewish identity and its relationship to the “other.” This new selfidentity was embodied in the replacement of “did not make me a gentile” with “who made me a Jew.” The endorsement of this change “corresponded to the religio-cultural approach of many Jews of the period who preferred a text that enabled them to preserve a Jewish self definition that, while emphasizing the uniqueness of the Jewish people, does [not] constitute it through the negation of the gentiles.”8 Although this is no doubt partly true, it is important to note that although some Jews were carefully copying and later printing the corrected, milder versions of various texts, others (or perhaps the same ones) were surreptitiously circulating uncensored versions of the original, with the passages attacking Christianity restored. For example, although Rabbi David Kimchi’s commentary on the Torah had its anti-Christian passages systematically removed before publication, the missing passages were clandestinely printed in 1517; in later editions, they were included as a one-page supplement bound at the back.9 The changing sense of self and relation to the other that

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Raz-Krakotzkin describes has evolved over time and has not always moved in a single direction. A wide variety of attitudes—and their linguistic expression— can be carried by different members of a community, and often within the same individual. The use of “who made me an Israelite” as a euphemistic replacement was probably suggested by its usage in the Palestinian formulation “who made me an Israelite and not a gentile,” which was still known in fifteenth-century Italian Jewish communities. In censored texts, “who made me an Israelite” directly replaced “who did not make me a gentile.” The subsequent printing of many classic Jewish texts with the censorship-originated formulation generated validity for it, despite the public knowledge that it had largely become popular as the result of censorship. When the Jewish master narrative was reconceptualized during the nineteenth century—along the lines that Raz-Krakotzkin ascribes to the sixteenth century—the meanings of Jewish rites also had to be adjusted. In German Reform prayer books, the themes of the three blessings were freely reinterpreted to conform to the overarching motifs of early liberal Judaism. Protomodern Orthodox and Conservative editors, for whom continuity between historical and current practice was a core value, made simpler emendations in the text, but generated a new hermeneutic, reconciling the new language with the historical text. Although the Hebrew text was almost universally emended, the meaning of the text was recast, whether in the form of rabbinic commentary or in the translation itself. Using the tools of modernity—grammar, morphology, and historical analysis—the troublesome language was removed in favor of new language that served the political and religious needs of the current community and could be defended as historically and linguistically authentic.10 The religious construction of women’s roles, as demonstrated by male commentators’ explanations of the blessing “who did not make me a woman,” was articulated and reinforced by the daily recitation by men of this blessing. The creation of special blessings for women to recite demonstrates the use of the liturgy both to maintain and to subvert the dominant worldview. A new blessing, previously unknown, was created because women were rendered invisible by the received liturgy. We cannot determine whether the impetus for the new blessing came from women or from men; the limited textual record suggests that, initially at least, the recitation of the new blessing encountered some rabbinic resistance. Soon enough, the new blessing became the authorized blessing that women were expected to recite. The blessing and its authorized interpretation were firmly within—and supportive of—the normative Jewish narrative of their time. However, from the Renaissance onward, counterinterpretations about women’s place in the world were circulating. The literary record of the circulation of blessings not officially authorized

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suggests that, at least with regard to the noncanonical liturgy, private, “unofficial” interpretations were given public voice (at least among women) during the late Renaissance period. The dissonance that the authorized blessing created, and the resolutions—interpretation, emendation, or omission—foreshadow the history of this blessing in the modern period. Every recension of these blessings—and of the prayer book as a whole— has had to reconcile the received text as an expression of the Jewish community’s master narrative, as understood by the interpreting community, with the contemporary multifaceted master narrative of the community. Whenever there is a perceived break between the received narrative and the contemporary one, this tear in the fabric of continuity must be accounted for. Thus, in the rabbinic narrative, the rabbis of the Talmud were not the first ones to institute the recital of these blessings; they merely recovered what had been done previously, but had been forgotten. For modern prayer book editors, no less than for their medieval predecessors, the claims of historical continuity are strong. Although the content of the identity statements that these blessings assert is fundamentally different today than it was 2000 years ago, the three blessings continue to function as conveyers of meaning, both in their manifest content and in the historical continuity they represent. Contemporary interpretations must confront the popular familiarity with the historical associations of these blessings, as well as the changed, inclusive attitude toward the “other” that characterizes our contemporary pluralistic culture. The continuous thread that links the diverse history of this liturgical text is the ongoing desire to establish authenticity. Within their respective cultural– religious systems, the Hellenistic and Jewish formulations sought to affirm the authenticity and primacy of their cultures. Over time, the continual debate turned on the authentic use of the blessings, in terms of both proper context and authenticity of language. The censored manuscripts often preserve signs of effort to mark the absence of what the copyist knew was the once-authentic language. Later, when the language was deliberately changed, claims for authenticity were made based on the historical record created by the very texts that were themselves the product of censorship. The multivocal meaning of the text for almost every generation included the acknowledgment of historical continuity. Even moderns, who are explicit in their rejection of many of the core values of the master narratives that generated these texts, nonetheless seek, whenever possible, to maintain the structural integrity and manifest language of the received tradition. The full acceptance of this yearning for authenticity and desire for continuity may enable us to read the historical record with a greater sensitivity to its nuanced multivocality, while enabling us to embrace our own conflicted relationships with received religious text and praxis.

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Appendix: Babylonian Talmud Menahot 43b and Parallels

TABLE

A1

Babylonian Talmud Menahot 43b

Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 9d*

Tosefta, Berakhot 6:18

Rabbi Meir [Judah]

It was taught: Rabbi Judah says:

Rabbi Judah says:

A person must bless three blessings very day, and they are:

A person must say three A person must bless three things every day: blessings every day:

[Praised are you Eternal . . .] who has made me an Israelite, who did not make me a woman, who did not make me a boor.

Praised [are You Eternal . . .] who did not make me a gentile, praised [. . .] who did not make me a boor, praised [. . .] who did not make me a woman.

Praised [are You Eternal . . .] who did not make me a gentile, praised [. . .] who did not make me a boor, praised [. . .] who did not make me a woman.

“Blessed [. . .] who did A gentile— R. Aha bar Jacob heard his son not make me a gentile.” reciting the blessing, “[Praised are You, Eternal,] who did not make me a boor.”He said to him, “arrogance—to such an extent . . .!”He [the son] said to [his father]: “Then what blessing should one say?”“[. . .]who has not made me a slave.”“But is not that in the same category as a woman?“A slave is worse.” (Continued)

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TABLE A1. continued Babylonian Talmud Menahot 43b

Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 9d*

Tosefta, Berakhot 6:18

because the gentiles are of no matter. [As it says,] “All the nations are as nothing before him” [Isaiah 40:17].

as it is written: “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” [Isaiah 40:17].

“Blessed [. . .] who did not make me a boor,”

A boor—

for, “a boor does not fear “a boor does not fear sin” [Mishnah sin” [Mishnah Avot 2:6]. Avot 2:6]. “Blessed [. . .] who did A woman— not make me a woman,” for, “women are not obli- for, “women are not gated to perform the obligated to perform commandments.” the commandments.” [Tosefta continues: ] To what can the matter be compared? To a king of flesh and blood who said to his servant [literally, slave], “Cook me a dish” and he had never cooked a dish ever before, and ultimately he ruins the dish and angers his master. [He instructs him] to hem him a garment and he had never hemmed a garment in his life, and ultimately he soils the shirt and angers his master. *Translations based on Neusner, Talmud of the Land of Israel, 318 and Neusner, Tosefta, 40.

Manuscript and printed editions of two other rabbinic-era sources preserve variant readings of the passage presented in the table. In the Palestinian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 9:2, the passage appears in the context of a longer discussion about blessings to be recited on various occasions: “It was taught: Rabbi Judah says: A person must say three things every day: Praised [are You Eternal . . . ] who did not make me a gentile, Praised [are You Eternal . . . ] who did not make me a boor, Praised [are You Eternal . . . ] who did not make me a woman.” There are three differences between the printed versions in the two Talmuds: the Babylonian Talmud Menahot text cites the passage in the name of R. Meir, whereas the Palestinian Talmud Berakhot has the name of R. Judah. There is no question that the original authority was Rabbi Judah; many manuscripts and early sources quote the passage in the name of Rabbi Judah, and modern translations emend the text accordingly.1 The original scribal error is easy to understand. The Gemara has a sequence of baraitot about prayer matters, the first three of which are all in the name of Rabbi Meir. It is not surprising that a copyist or editor wrote “Rabbi Meir” a fourth time in place of “Rabbi Judah” in the next baraita: “A person must recite three blessings.”

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The Babylonian Talmud speaks of “three blessings” and has the order “gentile, woman, boor”; the Palestinian has “three things” and switches the sequence, placing “boor” before “woman.” In both Talmuds, the explanatory discussion in the Gemara supports the order in which the blessings are presented. The Tosefta is an anthology of citations that are attributed to the Rabbis of the Mishnah, but that are neither contained in the Mishnah nor quoted in the Talmud’s explication of the Mishnah; they are presumed to date from the period of the Mishnah. Tosefta Berakhot 6:18 contains the same version of the text as the Palestinian Talmud, with the single exception of its use of “three blessings” (like Menahot) in place of the printed edition of the Palestinian Talmud’s “three things.” These variations, however, are not consistent across the various manuscripts of the respective texts. The interdependence of the three parallel texts, as evidenced by the variations within the manuscript history, does not permit privileging any of the three sources as being earlier or more authentic than the others.2 Many early sources quote the baraita in the name of Rabbi Judah; beyond this correction, it is impossible to reconstruct the original sequence and formulation, if there ever was one.3

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. The printed text has Rabbi Meir, but the Palestinian Talmud, along with most manuscripts and early sources, quote this in the name of Rabbi Judah (see p. XXX). I translate “boor” following Neusner, Menahot, 30. Others have “brutish man” or “ignoramus.” Tabory, “Benedictions of Self-Identity,” 111, suggests that this is a Hebrew equivalent for the Greek “not a barbarian.” On the force of the word bor in rabbinic texts, see Marx, Early Morning Ritual, 113–114. 2. The first scholarly study of the Menahot-originated blessings was in 1893 by Kaufmann, “Oldest Three Benedictions,” 14–18. The most thorough examination of the textual history of these blessings is a 1979 essay by Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 97–118, and this volume relies heavily on his work. Wieder is primarily concerned with the textual history of the blessings and cataloging of variant readings. I include a variety of manuscripts not considered by Wieder and examine how the blessings were used and what they disclose of the religious outlook of the Jews who recited these prayers. Additional manuscripts are listed in Halamish, “Unusual Blessings,” 436–445. Prior scholarship is summarized and more recent Israeli discussions are presented in Tabory, “Benedictions of Self-identity,” 107–138. The entirety of the early morning liturgy is the topic of a recent dissertation by Marx, Early Morning Ritual. Freehof’s early effort to link the origins of the Morning Blessings to the eighteen blessings of the Amidah, “Structure of Birchos Ha-Shachar,” is not credible; see the critique of Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud. 9, n. 15. The halakhic sources are summarized thoroughly by Anau, Pri Yeshuran, 86–94. 3. See p. XXX.

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5–10

4. A comprehensive inventory of the appearance of these blessings in Genizah sources was kindly provided by Prof. Uri Ehrlich, from the Genizah texts database project of Mifal Hatefila at Ben Gurion University. Every known appearance of these blessings in Genizah sources is cited in the text or notes. Despite the effort to catalog the Genizah texts, it is impossible to identify the fragmentary passages from the Genizah as originating in one type of synagogue or another; the claim and the evidence are inherently circular. See, for example, the conflicted discussion of how to characterize ms. Oxford Heb. g.2, a prayer book that exhibits characteristics of both Babylonian and Palestinian prayer forms; compare Fleischer, Prayer, 26, n. 30, and Margalioth, Ta-Shma and Feliks, Hilkhot Erets Yisrael, 127–128, and see the discussion in Marx, Early Morning Ritual, 200, n. 89. A later example is the absorption of Italian customs into Ashkenazic prayer books produced in Italy; see, for example, the Menahot blessings in Mahzor ke-Minhag K’K Ashkenazim she-be-khol gelilut Italia (Vienna, 1823), 6. 5. On the force of local custom, see Ta-Shma, Halakhah, minhag u-metsiut; Ta-Shma, Minhag Ashkenaz ha-kadmon; Langer, To Worship God Properly. 6. Daniel Goldschmidt found only three extant manuscripts. The primary difference, as in many local rites, is in the selection of piyyutim (liturgical poems); see Goldschmidt, Romanian Mahzor, 211 (= On Jewish Liturgy, 125). The Romanian versions of the Menahot blessings are discussed on p. XXX. 7. See Hoffman, Beyond the Text, 46–59.

CHAPTER

1

1. Hadas, Hellenistic Culture, 12. There is an extensive literature on Jewish-Greek interactions, see (among others): Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World; Bickerman, Jews in the Greek Age; Goldstein, “Jewish Acceptance and Rejection”; Goodman, Jews in a Graeco-Roman World; Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity; Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization; Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness. 2. Diogenes, Lives, “Thales,” i. 33, 35. 3. “Thanks to you Creator for having made me a human; for You having made me hearing, speaking, seeing; for You having created me free and not a slave; for You having created me a man and not a woman” (translated from the French). James Darmesteter, Prière judéo-persane, published a Persian Zoroastrian prayer and proposed that the Zoroastrian prayer was borrowed from the Jews. Others pointed out that it could have as easily been directly taken from the Greeks. The original prayer is found in manuscript i British Library Add 8996, f. 45b, and was first transcribed and published in a German translation by Sachau, “Neue Beitraige zur Kenntniss der zeroastrichen Litteratur,” 828–830. Darmesteter criticizes Sachau’s translation and offers his own French translation in Zend-Avesta, III, 187–190. Darmesteter’s work, in turn, is reviewed and critiqued in “Philology Notes,” Academy 40:1021 (Nov. 28, 1891); H. Murray Mitchell, “Une Priere Judeo-persane,” Academy 41:1051 (June 25, 1892); C. K. Cheyne, “Letter to the Editor,” Academy 42:1052 (July 2, 1882). 4. The original teacher was Rabbi Judah. For the textual history of the Talmudic passage, see p. XXX. This translation uses “boor,” following Neusner Menahot, 30. Others have “brutish man” or “ignoramus.”

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5. The first person to comment on this parallel was Martin Luther. Luther relied for his knowledge of Judaism on the apostate Anton Margaritha (born ca.1490), who published his influential work Der gantz Juedisch Glaub in 1530. See the introduction by Franklin Shermanto Luther, “On the Jews” vol. 47, 130. Luther wrote: They boast and they thank God, in the first place, because they were created as human beings and not as animals; in the second place, because they are Israelites and not Goyim (Gentiles); in the third place, because they were created as males and not as females. They did not learn such tomfoolery from Israel, but from the Goyim [sic]. For history records that the Greek Plato daily accorded God such praise and thanksgiving, if such arrogance and blasphemy may be termed praise of God. This man, too, praised his gods for these three items: that he was a human being and not an animal; a male and not female; a Greek and not a non-Greek or barbarian. (Ibid, 141; cf. Luther, Werke, vol. 53, 420) 6. Diogenes, Lives, “Thales,” i. 33, 35. In this passage, he quotes from another biographer, Hermippus, who attributes this well-known story to Thales. The Greek text begins: “Hermippus (5th century BCE) in his ‘Lives’ assigns to Thales the story which is told by some of Socrates, namely, that he used to say. . . .” Also see John Mayor, “Plato and St. Paul,” Classical Review X (May 1896), 191; Kaufmann, “The Oldest Three Benedictions,” 14; Lieberman, Tosefta ki-feshuta, 119. For comparison, the various elements of the aphorism can be labeled as follows:

Introduction Species (person vs. beast) Gender (male vs. female) Nation (Greek vs. barbarian, Israelite vs. gentile) Free vs. slave Circumcised vs. uncircumcised (only in Jewish sources) Polis (Athenian vs. Thebian [only in Greek sources]) Generation (generation of Socrates [only in Greek sources)] 7. Plutarch, “Caius Marius” IX, sec. 46:1, 595. Plutarch lived ca.45—ca.120 CE. 8. Dio, Discourses, 61. Dio lived 40—ca.120 CE. 9. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 3:19, sec. 17. Some manuscripts maintain the “made me x, and not y” structure with the reading “made me an Athenian and not a Theban”; see Lactantius, Lvcii Coelii, 373. Elements of the Hellenistic Sources Diogenes

Plutarch

Dio

Lactantius

Species

Species

Species*

Species

Gender

—

—

Gender

Nation

Nation

—

Nation

—

Polis

Polis*

Polis*

—

Generation*

—

Generation*

*Positive attribute only (does not include “and not y.”)

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10. Taylor, Pirkei Avot, 139. Hadas says: “[The] story told of both Socrates and Plato is true probably of neither but characteristic nevertheless. . . .” (Culture, 14). 11. Weiss, Dor dor ve-dorshav, vol. II, 29. Emphasis added. 12. Weiss’ anachronistic, cross-cultural projection is reminiscent of the common midrashic practice of anachronistically attributing later rabbinic customs to biblical figures; in BT Berakhot 26b, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are credited with initiating the daily morning, afternoon, and evening services, respectively. Weiss, Dor dor, vol. II, 132, writes: “Part of [Rabbi Meir’s] sayings suggest that he was expert in the writings of the Greeks. . . . He had no tradition or source in the teachings of his masters, but that he knew that this was the custom of Socrates the Greek to bless daily, and the matter made sense to him and he planted it in the soil of Judaism.” Compare with Lieberman’s vehement rejection of this idea (see p. XXX) and his Tosefta ki-feshuta, 120, n. 77. Weiss celebrates Rabbi Meir as worldly; his contemporary, Manuel Joel, uses the same attribution to defend Judaism against the charge of misogyny (see p. XXX). Unfortunately for Weiss’ elaborate theory about Rabbi Meir being an expert in Greek literature, Rabbi Meir was not the original speaker in the rabbinic sources (see p. XXX). Nevertheless, Weiss’ description is consistent with our understanding that the Jewish blessings emerged against the background of a common culture in which the Greek aphorism was widely known. The origin of the Morning Blessings as a group is usually credited in pious Jewish literature to King David, and, according to a single source, Moses (see p. XXX). Most unusual in Jewish sources—from any period—is the explicit attribution of a Jewish prayer to a non-Jewish source. 13. Cf. Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 217; Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne,” 167, nn.7–8. 14. A genizah is the storeroom or depository in the synagogue where worn-out books and papers were stored. The Cairo Genizah, discovered by Europeans at the end of the nineteenth century, contained tens of thousands of manuscripts dating back to as early as 870. Although the majority of the documents in the Genizah were written in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, they often record practices and customs going back several centuries. Although some are complete works, most of the tens of thousands of documents from the Cairo Genizah are individual leaves or several sheets from larger works. The individual leaves are now held in many different libraries around the world. The largest collection is at Cambridge University, in the Taylor–Schechter collection. These are identified as T-S followed by a box number and an individual leaf: for example, T-S 227.5 (227.4 and 227.6 are probably completely unrelated documents). After the original cataloging effort, a new series (NS) was started; these are denoted as, for example, T-S NS 271.21. See the Introduction to Goiten, A Mediterranean Society, and Reif, Cambridge Genizah Collections. 15. The word mahl (“circumcised,” vocalized with kamatz katan), according to Wieder (“The Form rabun,”217), should be understood as “one who fulfills the mitzvah [commandment] of circumcision.” Examples from the Genizah are T-S NS 229:2 and

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139

Cambridge Add. 3160:1. It can also be found in the later medieval manuscript HUC 441, but with the mem vocalized with a patach instead of kamatz. It also appears in the manuscript Antonin B0993, which is unvocalized (see Assaf “Prayer Book” 121). This usage is paralleled by the single (reconstructed) use of mahul (with kamatz katan) in T-S NS 271:21 (again, meaning “circumcised”). It is plausible and likely that the average Jew understood this blessing as “who made me circumcised” and was not troubled by the blessing’s skipping over of the intermediate causation. All of these texts use the form asher barah oti (who created me). The verb b-r-a is used exclusively for divine creation. 16. T-S NS 121.5; similarly, T-S NS 122.103. This elaborate formulation was preserved in later texts, too; see, for example, manuscript HUC 442, p. XXX. 17. See Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, n. 53. Texts include, T-S NS 121:5, T-S 229:2, T-S 271:21; Assaf, “Prayer Book,” 121; Mann, “Genizah Fragments,” 275 (= manuscript Cambridge Add 3160:1). 18. Older English translations of the Greek offer “one of the brutes” in place of “beast.” 19. Goldstein, “Jewish Acceptance and Rejection,” 7. 20. The author of II Maccabees, writing in Greek, opposes “Judaism” and “Hellenism” (2:21, 4:13) and describes the Greek emperor and his army as “barbarian hordes” (2:21, NRSV). The wider question of the fluidity of boundaries and identity among Jews in late antiquity is the subject of Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness. 21. Ibid, 71. Describing the Septuagint’s use of the term Hēllēnes, H. Windisch writes: “[F]or the Jews, the Greek sphere is a religious rather than a political matter . . . so that the term approximates to Gentile” (Bromiley, Theological Dictionary, 507). After reviewing and rejecting the claims for the equivalence of “gentile” with “Greek,” he concludes: “Hellenistic Judaism came very near to the equation of the Greek and the Gentile world, and the presuppositions of this equation are all present in Paul” (ibid, 516). In Roman Latin, the word gens—the root of gentile—was used to refer to the “foreign nations” (e.g., everyone not Roman). With regard to the Church fathers, it came to refer to those who were neither Christian nor Jewish, an identification that was later sought by the Jews and rejected by Christians (Andrews, Latin Dictionary, 1117). 22. See Mayor, “Plato and St. Paul,” 191. The elaborate effort by MacDonald, No Male and Female, to locate the source of Paul’s statement in an Egyptian gnostic tradition seems entirely unnecessary. Paul was likely to be familiar with both the Greek and Jewish versions and could have written this passage on his own without relying on an obscure and strained putative source. MacDonald, ibid, 121–123, recognizes Paul’s dependence on the Hebrew and Greek texts. For the history of interpretation of this passage, see Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 205–241, and references therein. 23. Throughout Paul and the Church fathers, “Jew” and “Greek” are opposed to each other. See Goldstein, “Jewish Acceptance and Rejection,” 320, n. 45, and the citations brought in Stern, Greek and Latin Authors. 24. David Goldenberg, “Scythian-Barbarian,” 100, suggests that “Scythian vs. barbarian” was also a widely known rhetorical opposition, simultaneously representing both racial and geographical opposites in the Hellenistic world.

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25. Attridge, Tripartite Tractate, 1:5.132.16–18. 26. Ibid., 1:5.132.16. 27. Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne,” 203. This influential article informs most subsequent debate. 28. Furthermore, they ask, how does Paul’s apparent promise of equality and universal access to the spiritual in Galatians relate to his more stringent teachings restricting women’s public roles, especially his teaching in I Corinthians 11:1–6?: 1

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. 2I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you. 3But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. 4Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, 5but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. 6For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil. (NRSV). One modern interpreter complains: Paul seems to have produced a discourse which is so contradictory as to be almost incoherent. In Galatians, Paul seems indeed to be wiping out social differences and hierarchies between the genders, in addition to those that obtain between ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes, while in Corinthians he seems to be reifying and reemphasizing precisely those gendered hierarchical differences. (Boyarin, Galatians and Gender Trouble, 183) 29. Schopenhauer, World as Will, 98. Schopenhauer cites these texts in an argument seeking to refute Immanuel Kant’s claims about the nature of reason. 30. Nineteenth-century Jewish defenders are equally quick to blame Greek civilization for what they consider to be objectionable ideas that have entered Judaism. Joel Manuel (1826–1890), a mid-nineteenth-century German rabbi, explained in his Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, 120, that the concept of the superiority of men over women “is not Jewish (nicht judisch [orientalisch]), but Greek” in origin. The same displacement, but defining “oriental” as a non-Jewish other, is articulated in Montefiore, Rabbinic Anthology, 510, no. 1441: “The general Rabbinic view about women [is] half-kindly, half-oriental.” 31. See p. XXX.

CHAPTER

2

1. Talmudic liturgical texts may have also been changed to bring them into conformity with later practice. That is clearly not the case here, where the geonic confusion centers on why later practice differs from the apparent talmudic model.

NOTES TO PAGES

20–21

141

2. More literally, “And this too!” See Epstein, Babylonian Talmud (Soncino edition), Menahoth, 264. A note suggests that the blessing is inappropriate because “a brutish man is also bound by all the precepts [mitzvot].” 3. Translation based on Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Menahot, 30. 4. Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 94. As late as the early fifteenth century, the Palestinian Talmud text was quoted without reference to the Gemara’s objections in the Babylonian Talmud: see Machir Ben Abba, Yalkut Makhiri to Isaiah 40:21. 5. See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-feshuta, vol. I, 119, 1. 84; Ginzberg, Perushim ve-hidushim ba-Yerushalami, 229. There is no extant manuscript evidence in support of Ginzberg’s hypothesis. 6. In his commentary to this passage in the Talmud, the medieval Jewish commentator Rashi (France, 1040–1105) also questions why the third term is needed and concludes: “It is to complete the three blessings Rabbi Meir specified.” Ginzberg never fully explains why the new term is preferable to the old. In Ginzberg’s reconstruction, the Gemara’s text remained unchanged through the later replacement of “not a beast” with “not a boor” in the text of the baraita itself. The received text, according to Ginzberg, preserved two alternative solutions—both “slave” and “boor” being replacements for the long-disappeared original term, “beast.” Ginzberg conceded that the substitution of “boor” for “beast” must have been extremely early, as both the Tosefta (the collection of authoritative, early rabbinic teachings that are not preserved in the Babylonian Talmud) and the Palestinian Talmud cite proof texts supporting the inclusion of “boor.” On the other hand, he cites the Greek parallels discussed above in Chapter 1, as well as the evidence from Jewish liturgical sources, in support of the talmudic text having once included the phrase “not a beast.” 7. Schechter, Seder Hibbur Berakot, 91, proposes the reverse sequence: “did not make me a beast” replaced “did not make me a boor.” (The thirteenth-century commentator, Menahem Meiri proposed that “boor” displaced “slave” (seep. XXX) Rabbi Meir, Schechter claimed, meant no disrespect to the uneducated Jews of his day, and intended both “gentile” and “boor” to refer to “the hated Romans.” Continuing his imaginary reconstruction, Schechter proposes: Rab Aha b. Jacob then substituted eved for bor; but the Palestinians first clung to the original bor, until later, perhaps due to Babylonian influence, the term bor was changed to behamah, alluding to the am ha-domeh le-chamor (the people/nation which is like an ass), under whose barbaric rule the Palestinians then lived. (Hibbur Berakhot, 91). The phrase am ha-domeh le-chamor (the people/nation which is like an ass) is usually a negative reference to non-Jews or non-Jewish slaves, punning on Gen. 22:5; see Genesis Rabbah 56:2 and parallels: TB Yevamot 62a, Ketubot 111a and Kiddushin 68a. In the talmudic texts, the “slave” is a non-Jewish Canaanite. 8. Lieberman, Tosefta ki-feshuta, 120. Lieberman’s objections are all the more unreasonable in light of the evidence in his own book, Greek in Jewish Palestine. In a chapter titled “Greek and Latin Proverbs in Rabbinic Literature,” 144, he notes:

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21–23

“Rabbinic literature contains Greek proverbs in the original language” and that some Aramaic proverbs in the rabbinic literature “are no doubt Judaized adaptations” of Greek originals. This is consistent with the hypothesis of this book: What eventually became a rabbinic prayer had its origin as an early Jewish adaptation of a Greek proverb or slogan. 9. Lieberman, Tosefta ki-feshuta, 121. See also Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, n. 55. On Lieberman’s assertion of unreliability, see Heinemann, Prayer, 166. 10. Deviations from the text of the Talmud that was in front of the writer had to be resolved; however, the uniform text of the Talmud was not effectively established until the invention of printing. 11. For a detailed exposition of the talmudic passage, see Marx, Early Morning Ritual, 65–92. 12. Sekvi usually means “rooster”—as it surely does in its original context here—but it also can mean “mind.” This in turn comes to be understood as “insight” or “awareness.” Because this latter meaning is central to many of the interpretations of this blessing, it has been left untranslated in most cases. The phrase is first found in Job 38:36. The pun is found in TB Rosh Hashana 26a (at the end). See Tosafot and Tosfot ha-R’osh to TB Berakhot 60b: “The heart is called sekvi and the heart is that which has understanding, and it is through understanding that a person distinguishes between day and night, and since the rooster also understands this, in Arabic ‘rooster’ is called sekvi” (Asher ben Jehiel, Tosfot ha-R’osh, 129). This, in turn, becomes the justification for linking the three blessings, which celebrate the privileges of Torah and mitzvot: “For the essence of wisdom is its dependence on Torah and mitzvot” (Horowitz, Shnai luchot ha-berit, Hullin, Derech hayim—Tokahat musar, 67). Rashi comments on Job 38:36: “Sekvi means ‘rooster’ according to the Sages, but there are others who say that it means ‘heart.’” 13. Nineteenth-century modernizers were sometimes disturbed by the scientific inaccuracy of “spread the earth over the waters” or the Jewish particularism of the two blessings that directly address “Israel” (see p. XXX). 14. In most (but not all) prayer books and manuscripts, the sequence of blessings is: washing of the hands, Asher yatzar (for relieving oneself), Elohai neshama, and then the sekvi. The “One Hundred Blessings” section usually starts with the blessing for the washing of the hands; sometimes it starts with the sekvi. 15. The blessing for shoes is the sole exception. 16. BT Berakhot 57b. 17. My understanding of this relationship was strongly influenced by my reading of Ricoeur, History of Religions and Sullivan, Icanachu’s Drum. Christopher de Hamel imagines a similar spiritual identification between the recitation of the matins prayers by medieval Christians and the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the scene most commonly portrayed in Books of Hours (medieval Christian prayer books for personal devotion): “The recitation of texts which the Virgin Mary herself could have used was in a remarkable way a shared experience which linked the user to divinity;” see Christopher de Hamel. “The One and Only Book,” Review of Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 by Eamon Duffy. New York Review of Books 54:2 (February 15, 2007), 42–44.

NOTES TO PAGES

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143

The exception in this series is the blessing for putting on one’s shoes: “who provides for all my needs.” Unlike the others in this series, this blessing is in the first person singular and does not have a powerful metaphorical association. In this regard, it is similar in style to the last blessing in the Berakhot 60b series (“who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids”) and the beginning of the Elohai neshama prayer: “The soul You have given me,” which precedes the Berakhot blessings in the Talmud and in all liturgies. The different form and style of the blessing for putting on one’s shoes suggests that it may have had a different origin than the others in the series, but there is no extant pre- or extratalmudic evidence for the development of any of these blessings. The medieval commentators struggle to explain the basis for this blessing. An original, if strained, explanation for this blessing is offered by Yehuda bar Yakar (France and Spain, twelfth century; Commentary, 20): All my needs It as if to say that one is naked without shoes, for even if one has dressed, and put on one’s belt and pants, one cannot go out to the market to acquire one’s needs (tzarchav) and the needs of his house; now that one is wearing shoes, one is dressed as much as needed (tzarcho kol levusho) and one should bless (God] for having provided me all this wealth (Dt. 8:17) and shoes are the last article of clothing one puts on. 18. Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 78, is emphatic that these blessings were for the pious: [W]ho see God’s presence and help everywhere, to give thanks to Him for each individual act, even the most insignificant. The entire discussion there was meant merely as good counsel for the pious, and as guidance for the proper attitude towards every act that comes one’s way. There was absolutely no thought of making the short benedictions listed there obligatory, nor was there the slightest intention of fixing them in the daily public service. 19. The many discussions about whether one recites the blessing for shoes on Yom Kippur suggests that the alternative narrative that these blessings are not linked to specific actions on a daily basis was never fully embraced. 20. This sentence also appears in many early versions of the Babylonian Talmud text; see Solomon ben Samson of Worms, Siddur Rabenu Shelomoh, 1, n. 4. 21. PT Menahot 14d. 22. Isaac ben Abba Mari (twelfth century, Marseilles), Ha-Ittur, Laws of Tzitzit, 77, reads these two passages disjunctively, proposing that Meir’s 100 explicitly excluded Rabbi Judah’s three, because they are not about material benefits the body enjoys (berakhot she-haguf nehaneh mi-hem). 23. Wieder, “One Hundred Blessings = Birchot ha-Shachar,” 358–360.

CHAPTER

3

1. We also cannot determine when the exhortation to “recite three things/ blessings” daily was transformed into a specific liturgical practice. The earliest known

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27–29

Genizah document of any kind is dated from ca. 750 CE, but, with rare exceptions, liturgical fragments are unable to be dated. The only earlier source where we might find evidence of the liturgical use of these blessings is from Qumran. There is no evidence of either set of blessings being used there. Although no definitive argument can be made from silence, the sole example of a prayer book from Qumran includes the liturgical use of several of the familiar texts from the Morning Blessings, but no trace of either the Menahot or the Berakhot blessings in their later rabbinic form; see Weinfeld, “Morning Prayers in Qumran,” 481–494. Although the theology of the Menahot series would have been consistent with the Qumran community’s teaching, we have no evidence to suggest that these blessings already had a liturgical form at this early period. The passage from Galatians suggests that the Menahot sequence was known in the Land of Israel at this time. 2. On the liturgical record preserved in the Genizah, see Fleischer, Prayer, Chapter I passim. Although “not a gentile” is usually first, the three blessings appear in every possible order, including “not a slave, not a gentile, not a woman” (T-S 160.27), and sometimes with just two of the three elements (e.g., T-S NS 152.7 is missing “not a slave”). The Babylonian Geonim may have tolerated more variation than is customarily ascribed to them. According to Robert Brody, Saadya Gaon, 42–43, Saadia tolerated non-talmudic benedictions, as long as they were blessings of praise, not petition, and did not stray from or alter the essential meaning of a prayer. In a doubtful attribution, manuscript Parma 1759 assigns to Saadia authorship of a piyyut, with a refrain that is the short blessing: “Praised . . . who listens to the voice of supplications;” see Goldschmidt, On Jewish Liturgy, 155, n. 5; and Davidson, Thesaurus, III, 543. Note the critiques of Brody in Langer, To Worship God Properly, 57. 3. Except for the suggestion that they be reserved for occasions when a person encounters a representative of the respective group (see p. XXX). 4. This can be said with some assurance about Palestinian–informed practice. In Egyptian synagogues, worshipers prayed individually and silently for a significant period before the service leader began the “public worship.” This is a hypothesis about what actually took place in Babylonia. Genizah prayer book manuscripts typically begin with the place where the public worship began; however, we would expect that if the Berakhot blessings were part of the private worship, they would appear in the same texts that include the Menahot set. 5. See p. XXX. 6. Halakhot gedolot, 9; c.f. Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v. “Halakhot Gedolot.” 7. Meyuchas, Sha’are teshuvah ha-geonim: Teshuvot ha-geonim, 30, no. 345. 8. The place and importance of the Geonim in Jewish history is the subject of Brody, Geonim of Babylonia. On Rav Natronai, see Brody, Teshuvot Rav Natronai. 9. See, among many examples, Anau, Shibbolei ha-leket, “Din seder meah berakhot” and notes, 127–132. 10. Lewin, Otzar ha-geonim 135, no. 369. On washing the feet in addition to the hands and face, see Brody, Teshuvot Rav Natronai, vol. I, 107, n. 4 and references therein. Other sources for Seder Rav Amram present this text somewhat differently:

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To bless each one at its appropriate time is impossible because of the uncleanliness of the hands which are fidgety and have been used (for hygiene and/or have become ritually impure). Rather when a person wakes up from sleep, one washes one’s face, hands, and feet as is customary. . . . And one begins and recites them in order. Each and every individual is obligated to fulfill them. (ibid, 137, no. 370; compare Goldschmidt, Seder Rav Amram, 2) The extant manuscripts of Seder Rav Amram are significantly corrupted. Some of the changes do not appear significant. For example, the insertion of Rav Natronai’s responsum into Seder Rav Amram may have been done by the editor, Rav Tzemah; see Goldschmidt’s Introduction to Seder Rav Amram; Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 113; Ginzberg, Geonica, I, 151; Zimmels, “Siddur of Rav Amram,” 380. Others are more substantial; see the discussion of the cantor on p. XXX. For a brief summary of Amram’s importance and the textual problems with the Seder Rav Amram, see Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 275–276. Natronai’s responsum was widely quoted in Amram’s somewhat abridged form. The full text of Natronai’s responsum is found in one recension in Ginzberg, Geonica, II, 114 (spacing of text is in original; compare and see notes in Brody, Teshuvot Rav Natronai 106 ff.): The sages said in Chapter Ha-Ro’eh (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 60b) at the time one opens one’s eyes, what does one say? When one dresses, what does one say?, etc. It means that each one should be said at its appropriate time and place but because of uncleanness . . . thus when a person wakes up from sleep, it is forbidden to bless a single blessing until one’s hands are washed. . . . Since when a person stands up from sleeping he turns and prepares himself and washes his hands, face and feet and blesses according to the order and since he has no permission to bless until he washes his hands, he should prepare himself for blessings and prayer with that washing. Accordingly, one is obligated to bless: . . . for the washing of the hands. This is the order of blessing after washing of the hands: . . . asher yatzar . . . Elohai neshamah . . . who gave the sekvi. . . . Blessed who did not make me a gentile Blessed who did not make me a slave Blessed who did not make me a woman Blessed (who) lifts the fall(en) Blessed who opens the eyes of the blind. 11. Later generations solved the general problem of how one’s first utterance should be words of praise by instituting the Modeh ani prayer, which does not explicitly mention the name of God. This prayer is first documented only during the late seventeenth century. 12. See Hedegard, Seder Rav Amram, 3. 13. Although it is no longer clear whether Amram ever actually was the legitimate Gaon of Sura, he was known as Amram Gaon for many centuries. Some suggest that he was, in fact, not Natronai’s successor, but his contemporaneous competitor; see the discussion in Brody, Geonim of Babylonia, 40–41.

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14. This legend was retold widely. See, for example, Numbers Rabbah, Korach 18:21. For a detailed list of citations, see Anau, Shibbolei ha-leket, 129, n. 7. 15. In a later version, the institution of the blessings is assigned to Moses, but then they are forgotten before being reinstituted by David; Al-Nakawa, Menorat ha-meor, II, 76. 16. According to Hedegard, Amram, 6, Rav Amram uses chazzan (cantor) and shaliah tzibur (prayer leader) interchangeably. 17. The list as cited in Rav Natronai’s responsum follows, with the Menahot set coming at the beginning of the list, in the order gentile, slave, woman. 18. These are the opening words of the first blessing of the Pesukei de-Zimrah (“Passages of Song”) section of the liturgy, which immediately follows the preliminary blessings and readings. 19. Epstein, Seder Rav Amram siduro u-mesadrav, 141. The Genizah fragment of Seder Rav Amram (manuscript JTSA 4649) does not have “The Cantor begins. . . .” On problems of the manuscript text of Seder Rav Amram, see Marx, “Siddur des Gaon R. Amram,” 1; Zimmels, “Additions,” 363–4; Ginzberg, Geonica, I, 125. On Amram’s use of the Palestinian Talmud, see Lewin, Metivot, Introduction, especially viii–xi). Even if Natronai’s responsum was not included in the original text composed by Rav Amram himself, it was added very soon, and the text circulated widely and was quoted in Amram’s name. All extant manuscripts of Seder Rav Amram include Natronai’s responsum; see Goldschmidt, Seder Rav Amram, 2. 20. In Palestinian practice, the preliminary service was recited silently at the synagogue; see the description of T-S 6 H 6.6 in Fleischer, Prayer, 244–248. 21. Wieder, “One Hundred Blessings,” 358–360. 22. The sequence in Saadia is not identical to the order found in the printed editions of Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 60a. Rabbinovicz,Dikdukei Sofrim, Berakhot, 346, n. 70, does not attempt to sort out these variations, because “[e]veryone of the Rishonim lists a different order in the Gemara.” 23. Davidson, Siddur Rav Saedyah, 89. “Who gives the sekvi insight” is not included in the list here; it precedes the blessing for using the toilet. The sequence of sekvi, asher yatzar, and the rest of the Berakhot list demonstrates that the correspondence to immediate action was already only symbolic because most of the gestures, such as getting out of bed, putting one’s feet on the ground, and so forth, must occur first to be able to use the toilet. 24. Meyuchas, Sha’are teshuvah ha-geonim: Teshuvot ha-geonim, 29, no. 327. The Babylonian Talmud version was by this time also known in North Africa, based on the title of a responsum preserved in the index to Sefer megilat setarim of Nissim ben Jacob of Kairouan (ca. 990–1062). Only the subject of the responsum is extant: “who did not make me a gentile, a slave and a woman: Remember this source in the Tosefta,” quoted in Assaf, “Sefer megilat setarim,” 239. The title includes “slave” (as recommended in the Babylonian Talmud) but the Tosefta only mentions “boor.” We do not know which phrase Rabbi Nissim ultimately recommended. 25. Hoffman, Canonization, 129, cites this as an example of the last stage in the geonic period, when “Amram’s championship of Babylonian custom has given way to

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31–36

147

cooperative endeavors and cultural interchange between Palestine and Babylonia and Hai . . . find(s) merit in Palestinian custom and precedent.” 26. Now known as manuscript JTSA 4522 (formerly ENA 23, it was first described by Adler, “Persian Jews,” 584–607. It was published with a commentary by Tal, Nusah ha-tefilah. 27. Tal, Nusah ha-tefilah, 19. 28. Ibid., 40. 29. Ibid., 21. 30. The instructions are in Farsi and these are my translations of Tal’s Hebrew translation. The blessing upon going to sleep is also from the Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 60b. This text is one of the few enumerations of the “one hundred blessings” that begins, not with the morning blessing, but in the evening as one prepares for bed. The various blessings are listed here consistently with the sequence in Berakhot 60b. On the identification of “one hundred blessings” with the Morning Blessings, see Wieder, “One Hundred Blessings,”358–360. 31. Tal, Nusah ha-tefilah, 25, 1. 16. 32. The manuscript simply says Zimrah (Song). 33. This is, of course, what happened to the three blessings tradition itself. The original passages are next to each other in the text of the Talmud. 34. See the Palestinian prayer book, Genizah manuscript T-S 6 H 6, in which the lengthy “Song” section precedes the blessings. This text is discussed in detail by Fleischer, Prayer, 257. 35. Compare the history of the piyyut as described in Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe, 24–30. 36. See the discussion of the modern Conservative movement’s revision of these blessings on p. XXX.

CHAPTER

4

1. Mann, “Genizah Fragments,” 273, and Freehof, “Structure of Birchos Ha-Shachar,” start with a similar premise. The same critique of their philological and “form-critical” methods applies equally to Ginzberg and Lieberman; see above, p. XXX, and Hoffman, Beyond the Text, 46–59. In the texts Mann cites, the Menahot blessings appear alone; there is not yet a linkage to the Berakhot 60b blessings. 2. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 157. 3. Although not of Palestinian origin, the Persian prayer book discussed earlier (manuscript JTSA 4522) demonstrates the fallacy of positing uniform or linear development to nonstatutory liturgical customs. The book quotes from the Shulhan Arukh (1542) yet preserves liturgical practices that may have predated Saadia Gaon by 500 years. It certainly demonstrates that Saadia’s recommendations were not universally adopted, even in communities that were strongly influenced by his prayer book, nor is there evidence regarding how the texts recorded in the prayer book were actually used. 4. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 9; Mann, “Genizah Fragments,” 270.

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36–38

5. Of course the “Palestinian–influenced” sources were sometimes shaped by Babylonian influences, and some Genizah texts are from the Babylonian communities in Egypt. When these can be clearly distinguished, they are so noted. I do not, however, try to assign certain Genizah fragments to the “Palestinian rite” versus the “Egyptian rite”; see Mann, “Genizah Fragments,” 270; Fleischer, Prayer, 244, calls T-S 6 H 6.6 “a pure Palestinian liturgy” on the basis that it was used for a service attended by the heads of the Academy and of the Court of the Land of Israel. This text can therefore be dated between 1083 and 1112. Even the most complete Genizah prayer book manuscript, Oxford Heb. g.2, is the subject of controversy (see Marx, Early Morning Ritual, 200, nn. 89–90). 6. On the composition of these prayer books for the exclusive use of the service leader in the synagogue, see Fleischer, Prayer, 243–248. 7. According to Wieder, “The Form rabun,” 217, the form mal (mem-lamed with kamatz katan) should be understood as “one who fulfills the mitzvah of circumcision” (see n. X on p. XXX). This volume uses the translation “one who circumcises” or “circumcised.” Assaf, “Prayer Book,” 124, argues that the two phrases “Israelite/not gentile; circumcised/not uncircumcised” refer to the Muslim and Christian, respectively. The phrase is found in both Genizah and European prayer book manuscripts (e.g., T-S NS 110.42, T-S NS 229.6, JNUL 80986, Parma 1983, Parma 1916, and HUC 442, among many examples). 8. T-S NS 229.2. In contrast, T-S 110.42 is a “Babylonian” prayer book with the sequence:

an Israelite and not a gentile one who circumcises and not uncircumcised a man and not a woman free and not a slave. The blessings are preceded by the Berakhot list and all have the opening formula written out completely (in contrast with the Palestinian “run-on” style). 9. Manuscript Antonin B0993, 1b. Manuscripts T-S NS 122.103 and T-S NS 229:6 contain the same elements in the same order, but without the last line: “pure and not impure.” 10. Heinemann, Prayer, 165, n. 12. On the principle that the tendency over time is to homogenize variant readings, we assume that the early Palestinian Talmud version probably was “things.” However, the best manuscript of Sefer ha-manhig does not use either one, reading: “Rabbi Judah taught: ‘A person must say three daily.’” In the margin of the manuscript, “three things” is added; Abraham of Lunel, Ha-manhig, 37. Other Ha-manhig manuscripts and other versions of the Palestinian Talmud read: “blessings”; see Ratner, Ahavat Tziyon ve-Yerushalayim, 198. 11. Manuscript Halper 121. This prayer book fragment contains five elements:

P A Y E O K U* who did not make me a gentile P AY E O K U who did not make me a slave P AY E O K U who did not make me a woman P AY E O K U who did not make a beast

NOTES TO PAGES

38–39

149

P AY E O K U who did not make me of the nations of the world (mei-umot ha-olam, lit. “peoples of the world”) but from Your people Israel. (*Praised are You ETERNAL our God King of the Universe) All five elements here are phrased in the negative alone, except for the last one: “who has not made me from the nations of the world but of Your people Israel.” This is a new formula and not consistent with the positive/negative structure. A new opposition is created: “peoples of the world (umot ha-olam)” in contrast to “Your people, Israel.” Other texts have “not a gentile (goy) like the gentile (peoples) of the (other) lands (goyai ha-aratzot).” See Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 113. This passage is first described in Halper, “Genizah Fragments,” no. 172, 191. The same formulation appears to be used in the T-S NS 230.11 (see p. XXX). 12. T-S 10 H 2.6. See Schechter, “Version of the Kaddish,” 53; Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 9; and Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 110, n. 59. For the relationship between “am ha-aretz” and “boor,” see ibid, 110, n. 60. 13. The passage appears in the tenth century Midrash tanna d’vei Eliahu, section 22, and in Siddur Saadiah. 14. The usage of this passage as the introduction to the Shema occurs in Siddur Saadiah and subsequent texts. 15. This combination is found, for example, in manuscripts British Museum Or. 5557 O 8, T-S H 18.7, and T-S 8 H 10.13. T-S NS 155.99 may be of this type as well, but is too fragmentary to resolve. Other manuscripts have “May a person always fear . . .” immediately following the Menahot sequence without the blessing “not a boor.” Perhaps these reflect the influence of Rabbi Aha bar Jacob’s instruction in the Talmud not to recite this blessing? See manuscripts T-S NS 6 H 2.10, T-S NS 160.26, T-S 8 H 9.7, and T-S 152.7 (“not a slave” is also absent). Equally possible is that copyists wrote down the blessings with which they were familiar. Manuscript T-S 6 H 2.10 has an extensive list of blessings not found in the Talmud, but only has “not a gentile, slave, woman” and then goes directly into: “Let a person always fear. . . .” Similarly, T-S NS 160.26 does not have “not a boor,” but follows the same format. The blessing “not a slave” is missing entirely from T-S NS 110.166: “Not a gentile . . . not a woman . . . not a boor, for a boor does not fear sin. Let a person always fear. . . .” 16. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, nn. 52–54 and esp. n. 55; compare Mann’s text, which is manuscript Cambridge Add 3160:1. 17. According to Jacob Mann, “Genizah Fragments,” 274, n. 18, “the phrases goyim v’aralim (gentiles and uncircumcised ones) or Ishmaelim v’aralim (Ishmaelites and uncircumcised ones) for Muslims and Christians occurs frequently in medieval Jewish literature”; also see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, n. 55. However, there are no Genizah texts––from Jews living among Muslims––that have the phrase “not an Ishmaelite.” The only example of this phrasing is in a medieval Italian prayer book and a later commentary written in Germany. This suggests that “Ishmaelite” was an acceptable euphemism that replaced “gentile”; see page XXX. 18. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, nn. 52–54 and esp. n. 55; compare Mann’s text, which is manuscript Cambridge Add 3160:1.

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19. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 108, nn. 52–54 and esp. n. 55; compare Mann’s text, which is ms. Cambridge Add 3160:1. 20. If “slave” replaced “beast” in the Babylonian Talmud, then this is the reverse sequence of the Babylonian order: PALESTINE

BABYLONIA

Person and not a beast man and not a woman Israelite and not a gentile

not a gentile not a woman not a slave

21. According to Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 165, n. 12, Palestinian prayer style was to expand the text rhetorically as widely as possible without adding additional content. 22. During the late Second Temple and early rabbinic periods, circumcision was a controversial marker within and outside the Jewish community; see Smith, Imagining Religion, chap. 1. Smith also points out that “circumcised is consistently used in the Pauline literature as a term for the Jew, uncircumcised for the gentile,” 10. On the use of liturgy for “Jewish identity polemic” (my term), see the proposal and cautions of Hoffman, Censoring In, Censoring Out, 29–32. 23. According to Brody, Saadya Gaon, 42–43, Saadia, who was born in Egypt and taught many Palestinian practices, did not object to blessings of praise being added to the service; Brody’s interpretation of the evidence is critiqued in Langer, To Worship God Properly, 57. 24. Although the later legal authorities emphasize the order “gentile, woman, slave,” the Genizah manuscripts demonstrate every possible permutation. Although “not a gentile” is customarily the first listed, it is not first in manuscripts T-S NS 121.7, T-S NS 229.6, and T-S NS 160.27. The two styles of blessing formulas also appear in the same text. For example, in T-S NS 229.6: Praised A’ (re) Y’(ou) E(TERNAL) Our God K’(ing of the) U’(niverse) who made me (she-asitani) a man and not a woman. Praised A’(re) Y’(ou) E(TERNAL) Our God K’(ing of the) U’(niverse) who made me an Israelite and not a gentile Praised A’(re) Y’(ou) Y’Y’ Our God K’(ing of the) U’(niverse) who made me (circumcised) and not uncircumcised. Praised A’(re) Y’(ou) E(TERNAL) Our God K’(ing of the) U’(niverse) who did not make me (lo samtani) a slave. Praised A’(re) Y’(ou) E(TERNAL) Our God K’(ing of the) U’(niverse) who did not make me (lo samtani) a boor. 25. Halper, “Genizah Fragments,” 191, no. 172. 26. Fleischer, Prayer, 248. 27. Compare this usage with T-S NS 229.2, p. XXX, where “free and not a slave” is the last unit in the sequence. 28. Other litanies include additional blessings never mentioned in the Talmud at all, but of the same form (verb + object) as the initial blessings from Berakhot. For example, T-S NS 22.6 begins with “quickens the dead . . . wakens the sleepers . . . gathers the dispersed” before continuing with the “expected” sequence from Berakhot.

NOTES TO PAGES

41–46

151

29. In the Talmud, the sekvi is separated from the others by the longer blessing for “when opening the eyes,” but this longer passage is missing completely in this text. 30. In later Ashkenazic prayer books, the Menahot blessings appear immediately after the sekvi at the beginning of the list. Commentators find a common theme of “insight” in these four blessings. In Sephardic prayer books, they appear appended to the end of the Berakhot list. 31. Similarly, manuscript Oxford 2700 Heb. g.2 has five blessings in the asher lo (who did not) format:

Asher lo samtani goy (did not make me a gentile) Asher lo samtani eved (did not make me a slave) Asher lo samtani ishah (did not make me a woman) Asher lo samtani bor (did not make me a boor) Asher lo chasartani k’lum (did not withhold from me anything).

CHAPTER

5

1. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 171, calls attention to the difference between official and unofficial relations between Judaism and Christianity: Officially . . . Judaism and Christianity developed a doctrine of relative tolerance towards each other: Judaism (in Christian terms) was to remain as a testimony for the veracity of Christianity until the end of days; Christianity was eventually classified as a monotheistic religion of sorts—at least removed from the category of idolatry. How different were the less official voices! The very language of the Tosafists [medieval commentators on the Talmud] deciding that Christians are not idolatrous testifies to the rift between reason and sentiment: “As to today’s idolators, we hold that they do not worship idolatrously (Tosafot to BT Avodah Zarah 2a).” This volume of the Talmud was the most severely censored and was excluded entirely from the Basle edition of the Talmud (1578–1580). On Christian-Jewish relations in general, see (among others), Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, and Yuval, Two Nations. 2. During this period, any Hebrew book was endangered. Popper, Censorship, 8, n. 13, describes a Jew in Narbonne in 1236 who reported how an anti-Semitic mob broke into his house and took his books, but that sympathetic officials later arranged for their return. 3. Denifle, “Barcelona,” 236, n. 5. Stow, “Burning of the Talmud,” argues that eventually the concern about blasphemy became secondary to the goal of encouraging conversion. 4. Cohen, Living Letters, 325; Marcus and Saperstein, Medieval World, 163–168. The same objections are repeated over several centuries; see Pullan, Inquisition of Venice, 83. 5. Cohen, Living Letters, 322, n. 8. 6. Popper, Censorship, 10.

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7. This was a key argument in the first major disputation by Rabbi Yehiel of Paris in 1240; Margaliot, Vikuah rabenu Yehiel, 10; Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 108. 8. See the discussion of Foucault in Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 54. 9. The authorities could not always guarantee the safe return of books confiscated for inspection and return. After the death of Pope Paul IV in 1559, a set of Jewish books was burned during a riot targeted at the offices of the Inquisition (ibid, 81, n. 17). 10. Encyclopedia Judaica, s. v.”Martini, Raymond.” Saul Lieberman, Sheki’in, 52 casts Martini in a positive light, claiming that he was doing a constructive service and saving the Talmud from being burned. 11. Chazan, Barcelona, 91. 12. Burnett and Jerchower, Hebraica Veritas? 13. Christian Hebraists, in particular, wanted access to Hebrew literature, whether to access the veritas Judaica (divine truth and wisdom disclosed to the Jews) or as a tool for missionary activity (Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 122). The translation of some Jewish liturgical poetry into Latin in turn resulted in the original Hebrew being self-censored during the late thirteenth century; see Mintz-Manor, “Shavuot Piyyutim,” 637. Internal self-censorship by Jews was complemented by efforts to negotiate with Church authorities about the boundaries of what could be said. Anticipating formal control, Roman Jews presented a petition in 1560 requesting permission to expurgate the Talmud of all things “offensive to the Christian religion;” expurgation would permit continued possession of condemned volumes (Parente, Index, 167). Although the rules for censorship could sometimes be negotiated, the use of nokhri, the most common Jewish replacement for goy, was rejected by the Vatican’s Index Commission in a joint meeting with representatives of the Jewish community on August 7, 1590; see Popper, Censorship, 71. 14. Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 137. 15. Prepublication approval was required of all books. The control of Hebrew publishing was one aspect of a much larger system of controls. The first requirement for an “imprimatur” before a book could be printed was in Venice in 1480; see Benayahu, Copyright, 156. 16. Parente, Index, 167–168. 17. Popper, Censorship, 42. 18. Ibid., 20–40. 19. Some Jewish communities organized and hired a Jew to expurgate their books in a standard fashion, with the goal of getting them presented and returned as soon as possible. This was the case in Mantua and Modena beginning in 1555, according to Sonne, Expurgation, 7–9. On Jewish participation in the censorship of Hebrew printing, see ibid, Chapter II. In other cases, it is clear that the corrections were inserted to conform to prevailing practice or to avoid the wrath of the censor if found, but they show no evidence of having been examined. See, for example, manuscript Oxford Oppenheimer Add. 11, which has “gentile kuti,” but otherwise shows no signs of having been expurgated; the Alenu is untouched. Manuscript HUC

NOTE TO PAGE

48

153

440 has goy o”e, with the added abbreviation (oved elilim, worshiper of idols) written in by a later hand. Compare the changes made in the 1556 Cremona edition of Amude Golah, cited in Sonne, Expurgation, 28. The Alenu is modified so that it makes a complete sentence while leaving a space for the missing phrase:

she-hem mishtachavim le’elilim (for they bow down to gods) [line 1] [blank space] ve’anu mishtachavim . . . [space] while we bow down to. . . .) [line 2] 20. For an English translation of Ten Rules Concerning Prohibited Books Drawn Up By The Fathers Chosen By The Council Of Trent And Approved By Pope Pius, see http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/trent-booksrules.html. 21. Popper, Censorship, 21, n. 72, cites places where Soncino was apparently conscientiously self-censoring. Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei sofrim, 28, however, holds that Soncino simply copied the manuscript that he had in front of him: It appears to me that these few erasures were not done by Soncino for the sake of peace, for if so he would not have left half of them, but rather were already missing from the manuscript which he was printing (i.e., copying] from. For in the books which were written in Spain it was customary for scribes to omit them on the instructions of the government from the beginning of the sixth millennium (of the Jewish calendar, i.e., the edict of James I of Aragon] onward; and it appears that in the course of time the order was forgotten and the scribes were not exacting in this matter, and sometimes omitted and sometimes desisted. . . . The absence of a consistent standard sometimes resulted in the need to replace one euphemism with another to make the user’s book conform to the current practice of the community or a new censorship regime. Steinschneider, Catalogus librorum hebraeorum, 385, brings an example of aku’m being censored out of a 1703 prayer book whereas the Harvard University copy of Landshut, Hegyon lev, 10, has nokhri neatly written in the margin while oved kokavim is crossed out in the text. 22. The censorship of Hebrew books cannot be separated from the Church’s wider efforts to stamp out heresy (most especially among Protestants) and control access to religious works. An unpublished 1596 version of the Index permitted prayer books in Hebrew but prohibited publication in any vernacular language; see Parante, Index, 191. Raz-Karotzkin, Censor, 120–134, argues that Sefer ha-Zikkuk embodied the transition from polemical opposition to Jewish religious writing toward rendering it theologically neutral so that it could be used by Christian and Jewish readers alike. 23. Based on Isaiah 45:20: “they have no knowledge that carry the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.” 24. Popper, Censorship, 17. Although, at times, converted Jews are reported to have been helpful to their families and communities of origin, they also were frequently the source of anti-Jewish accusations and polemics. A leader of the Barcelona dispute, Friar Paul, was born into a leading Jewish family, and, in 1553, Allessandro Franceschi, the former Hananel da Foligno, was a leading campaigner against the

154

NOTES TO PAGES

48–50

Talmud and advocate for burning Hebrew books; see Chazan, Barcelona, 25 and Ruderman, “Apologetic Treatise,” 255. 25. Although Popper, Censorship, 17, says that “(A] convert by the name of Peter tried by a rather ridiculous use of kabbalistic methods to prove that it contained blasphemies against Jesus,” Naphtali Wieder, “Permutations,” 1–14, demonstrates that the members of Hasidei Ashkenaz (a twelfth- to thirteenth-century mystical movement in Germany) valued the prayer, in part, precisely because of the gematria (numerical calculation based on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) equating the words “Yashu Muhamet (Jesus (and] Muhammed)” with “emptiness and vanity (le-hevel va-rik).” The numerological value of both sets is 413. Commentaries explaining this equivalence, including Arugat Ha-bosem (1602), were either corrupted or suppressed; see ibid, 4; Mahzor Vitri, 369, n. 1; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 71. At the time, Jews protested that the phrase was simply a quote from the prophet Isaiah (Is. 30:7) and therefore could not be understood as a reference to anything but the idolaters of his own time, and certainly was not about Jesus, who lived so many years later. For an extreme anti-Christian version of the Alenu, see the description of manuscript London Valmadonna 1 (ca. 1189), in Beit-Arie, Medieval Hebrew Manuscript, and Halamish, “Alenu le-Shabeah,” 262–265. Additional evidence of anti-Christian language and interpretation in the Alenu is noted by Yuval, Two Nations, 192–202. Yuval claims that the Alenu reflects an escalation in Jewish antipathy toward Christianity in the wake of the ritual muder accusation and subsequent massacre of Jews in Blois in 1171. According to Yuval, ibid, 204, the “Alenu served as a kind of anti-Christian credo in general, and against the cult of Mary in particular, and this is apparently the meaning of its incorporation into the Prayer Book at the conclusion of all standard prayer services.” Although there is certainly ample evidence that medieval Jews interpreted parts of the Alenu as an anti-Christian (and Islamic) statement, Yuval’s claim is exaggerated and overdetermined. 26. This is a liturgical version of what Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 18, calls “a trickster tale” within which a “‘hidden transcript’ is encoded in a public one,” as described by Boyarin, Dying for God, 45–46. 27. Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 86, 163; elsewhere he argues that the convert censor was simultaneously a cocreator of the boundaries of acceptable discourse and complicit with a “wink and a nod” in the use of “code words” that were superficially inoffensive but lent themselves to a polemical interpretation if desired; see p. XXX. 28. See Grendler, Destruction of Hebrew Books, 105, and Popper, Censorship, 89. 29. Early Italian printed editions in the sixteenth century left out the objectionable phrase and put a blank space in for the missing words of the Alenu; Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 163, cites six examples. 30. See p. XXX. 31. There were also occasions when specific anti-Christian and anti-Muslim polemics were included in the liturgy; see Wieder, “Gematria,” 1–14. 32. Beginning of Beit ha-behira to Tractate Avodah Zarah. See Ruderman, “Apologetic Treatise,” 263 and Goldstein, Lonely Champion. Maimonides, on the other hand, considers them to be in the category of idolators (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry 9:4); see Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 32–36, 118. Rabbi Solomon Modena, writing in Ferrara before 1569, similarly set out to prove that the goyim referred to in

NOTES TO PAGES

50–52

155

rabbinic texts could not be equated with contemporary Catholics; see Ruderman, “Apologetic Treatise,” 262–264. 33. Benayahu, Copyright, 193; see Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 144. Explicit comments, like those of Rabbi David Kimchi (1160–1235) that “Christians too are considered idolaters” were erased before publication (ibid, 150). 34. Ibid, 193, n. 4. 35. Originally, Kutite meant Samaritan or a member of one of the peoples that King Ashur settled in the cities of Israel after exiling the ten tribes, c.f. PT Berakhot 27:1. It came to mean “gentile” through its constant use as a replacement for goy; see Even Shoshan, Ha-milon he-hadash, 1038. Its initial choice was clearly intended as a term that indisputably referred to pre-Christian groups. 36. In manuscripts such as JTSA 8257, Parma 1744, British Museum Add. 27029, and Parma 2891, the blessing sequence is missing any reference to non-Jew or Israelite:

Sekvi slave woman opens the eyes. . . . London-Valmadonna 10 leaves a blank space for the missing blessing; this may also be the case with manuscript Modena-Estense γ.F.7.14. In contrast, manuscript JTSA 4653 shows careful attention to the revised text. The copyist (Abraham Farissol) wrote out asher (who has) in asher asani Yisrael (who has made me an Israelite) so that the line would have the same length as the lines that began she lo asatani (who has not made me); in common usage, the word asher is abbreviated to she (requiring one letter instead of three). 37. C.f., for example, manuscript British Library Add 18692. Jews sought to identify with Christians against “the Ishmaelites” even as Christians linked “Jews and Ishmaelites” together (see p. XXX and Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 150, 161). 38. There is no consistency in what language was permitted and what was not, and sometimes the same manuscript was censored more than once over a period of 200 years. Compare the two manuscripts presented in the table below. Both of these manuscripts use “who made me circumcised and not uncircumcised” to evade the censorship of “who did not make me a gentile.” The writing of the manuscripts already reflects the threat of censorship (the Hebrew University manuscript was copied in 1478; the Parma manuscript is dateable to the early fifteenth century. Once written, in one the original line was allowed to remain and in the other it was partially removed. Same Textual Solution, Different Responses Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, manuscript 8o986

Parma manuscript 1783

Who made me circumcised and not uncircumcised

Who made me free and not a slave

Did not make me a slave

Who made me circumcised and not uncircumcised

Did not make me a woman

Who made me a man and not a woman

156

NOTES TO PAGES

52–54

Manuscript Parma 1916 has a variation of this line: “who made me an Israelite and not uncircumcised.” Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 114, suggests that this substitution was made because the force of “gentile” was not clear. More likely is that it was changed precisely because the use of “gentile” was already unacceptable, and the copyist self-censored in the hope of avoiding the censor’s brush. The manuscript was written in 1491. Yiddish, Judeo-Italian, and Judeo-Spanish all adapt the Hebrew arel (uncircumcised) as their word for “non-Jew.” I am grateful to Prof. Sarah Bunim Benor for this observation. 39. Manuscript Parma 1765. Two different hands made marginal additions. Originally, the sekvi blessing was just “ha-noten le’sekvi binah,” making it of equal length with the other three-word blessings, and the last line on the page was goy. Presumably goy was erased; a later hand clearly added, vertically up the side of the margin, “Ishmaelite” and “to distinguish between day and night.” The original script uses a combination of thick and thin strokes, and the additions lack this delicacy. A different amateur hand added the letter heh to two lines where they were omitted by the original copyist to keep the margin justified; see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 106. The language “not an Ishmaelite” was apparently in the prayer book of Joseph Kosman (d. 1758). Kosman documented the customs of Germany, especially Frankfurt; see his Noheg ka-tson Yosef, 20. 40. Cohen, Living Letters, 342, n. 71. Jews differentiated themselves from “Christians and Muslims”; aku’m, a common replacement for goy, was sometimes understood as “worshippers of Christ and Mary” and sometimes as “worshippers of Christ and Mohammed;” see Wieder, “Permutations,” 1–14, Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 161, and the interpretations of the Alenu on p. XXX. Raymond Martini’s thirteenth-century work exposing the anti-Christian passages in Jewish sources was titled Dagger of Faith against Moslems and Jews. In a provisional version of the Index of Forbidden Books from May 12, 1590, the Jews are included with other “enemies of the Christian religion. . . . Books of whatever kind by Jews, Mohammedans, Saracens and other person of the same kind, enemies of the Christian religion, containing anything contrary to the Catholic faith, the rituals and discipline of the Church, translated into Latin or any other language, are prohibited in the same manner as those by heretics” (Regula XI, cited in Parente, Index, 178.) The Jewish effort to identify with the contemporary and European by distancing the other in geography and time prefigures the western orientalism criticized by Edward Said. 41. For example, compare two manuscripts, both copied by Abraham Farissol: Modena-Estense γ.F.7.14 and JTSA 8257. Early printed Hebrew books often also left space for the missing words (, see Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim, 28, n. 26). The voluntary expurgation of such terms and phrases as “Jesus the Christian,” “sectarians,” or “the evil kingdom” was euphemistically described as having been done “in accordance with the ways of peace” (see Benayahu, Copyright, 159).

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54–55

157

42. Examples of Different Replacements for “Not a Gentile” JTSA 4653

British Museum Add 27029

Parma 2575

Parma 1744

not a slave

not a Kuti

Israelite (fem.)

“not a gentile” is missing; no replacement

Israelite

not a slave

not a slave (fem.)

not a slave

not a woman

not a woman

according to His will

not a woman

43. For Farissol’s biography, see Ruderman, Farissol. 44. Ibid., app. II, 157–161 (the numbers in this note correspond to Ruderman’s appendix). I examined thirteen of the seventeen prayer book manuscripts copied by Farissol. One was destroyed by fire (no. 32) and the whereabouts of two are unknown (nos. 4 and 27). One is extant but not on microfilm in Jerusalem (no. 14). Of the books I examined, one is missing its first few leaves (no. 21) whereas two others are high holiday prayer books without the statutory prayers (nos. 21 and 23). 45. In one manuscript, Modena-Estense γ. F.7.14, the entire line where this blessing is expected is blank. Presumably there was once a variation on “who did not make me a gentile.” However, other places in this manuscript have been censored with thick ink. It is odd that this passage was not treated in the same way. Perhaps Farissol never wrote the blessing in, but instead left a space where it belonged? The identical situation is found in manuscript London Valmadonna 10. 46. The unique variations inserted by Farissol are found in the two prayer books he copied for women (see p. XXX). 47. Lazar, Siddur tefillot, 38. A Catalan translation of the prayer book written “during the fifteenth century” has the reading “quo mo.m fa st ydolatre” in the order slave, woman, idolater. The modern editor of this prayer book suggests that it was written from memory rather than copied or translated (see Riera I Sans, El Siddur en catala, 27). 48. The destruction of Hebrew books and Jewish culture in Spain (1492) and then Portugal (1496) is captured in the painful memoir by Rabbi Abraham Sabah, found at the conclusion of the introduction to his commentary on the Scroll of Ruth: I, the weakest among the thousands of young students of Abraham ben Ladoni he-Hasid ibn Yaakov Sabah z”1 [of blessed memory], decided to interpret the Five Scrolls. The hand of the God of goodness was upon me and God permitted me to explain and expand them . . . and then the anger of God was kindled against his people and all the Jews of Portugal were expelled by decree of the King Manuel (may his name and memory be erased!). And not only this, but he also commanded that all the books in his kingdom be taken after he commanded to take the sons and daughters (for forced baptism] and the synagogues, he ordered that all our books should be seized . . . I gathered all the books in the city of Porto according to the royal decree, and I put myself in danger and brought with me to Lisbon the

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Commentary on the Torah that I wrote, along with the commentary on Tractate Avot and the commentary on the Five Scrolls along with the Hibbur Tzarur ha-Kesef which addresses the laws which I compiled in my youth. But when I got to Lisbon, the Jews came to me and said to me and they said to me that a “voice had passed through the camp” announcing that any Jew who is found with a book or phylacteries would be killed. So immediately before I entered the inn which was outside the city, I brought these books which were in my hand and two Jews accompanied me; and they dug under an olive tree and buried them there. Even though a beautiful, vigorous olive tree which was “beautiful to look at” grew—based on the Torah which was inside it—I called it “a tree of tears” since I buried there “the delights of my eyes” those being the commentaries of the Torah and mitzvot which are more delightful than gold, yes, better than much fine gold, since with them I would console myself over my two children who were forcibly converted against their will; and I had said, “These (books] are the ‘inheritance of the servants of the ETERNAL’ (Isaiah 54:17) and they are more precious to me than sons and daughters.” (my translation; another translation is in Popper, Censorship, 20. Hebrew text is reproduced in Rabbinovicz, Hadpasat hatalmud, 7, n. 1). 49. Lazar, Ladino Mahzor, ix, xxvi, 4, 5. This volume was the template for a high holiday mahzor published the next year and containing the identical language (see ibid, 14). The public familiarity with these blessings—including the traditional negative formulation—is suggested by the accusation by a Christian witness in an Inquisition trial in 1483 against an accused Judaizer, Juan Diez, that he had prayed, among other prayers: “Praised are You, Adonai, who (did not) make me a pig that the Christians might eat me” (see Beinart, Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real I, 572). I am grateful to Moshe Lazar for bringing this parallel to my attention. 50. Lazar, Siddur tefillot, xv. 51. Sonne, Expurgation, 29. I have not found any instances in the prayer book manuscripts I examined of the vowels without the consonants. This may have been limited to printed editions, as discussed in Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 132. An example of a blank space being left in the printed page (in this case, a 1727 edition of the Talmud) is reproduced in Heller, Printing the Talmud, 189. Tabory, Blessings of Self-Identity, 110, n. 10, cites two different printed editions of the prayer book, held in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, in which objectionable words were cut out of the page, leaving holes behind (in one case, a later hand pasted over a corrected reading). 52. Manuscript JTSA 8892, 14r, reproduced in Cohen, Rothschild Mahzor, 30. Insofar as many of the censors hired by the Inquisition were Jews, they might have had an incentive to censor as narrowly as possible, only blacking out the specifically forbidden words. Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 86, suggests that some of the convert

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censors remained sympathetic to their birth communities and could be appealed to on various grounds. 53. Manuscripts British Library Add 19944, Montefiore 217, and British Library Add 18691; see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 106. Wieder notes without comment that “one who does not speak” replaces “a gentile” in these manuscripts, 105, n. 39. 54. Rav Saadia Gaon uses chai medaber (speaking creature) in his explication of Gen. 3:20, see Zucker, Saadya’s Commentary, 191, 296. The first use I have been able to find of balti m’daber is by Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague (1525– 1609), Netivot Olam, Netiv ha-Torah, chap. 4; it is also used by Hayyim Ben Moses Ibn Attar (1696–1743), Or ha-hayim, on Genesis 1:26. 55. Wieder cites manuscripts Montefiore 214, f. 78a, and Parma 1781, both of which have “made me an Israelite and not a gentile” (“not a gentile” in Montefiore 214). Parma 1765 reads “who made me an Israelite and not an Ishmaelite.” Wieder’s citation of Parma 1781 as “one who circumcises and not uncircumcised” is an error (he may have confused it with Montefiore 214, which inserts it into the sequence). All three of these manuscripts have the Palestinian sequence: man/not a woman, person/ not a beast (circumcised/not uncircumcised), Israel/not a gentile. Of the same type but a different sequence is manuscript HUC 442:

. . . who made me a man and not a woman . . . who made me a person and not a beast, . . . who made me an Israelite and not a gentile, . . . who made me circumcised and not uncircumcised, . . . who did not make me a slave. Further evidence of the different origins of the last phrase in this manuscript is that the paired series uses one verb and the last item uses another: sheasitani ish . . . / . . . shelo samtani eved. 56. The three manuscripts are: BRITISH LIBRARY ADD

18691

who did not make me a slave who did not make me one who does not speak who made me a man and not a woman (The words extend into the margin, a much thinner stylus is used, and the shapes of all the letters are distinguishable from the rest of the page.) MONTEFIORE

217

who did not make me one who does not speak who did not make me a slave who made me a man and not a woman (The words have been written using a thinner stylus; the letters are smaller; and the letters mem, lamed, and bet are shaped differently.)

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57–59

19944

who did not make me one who does not speak who did not make me a slave who made me a man and not a woman (The last word extends well into the margin and its letters are shaped differently.) 57. See manuscript Parma 3518: who did not make me (she lo asah) a beast (behamah) who did not make me a slave who did not (shel—aleph is missing) make me a woman Behamah (beast) is written in a much smaller hand and extends well into the margin. The original order was “gentile, slave, woman.” In this manuscript, the letter aleph is substituted for the heh in the word asah (make); this comes from the shortening of the more common shelo asani (who did not make me), written with an aleph before the nun. The missing aleph in the first word of the second and third lines is a scribal error. On this prayer book, see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 105, n. 39. 58. See, for example, Sonne’s account, Expurgation, 20, esp. n. 51, of the careers of David, Moses, and Abraham Provençal. Moses Provençal is credited with adapting the Italian prayer book to the requirements of the bull of Julius III (Sonne). The physician Jacob Marcaria is identified as “a prominent professional corrector” (ibid, 24 and n. 65). The editor of the second edition of the Responsa of R. Jacob Levi complains that the first edition is replete with errors and that “the Jewish corrector was an ignoramus, paid only for doing nothing” (ibid, 31). Sonne’s translation is itself a minor euphemistic expurgation, in so far as the Hebrew text, ibid, n. 85, reads not “ignoramus” but “chiresh shoteh (dumb idiot).” Benayahu, Copyright, 190- 208, presents an alternative interpretation of the role of Jews in the censorship enterprise. 59. See Isaiah Sonne’s description of the Hebrew press in Cremona, Expurgation, 26–32. On the Hebrew press in Cremona, see Benayahu, Hebrew Printing at Cremona. 60. There are many manuscripts in which the objectionable words have been erased and that remained blank (e.g., Parma 1799 and Paris 214). 61. Luzzatto, Mavo, 155, n. 5. Sometimes expurgation and substitution even extended to quotes from the Bible; see, Ehrenreich, Sefer Abudarham, 189, and manuscript Venice: “All the kutim are as nothing before Him” (Isaiah 40:17). 62. This insiders’ joke/pun also resonated for educated Jews with the Talmud’s comment on Genesis 22:5 in TB Baba Kamma 49a, “am ha-domeh le-chamor (the nation which is similar to an ass)” (see p. XXX). On Jews calling Christians “animals”—along with much stronger vengeance fantasies—see Yuval, Two Nations, “The Vengeance and the Curse,” 92–134. 63. See Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 132, on the concept of “resistance.” Like other minority groups, Jews had “in-group” language that referred negatively to their oppressors. In medieval texts, Hebrew puns were used to create a “network of semantic substitutions” that parodied ideas sacred to Christians; thus, kedoshim

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(saints) was written as k’dashim (prostitutes), and beit tefilah (literally, a house of prayer, but often meaning church) was rendered beit tifla (house of vain [prayer]). Jewish converts to Christianity were the primary source for Christians learning about such internal Jewish language. Rabbi Ishmael Chaninah da Valmonte, a leading rabbi of Bologna, was challenged in 1568 to explain the alleged use of unflattering expressions by Jews in reference to “churches, the cross, priests and saints” by Alessandro, a convert; see Ruderman, “Apologetic Treatise,” 254, n. 6. The Hebrew version of what Moses Nachmanides said at the Barcelona dispute of 1263 contains any number of strongly worded anti-Christian statements that are mostly unlikely to have been said aloud, even if they were in his mind (Chazan, Barcelona, 49). Raz-Krakotzkin, Censorship, 128, suggests that the censor, wittingly or not, may have facilitated the creation of insider language: The use of code words, on condition that they were not directed against a specific, real subject, demonstrates how the censor recognized Jewish readings and beliefs (even if this was not his intention). The convert censor created a literature that he could read and continue to possess as part of a common heritage. . . . The “other” implicated by the discourse is no longer a well defined entity, namely Christians and Christianity, but is distanced from the contemporary polemic and becomes an abstract linguistic entity. Of course, even after the changes were made, Jews could give an anti-Christian interpretation to the text if they so chose, as they often did. 64. For example, Salih, Tiklal ets hayim, 11, comments about the probable censorship and reads “gentile.” 65. See Stern, “Notes to Shaarai Tefillah,” 220, n. 490: “Following some old manuscripts, we read She-asani Yisrael, ‘who had made me a Jew,’ in place of Shelo Asani Goi, ‘who has not made me a Gentile;’” similarly, Hammer, Or Hadash, 65.

CHAPTER

6

1. Landau, Ha-agur, 31, no. 87. 2. The Talmud’s authority initially clashes with older, local customs. Despite the theoretical opposition of the medieval authorities, almost 100 extratalmudic blessings are mentioned in medieval rabbinic sources, and some of them became and remain normative Jewish practice to this day; see Ta-Shma, Minhag Ashkenaz ha-kadmon, 8. 3. The most accurate source for what was actually done is sometimes a hostile polemic, like the critique of Egyptian practice by Rabbi Abraham, son of Maimonides (see p. XXX). 4. For example, after various talmudic sages propose three different possible blessings for the study of the Torah, the discussion concludes: “Therefore, let us say all of them!” (TB Berakhot 11b); similarly, the calls of the shofar; see BT Rosh Hashana 34a and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Hayim 592:1. 5. All four terms are found, for example, in the Italian manuscripts Parma 1759 (“gentile, slave to humans, woman, boor”) and Parma 309, and in the French–Ashkenazic

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manuscripts Parma 3136, Parma 3009, Paris 633, and Paris 642; see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 110–112. 6. Halberstam, Pirkei rabeinu ha-kodesh, 66. This midrash is also known as Midrash ma’aseh Torah and Midrash shelosha ve-arba’ah. It is a collection of rabbinic comments that are about numbers of things: twos, threes, fours, and so on. The original baraita could as easily have been listed under “three” rather than “four.” This would argue for the text having been circulating in its modified “four things must a person say” form before it reached the editor of this midrash. T-S NS 155.60 includes all four blessings, immediately followed by Mishnah Peah 1:1: “These are the things which have no limit.” 7. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 110, brings five examples. This practice extended much later; c.f. ms. Paris 616 (see p. XXX). In this case, what originated in the Tosefta as a proof text becomes “the (declaimed) text.” This process of elevating and ritualizing what begins as a commentary or instruction is also seen in the addition of Mar’s personal prayer to the end of the silent Amidah, a practice attested to by Rav Amram; see Hoffman, Gates of Understanding, vol. 2, 83, or the inclusion and recitation of Mishnah Berakhot 1:15 in the Haggadah at the Passover Seder: “Ben Zoma said:. . . .” 8. This is the earliest extant source for the observation “slaves are considered as beasts.” If it were commonly known previously, it would support Ginzberg’s claim that “slave” replaced an earlier use of “beast.” Alternatively, it could be an indication that the compiler of this midrash was familiar with the tradition of reciting the blessing, “who did not make me a beast.” 9. Jick, Americanization of the Synagogue; Hurwitz, Mahzor Vitri, 5; c.f. Abraham of Lunel, Ha-manhig 37, 1. 55 (in the name of Amram): “whoever says ‘who did not make me a boor’ . . . has not done properly.” On this blessing, see Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 94–97. 10. See, e.g., Luzzatto, Mavo, 80, n. 5; manuscript Parma 1759, manuscript Cambridge Add. 667:1, and the five French–Ashkenazic examples brought by Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 111. In one case, it replaces “gentile,” resulting in “who did not make me a boor, . . . a slave, . . . a woman” (Mahzor Romi, manuscript Sassoon, Ohel David 294, cited in Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 95). The same arrangement is found in the JTSA Rothschild Mahzor (JTSA 8892) (see p. XXX). This substitution may have been a proactive response to the threat of censorship; the copyist drew from the known “catalog” of possible blessings and made the substitution. If the censor or outside reader understood the new negative term as a replacement for “Christian,” the replacement reading would not be acceptable. However, if the only task was to remove the word “gentile,” then this was a satisfactory resolution. 11. Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 95, quotes this from the Isaac Last edition of Magen Avot (London, 1908), 16. 12. Ibid, 95. 13. Al-Nakawa, Menorat ha-meor, II, 76. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 110, n. 57, holds that this is an insertion into the Pirkei rabbeinu ha-kodesh text by a later copyist. 14. Goldschmidt, On Jewish Liturgy, 125. This manuscript of the Romanian rite (Paris 616, copied in 1529) shows the influence of the early Italian rite, including

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additions to the Berakhot set and an unusual order (similar to Mahzor Turin; see p. XXX). The sequence of the Menahot set is “slave, woman, gentile, boor, since the boor does not fear sin.” Further evidence for the early traditions this late manuscript preserves is the use of “asitani” for all four elements. Manuscript Vatican 320, a parallel text, has the sequence “woman, gentile, slave.” 15. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 112, cites a sparse list of places where this blessing was erased or censored; it is missing in two out of four manuscripts of Sefer ha-manhig in the citation of Natronai Gaon’s responsum, but then appears later when the individual blessings are explained; c.f. mss. Parma 1789 and Parma 1765. 16. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 29–30. 17. For recent discussions of the servi camerae, see Narin van Court, “Socially Marginal,” 325, n. 26. 18. The earliest datable source for this usage is attributed to Seder Rav Amram by Bedarshi, Sefer ha-menuhah, 126. We do not have this phrase in our versions of Seder Rav Amram, but many insertions made their way into the text and were circulated as part of Seder Rav Amram (see p. XXX). The same usage also appears in Mahzor Turin, cited by Schechter, Seder Hibbur Berakot, 89; Abraham of Lunel, Ha-manhig, 38, and manuscript Parma 1759 (cited in Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 107, n. 51). 19. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 113. 20. “Certainly this is a good form of divine supervision that the Jews remain under the hand of the kings of the earth and are slaves to kings and not slaves to slaves” (Isaac Arama to Dt. 28:68 in Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 113; also see the commentary of Isaac Abravanel to this verse. 21. T-S NS 121:5; ms. Camb. Add 3160:1; ms. Parma 1783. See Luzzatto, Mavo, 155, n. 5. 22. Perhaps it reflects an otherwise unknown Palestinian variation. This would explain its presence in the very early Italian prayer book Mahzor Turin (manuscript JTSA 8402; see Schechter, Seder Hibbur Berakot). 23. The modern Orthodox commentator Baruch Epstein, Baruch she-amar, 30, uses this distinction in his defense of the contemporary significance of the blessing: “The thanksgiving is expressed ‘who did not make me a servant,’ i.e., a servant to Your servants, to people.” 24. C.f. Mahzor Turin (manuscript JTSA 8402); Abraham of Lunel, ha-manhig, 38. 25. Ha-avodah ma’avir ha-adam al da-ato ve’al da’at kono. 26. Abraham of Lunel, Ha-manhig, 38. See Mishnah Avot 2:8; Horowitz, Pirkei de-Rabi Eliezar, chap. 29. This line opens a section about the disdain for slaves that extends through multiple generations. The second part of the quote, “The more slaves, the more theft, for slaves (or: servants) are not trustworthy” is not included in printed editions of Pirkei de-Rabi Eliezer “as a consequence of censorship” (notes to Ha-manhig, 38, 1. 78). Abraham ben Nathan of Lunel was a student of Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne (called Rabad, ca.1110—ca.1179). 27. Yakar, Commentary, 221. 28. Jaffe, Levush, Orakh hayyim 46: 5.

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29. Asher of Lunel, Sefer ha-minhagot, 141. This passage through “ . . . with wisdom” is quoted verbatim in the thirteenth century by Bedarshi, Sefer ha-menuhah, I, 126. 30. “We do not bless ‘who did not make me a beast’ since the beast does not have a soul” (Ibn Shuab, Derashot, Tazria/Metzora, 48). Ibn Shuab’s mention of the blessing ca. 1310 indicates that probably some people in his congregation either favored saying the blessing or certainly knew of the custom of reciting it. See Recanati, Commentary, Mishpatim, 104d, 48; for rabbinic and medieval sources, see Freiman’s notes to Judah ben Samuel, Sefer Hasidim, 94, n. 304a. 31. In the prayer, humanity is created b’chokhmah. The normative understanding of this expression is “with wisdom,” and wisdom refers to God’s quality or attribute that is reflected in the created human being. In Rabbi Asher’s creative reading, wisdom is a human attribute that comes from God. 32. Meyuchas, Sha’are teshuvah, 30, 345. 33. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, Even bohan; in this case, a young man yearns to say the blessing that is reserved for women! See Rosen, “Cinderella,” 87. 34. Jacob ben Asher, Tur, Orach hayyim, 46. There is no clear origin of the phrase “who made me according to His will.” It may derive from Ecclesiasticus 50:22: “Veya’asehu kirtzono (He made him according to His will),” as suggested by Abrahams, Companion, 17, except that the Hebrew version of the book was not known after the time of Saadia Gaon (tenth century) whereas the Tur was written during the fourteenth century. Some explain the blessing by way of a midrash that tells how God consulted the angels before making Adam, but acted entirely alone in creating Eve. This is proposed by Yaakov Ornstein (1775–1839), Yeshuot Yaakov, 46:5, and is quoted favorably by contemporary defenders of the traditional blessing language. Another variation is that the circumstances of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib precludes the possibility of the blessing “who did not make me a man;” thus, Finkelstein, Seder Tefilah, 8. 35. Abudarham, Abudarham ha-shalem, 42; Jaffe, Levush, Orakh hayyim, 46:5; cf. the comparison to the androgynous and the hermaphrodite by Israel Isserlin, Pitchai teshuvah, 22. 36. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 105, n. 39, describing the persistence of “did not make me a beast,” imagines this type of substitution as a mechanical process in which the various variant blessings were fungible. I am arguing throughout that the choice of substitutions was rarely random or unconsidered. Struggling to reconcile grammar and received practice, Shabbtai Sofer (ca. 1565–ca.1635), Siddur Shabtai Sofer, 17, concludes It would be more correct for her to skip over the first two blessings which are written in the male gender and it would suffice for her to say “who made me according to his will,” but in order not to skip over the format of the blessings that the wise have fixed (it is good for her to say the blessings as they are written) since they include males and females.”

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37. Consider the folk etymology of the Yiddish greeting “katzil kumt,” which, according to Harkavy, Yiddish-English Dictionary, 297: “Is usually addressed to women, and it is supposed that ‘katzil’ is a contraction of ‘God’s will’—an allusion to the fact that in the Morning Benedictions the Jewish women humbly bless their Creator for having made them according to ‘His will.’” This folk etymology, however, is linguistically indefensible; the expression probably derives from a German exclamation. See Herzog, Yiddish Language 66–68 and Raisen, “Skotsl kumt,” 282. 38. See, for example, Abudarham, Perush ha-Berakhot, 170, n. 4; Ciechanow, Tselota de-Avraham, 44. On the blessing formula, see TB Berakhot 40b, and Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 5–6 and 389, n. 10. 39. Rabinowitz, Sha’are, 20; Recanati, Commentary, Parshat Mishpatim, 104d, 48. 40. This comment is perplexing for later commentators and they struggle to explain it. One early twentieth-century talmudist, Rabinowitz, Sha’are Torat Erets Yisrael, 20, dismisses Recanati outright: “Without doubt he relied on his memory and erred, and his words are from some foreign barbarian, who was not expert in the oral Torah, and it is known that at ‘the entrance to memory, forgetfulness lies.’” Rabinowitz cannot countenance the idea of variations in the text of the Talmud, nor, like Lieberman, can he admit to any outside influences on the origins of a Jewish prayer. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 104–105, makes a similar observation. Joseph Freimann suggests that Recanati’s text of the Talmud preserved the reading “beast” in place of “boor,” but, as he acknowledges, there is no textual evidence for this; Joseph ben Moses, Leket Yosher, 7, n. 18; Ginzberg enthusiastically endorses this position, Perushim ve-hidushim be-Yerushalami, 229, but see Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 104. Tzvi Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 97, n. 8, offers another explanation: “Our rabbis of blessed memory” does not refer to the rabbis of the Talmud, but rather to the rabbis of Recanati ’s own generation, and his use of Menahot does not refer to the text of the Talmud, but to the study of its text. According to this interpretation, which Wieder also accepts, the Italian rabbis of Recanati’s day, although studying this passage in the Talmud, disputed whether one should say “who did not make me a beast.” If true, as is likely, the actual practice of Jewish communities was different from what the normative text prescribed. In this case, the liturgical texts, influenced by older Palestinian practice, preserved a blessing that the Talmud did not mention. Recanati’s only mistake, Wieder concludes, was in assigning the source of this real debate to the Talmud itself and not to his contemporary prayer books. Recanati’s comment appears in the context of his Torah commentary on the mystical meaning of the word “beast.” Although there is no other evidence than this comment, we might still posit an oral tradition of an original conflict. Perhaps Recanati had an esoteric oral tradition about a dispute between the Palestinian and Babylonian teachers regarding the subject of the baraita in Menahot. In a discussion of continuity in mystical Jewish thought, Moshe Idel, Kabbalah, 31, proposes that “ancient Jewish motifs . . . remained the patrimony of Jewish thought and continued to be transmitted in Jewish circles, ultimately providing the conceptual framework of the Kabbalah.”

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41. Recanati concludes this passage: “And if this is a tradition we accept it,” suggesting that he personally may not agree with this idea. I am grateful to Melila Hellner-Eshed for her assistance in understanding this passage. 42. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, Mishpatim, 104d, 48. 43. Eliezer Hurwitz, Shnei luhot ha-berit, Ki tetzai, Torah ohr -Gimmel, praises Recanati’s “superb allusion” to the transmigration of the soul across genders in relation to the blessing “who did not make me a woman.” 44. Joseph ben Moses, Leket Yosher, 7. 45. Abraham Azulai (1570–1643), a kabbalistic commentator, writes in Hesed Le-Avraham, 2:45, that being transmigrated into a gentile, slave, or woman would be a bad fate, but nothing compared with being transmigrated into a dog or another animal. One should gave thanks daily for not having become one of the first three but “no one recite should recite ‘[did] not [make me] a beast’” I am grateful to Melila Hellner-Eshed for bringing this reference to my attention. 46. See, for example, manuscript HUC 442. 47. Cf. the suggestion of Groner, “A Blessing which was Forgotten,” 96, that there was a “living oral tradition from a Palestinian community . . . from whom they received the custom of reciting ‘who did not make me a beast.’” 48. Joseph ben Moses, Leket Yosher. 49. One example of women’s Hebrew literacy is that of three extant JudeoSpanish prayer books. The two intended for general use are in Latin characters and the one composed especially for women is in Hebrew characters; compare Lazar, Ladino Mahzor; Lazar, Libro de Oracyones: Ferrar Ladino Siddur (1552]; and Lazar, Siddur tefillot. Also, see the comments of George Jochnowitz, “ . . . who made me a woman.” Commentary, April 1981, 120. 50. Manuscript JTSA 8255. The siddur is described in Jochnowitz, “Made Me a Woman.” A digital image can be viewed at http://alpha3.jtsa.edu:8997/aleph_images/ manuscripts/MS8255a.jpg. 51. Jochnowitz, “Made Me a Woman,” 118. 52. Despite the many examples of these usages, modern halakhic authorities still disagree whether women can use the Hebrew feminine terms for “non-Jew” and “maidservant”; Shabtai Sofer, Siddur Shabtai Sofer, 16, reports on “a sage of this generation” who has instructed his wife to say “not a shifchah (female servant),” but Shabtai does not approve. 53. This was common practice. Compare, for example, the Judeo-Italian woman’s prayer manuscript JTSA 4076, f. 1b-2a. It has the feminine forms shifchah and goyah, and then the expected (but syntactically incorrect): “che fecemi come la volontade soa” (the entire manuscript is written in Hebrew characters). Other similar manuscripts are discussed by Cassuto, “Judeo-Italian Translations,” 260–80.Also, see Riera I Sans, El Siddur en catala. 54. See Ruderman, Farissol. Both manuscripts are listed in Ruderman’s appendix, 158: no. 13, 1478, “Siddur, Italian rite, for wife of patron whose name is erased” (manuscript JTSA 8255); no. 15, 1480, “Siddur, Italian rite, for unknown woman patron copied by two scribes, one of them being Farissol” (manuscript JNUL 805492). See Sabar, “Bride, Heroine and Courtesan,” 68.

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55. One of these was copied entirely by Farissol himself; the other was copied by Farissol and another scribe. There is no indication of who copied which section. Another significant variation, showing how fluid the opening section of the liturgy remained at this time is the location in JTSA 8255 of the long blessing “who removes slumber from my eyelids,” which contains a closing eulogy and, by halakhic accounts, closes this series of blessings. In this manuscript it precedes the rest of the Berakhot set. In its place at the end of the entire series, this prayer book has the blessing “who gives the sekvi insight.” So, although this latter blessing remains linked to the Menahot set, here it follows them instead of preceding them. 56. Historically, this was most certainly not the case, because Hebrew books were repeatedly seized and censored. See Berliner, “Censorship and Confiscation,” I, 18, for a description of how the same books were repeatedly taken. 57. Jochnowitz describes it as “slavishly copied.” 58. Jewish culture was simultaneously distinct and an expression of the wider, common, Greek–informed culture. Although the Latin authors Dio and Lactantius criticize the original “Socratic” statement on logical grounds, they do not dispute the values assertions it makes. 59. Jaffe, Levush, Orakh hayyim 46:5: “She is “like one who accepts the decree.” Although the Talmud states that one must bless on the bad as well as on the good, the only required occasion to recite the blessing “Praised are You . . . the true Judge” is when learning of a death. This act is called “tziduk ha-din [accepting (the justice of) the decree (literally, judgment)].” The rabbinic commentators cannot bring themselves to say that being a woman is the same as death and needs to be accepted in the same fashion, so they generate distance by the insertion of “like one.” Nonetheless, the linkage is strong. Marc Bregman drew my attention to this relationship. 60. Yakar, Commentary, 21. 61. Genesis Rabbah 14 and 15, according to Yakar, Commentary, 19, n. 98. 62. Ibid., 19, n. 98, cites “old Tanhuma, Chaiyai Sarah 3.” 63. TB Kiddushin 98b. 64. “Shifchah l’ba’alah k’eved le’rabo,” Rashi to TB Menahot 43b; thus also Lunel, Ha-manhig, 38. 65. See TB Hagiga 4a. 66. TB Bava Kama 87a. 67. Jaffe, Levush, Orakh Hayyim 46:5.

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1. The order of blessings is Elohai neshama, sekvi, who clothes, tzitzit, “passes his hands over his eyes and blesses: ‘Opens the eyes,’” sits up, puts his feet on the ground, stands up, washes hands (and recites blessing), washes face, puts on belt, puts on shoes, begins to walk (Alfasi, Hilkhot Rav Alfasi, 50). 2. Maimonides, Mishneh torah, Hilkhot tefila (Laws of Prayer), 7:7–10. These paragraphs are paraphrased in the writings of Rabbi Jacob ben Judah of London, the only witness to Jewish customs in England before 1290, who paraphrases Maimonides

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and explicitly forbids the serial recitation of the blessings in the synagogue. In the sole surviving manuscript, beside the quotation from Maimonides, a later hand added a marginal note, excerpting Natronai’s responsum permitting their serial recitation, because it is impossible to recite these blessings before washing the hands. The gloss—which is impossible to date—reconciles the prayer book with the then prevailing practice (Jacob ben Judah, Etz hayyim, 65). 3. Here the order is “gentile, slave, woman,” whereas, in the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides is faithful to the Talmud’s “gentile, woman, slave.” There is no consistency in any of the early prayer books or commentaries in placing “woman” or “slave” first. 4. See p. XXX. 5. Thus, these blessings become like the other occasional blessings recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 59a/b, which are recited when one sees a great teacher, a ruler, or a person of unusual appearance. 6. Maimonides, Teshuvot, 42. 7. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 99. 8. T-S 8H 9:15 and manuscript Oxford Heb. f.22 are discussed in Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 111–112. The instructions are in Arabic, written in Hebrew characters. T-S NS 240.4, a fragmentary portion of a single leaf, appears to be a catalog of Hebrew blessings with Arabic instructions and when each one is said. From the layout of the page, it is likely that, in this case, the instructions for the three blessings were to say them as a unit. 9. Abraham ben Moses, Teshuvot, 120–126. For Rabbi Abraham’s efforts to change synagogue practice, see ibid, 120, n. 2; Maimonides, Teshuvot, 49. 10. Well-known examples are the inclusion of Mar’s personal prayer (BT Berakhot 17a) at the end of the Amidah and the ritualization of the four questions at the Passover Seder; see Goldschmidt, Haggadah, 10–13. 11. The recitation of Elohai neshama is one of Rabbi Abraham’s examples. A Sicilian rite prayer book, printed in Venice ca.1582, begins with Elohai neshama in the plural and continues using the plural throughout the Morning Blessings; see Goldschmidt, “Mahzorim According to the Rite of the Greek Communities,” Jewish Liturgy, 237. Among the variant blessings is the plural formulation: ha-oseh lanu kol tzarcheinu (who provides for us all our needs).This volume was printed ca. 1582, more than 300 years after Rabbi Abraham expressed his objections. 12. Solomon Ben Samson, Siddur Rabenu Shelomoh, 4–5. Text of the manuscript is corrupt here. This is a reconstruction based on Herschler’s notes. These two paragraphs are identical to the same section in the prayer book attributed to Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan (ca. 1090-ca. 1170), Siddur ha-Meyuchas le-Ravan, 5. Eliezer, though, begins with the discussion of the 100 blessings, attributed to Seder Rav Amram, explaining why they are recited together at the synagogue. It is doubtful whether these paragraphs were part of Amram’s original composition (see p. XXX). 13. Rabbi Solomon cites the baraita from Menahot but expands the text beyond what is found in the classical rabbinic sources. He emphasizes the consciousness of the reward for the mitzvot, which the male Israelite enjoys more than a non-Jew or a

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woman. The explanations for each of the blessings are linked to the rewards for the performance of mitzvot. In the Tosefta, this explanation is limited to why a man recites “not a woman.” Here, for the first time, this rationale is applied to all three of the cases. Rabbi Solomon certainly knew of the practice of reciting these blessings in the synagogue. The recitation of these blessings in the home, with the precise directions that follow, may have been part of a wider program of personal piety in the circles of Hasidei Ashkenaz. In his commentary, Rabbi Solomon offers eloquent interpretations, presenting a simple, nonmetaphorical explanation for each blessing, such as “‘frees the prisoner’ because he was like a prisoner all night in his house.” 14. Bedarshi, Sefer ha-menuhah, 126. 15. “They are ranked” = hen midregot. Ibn Shuab, Derashot Tazria/Metzora, 48b. See Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 111, n. 69, and Chavel, “Nachmanides’ Opinion,” 96. The sermons can be dated before 1310; see Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v.”Ibn Shuab.” 16. The general halakhic position that a convert cannot say “who did not make me a gentile” is based on this interpretation of the meaning of the blessing; see, for example, Abudarham, Abudarham ha-shalem 41; Amar, Tefilah le-David, 25a; Nazir, Mateh Yosef, Orach Hayyim 8: 4. 17. An early kabbalistic interpretation of the blessings is offered by Azriel of Gerona, but his esoteric reading was not quoted by others; See Azriel, Commentaire, 32–37. 18. Ibn Gabbai is quoted by name in Salih, Tiklal ets hayim, 11. The last sentence is slightly edited: “Thus, when a man rises up from his bed and knows that he is righteous, he should bless three blessings, whose meanings is that God did not assign me to these places (heaven save us, Amen!).” 19. Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 57b. 20. Zohar III 121b in Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, II, 819. 21. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, II, 818, n. 25, comments on this line of the Zohar’s text: “As the soul ascends it has to traverse the domain of sitra ahra and it comes into contact with the husks. ‘The deceiving lights’ (komerin teherin) is a term for demons, but its precise meaning is doubtful. The translation given is the most probable one.” 22. Lech Lecha, Zohar I, 83a, translation from ibid, II, 818; Naso, Zohar III, 121b, see: ibid, 819. 23. “U’machnisin otah b’makom ha-goy hatameh ha-mezuham o ha’eved she-nidach la-temurot.” The temurot are “forces that are opposite and parallel to the seven lower sefirot. Together, they are called enemies, outside forces, qelippot” (Matt, Book of Mirrors, 30). 24. Ibn Gabbai, Tolaat Yaakov, 11. Other editions have a different closing line: “ . . . whose meaning is: that they did not seat him in the impure place which is like one who performs idolatrous worship.” According to Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), the souls of the non-Jews are side-by-side, only separated by a wall (Olat reiyah, 71). 25. Cordovero, Siddur, 10b–11a. 26. There are many aggadic comments that are very hostile to slaves; see, for example, Horowitz, Pirkei de-Rabi Eliezer, Chapter 29.

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27. Cordovero, Siddur, 10b–11a. 28. This theme is taken up by later kabbalistic commentators. Cf. the commentary in Meklenburg, Siddur derekh ha-hayim, 40: “Put on one’s heart great joy for the Creator creating him in the community of Israel, a holy people, . . . and did not create him amongst the idolaters and he would bow to the sun and moon.” 29. The passage continues: “And also that he is not in the place of the woman, which is below by six kitzavot, which are Vav, which is Seder Zemanim.” The Hebrew letter vav has the numeric value of six; this is an apparent reference to the secret relationship between the letter vav, Seder Zemanim, and the six days of creation. Kitzavot (the extremities) is a name for the six lower Sefirot (seven except for Shechinah, the tenth and last). Seder Zemanim is the name of one of the fourteen books in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and deals with the festivals and the calendar. The reference here may be more generic. 30. The general halakhic rule is that women are “excused from time-bound affirmative commandments.” See TB Kiddushin 33b-35a and its parallels. 31. “B’girmat z’man ha-zachar.” 32. Cordovero, Siddur, 10b–11a. 33. See note 23. 34. The original language of the Alenu prayer declared that “they bow down to emptiness and vanity (hevel va’rik) and to a God that does not save.” Christians found these lines objectionable and they were censored out; see figure 5.1. 35. Cordovero, Siddur, 10b–11a. 36. Ibid. 37. “L’hitaber be-mah shelo yo-ileho.” 38. A commentator explains: The force of these three blessings is that there are people whose souls (nefesh, ruach and neshama) run away from them and nothing remains in him but the animal soul from the diminishment of readiness and pollution of the throne. With this do their deeds change, sometimes as women, sometimes as men, and there are many for whom the majority of their lives work like a slave. And this demonstrates the diminishment of their soul. For the inner shows its actions in the external, and for this reason these three blessings were established to be recited daily, so that this matter might be renewed for a person daily and one must be intent and cancel every type of women’s work and levity and slave work and impure thought. (Me’ever Yabok 84b in Salih, Tiklal ets hayim, 11) 39. “Yabit” (literally, look). Later texts read: “checks (yiv-dok) himself well.” 40. “Avur mei-hitaver.” 41. Cordovero, Siddur, 10b–11a. 42. This articulation of the order of the universe was widely repeated and celebrated: I give you praise and thanks that you gave me my fate and destiny amongst the holy Israelite people. . . . And not only this, that you did not make me one

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who has no dimension of the mitzvot. . . . And not a woman: for even though she is a daughter of Israel, even she is exempt from the study of Torah and from mitzvot which are time bound, and so I give you thanks about this . . . for You sanctified me through mitzvot and through the study of your holy Torah (Ha-Levi, Mahzor Yerushelayim, 2). It is also read in relationship to the avoidance of an undesirable transmigration of the soul: There are those who transmigrate into a gentile and this is less hard than the prior [examples of transmigration into an animal], and there are those who transmigrate into an Israelite servant, and this is preferable to the prior, and there are those who transmigrate into a woman, and this is better than any of the others. All the same, it is a descent from the first level, and for these three we bless: who did not make me a gentile, a slave a woman (Azulai, Hesed le-Avraham, 2:45).

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For assistance in identifying the various prayer books cited, the notes in this chapter include the city and year of publication. 1. See Kobler, Napoleon and the Jews, and Schwarzfuchs, Napoleon. 2. In his commentary Mekor Berakhah, Eliezer Landshuth, Hegyon Lev, 10, systematically avoids goy, removing it from the historical sources as well as from his own writing. According to Petuchowski, Censorship Prevention, 299–324, this was motivated in part by the need to accommodate the Russian censors. Prayer books printed for the East European market during this period used the euphemism Aku’m (ovdei kokavim u’mazalot, worshippers of stars and planets)—for example, Mahzor le-rosh ha-shanah (Zhitomer, 1862) or ovdei elilim (worshipper of idols, sometimes abbreviated to the letters ayin’aleph) as in Mahzor . . . Korban Aharon (Vilna, 1839). 3. From the principles for liturgical reform of Leopold Stein, described by Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 76. Stein’s own prayer book, Seder ha-avodah (Mannheim, 1882), 54, not only uses Abraham Geiger’s non-particularistic “made me for His service,” but the first blessing eliminates any reference to the “rooster” in favor of human insight: “Asher natan lanu binah l’havkhin bein ohr l’choshekh (who has given us insight to distinguish between light and dark).” On Geiger, see p. XXX. 4. In Italy, Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) translated the Ashkenazi and Italian rites into Italian in 1821 and 1829; he produced a critical edition of the Italian rite prayer book in 1856. The introduction was reprinted and edited by Goldschmidt. 5. See Weiner, Baer’s Siddur. 6. Shabbatei Sofer (ca. 1565—ca.1635) complained about this; see Reif, Shabbethai Sofer, 22. 7. Typical examples of the commentary not matching the text of the prayers include: Eliezer ben Nathan, Siddur Ke-Minhag Polin, Lita Ve-Riisin ve-Mahrin im

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peirush R’aven (Vienna, 1817), 26; Mahzor ke-minhag K’K Ashkenazim (Sulzbach, 1809). These kinds of mistakes were common. 8. See Abraham ben Raphael Landau, “Shomea Tefila” in Tzelota de-Avraham, 41; Elijah ben Solomon, Sidur ha-Gaon, 23. 9. Isaac Mannheimer, Tefillot Yisrael, in Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 67. On linguistic bifurcation in the prayer books, see Meyer, Response to Modernity, 186. 10. Luzatto, Formulario delle Orazioni, 5. 11. David Kimhi, Sefer ha-shorashim, 57: Our rabbis became accustomed to refer in their usage to any person who was not from [the people of ] Israel as goy. It was their practice that for any person they wanted to mention who was not from [the people of ] Israel but just from another nation and it was not clear to them from which nation [goy] he was, whether an Edomite or an Ishmaelite or from the other peoples, accordingly they would say goy, that is to say, he is from some other nation which is not Israel. 12. Wieder, “On the Blessings,” 13, suggests that the concern that the blessing would be misunderstood and become a “blessing in vain” is the origin of the added phrase in ancient prayer books “who did not make me a gentile from the gentile-nations of the earth.” Medieval halakhic authorities objected that if the first blessing was framed in the affirmative, then there would be no point to the second and third blessings, and therefore they would be in vain. Besides any other associations the word goy had, many “enlightened” Jews during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had a strong prejudice in favor of biblical usage over rabbinic usage. Reading the rabbinic-originated blessing as if it was in biblical Hebrew generated a scientific objection to the traditional text; the desired emendation could then be made entirely on internal, Jewish grounds. 13. Thus, Hayyim Hezekiah Medini (1832–1904) in his Sadei chemed, 6:1312. Although this solution avoids changing the original language of the blessing, it counters the halakhic rule that the text of the prayers should not be expanded or contracted. Although probably unknown to these nineteenth-century editors, this locution was also found in Genizah manuscripts. 14. Cf. Kosman, Noheg ka-tson Yosef, 20, who apparently had “not an Ishmaelite” in his own prayer book but recommended “who made me a Jew.” 15. Baer, Seder Avodat Yisrael, 40–41. Baer also defines nokhri as one who does not fulfill the terms of the seven Noahide commandments (according to Jewish teaching, the minimum commandments required of all humans, given to Noah after the flood; see Novak, Image of the Non-Jew). Baer’s Avodat Yisrael was a reference work as much as a prayer book; Heidenheim’s prayer books were intended for synagogue and general use. They were published under a variety of titles and in many editions, mostly in Roedelheim but throughout Europe. Baer’s position was not an unchallenged one. Menahem Mendel Landau, in his commentary “Shomea Tefilah,” Tselota de-Avraham, 40, wrote: “I read in Avodat Yisrael about nokhri and this has become widespread throughout Europe.” He goes on to object to its use as lexically incorrect and the product of censorship.

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16. With a single exception (see p. XXX) every prayer book examined that was printed in Germany that has a translation in German characters uses nokhri in the Hebrew and Heiden in translation. In books that were only printed in Hebrew, some use nokhri and others use goy. This transition was not limited to “modern” editions alone. Compare, for example, Epstein, Seder tefilah derekh yesharah (Amsterdam, 1768), which has “not a goy” in the text and the commentary, with the later edition of the same work, Seder tefilah ke-minhag Ashkenazim. . . . (Karlsruhe, 1805). Both books have the identical commentary by Jehiel Michael Epstein (d. 1706), printed in the identical typeface. However, the latter volume has “not a nokhri” in the prayer text and titles the corresponding paragraph in the commentary “who made me an Israelite.” Although the commentary had perhaps been copied from a previously censored version, the prayer text probably was not; had it been, it would have much more likely read “who made me an Israelite.” Similarly, Mahzor ke-minhag Polin, Risin . . . (Vienna, 1835) prints “not a nokhri” in Hebrew but “Yisrael” in the Hebrew-character German translation. On at least one occasion, Heidenheim’s revision was reversed. Isaac Berlin issued a “further precisely edited” edition of Heidenheim’s prayer book with goy restored and a footnote defending its rabbinic origin, Sefer Keruvot hu mahzor le-yom rishon shel rosh ha-shanah. . . . (Hannover, 1838), 5. The title page reads: “Prepared entirely by Wolf Heidenheim. With further precise supervision, and with the addition of translations of the piyyutim by the punctilious Isaac Berlin.” 17. Stern, Shealot u-teshuvot, 42–46. 18. Meklenburg, Siddur derekh ha-hayim, 45. 19. Emphasis added. On the Noahide laws, see Novak, Image of the Non-Jew. 20. A similar distinction between the goyim-as-other and the Christian majority is drawn at length by Landshuth in Hegyon Lev, 10. 21. In Hebrew characters, “wahrheitsverkenner” is inserted in the text. 22. Meklenburg, Siddur derekh ha-hayim, 45. 23. Ibid. 24. Appearing before the court of Louis IX in disputation with the convert Nicolas Donin in 1240, Rabbi Yehiel explains that “the evil government” mentioned in the Alenu prayer refers to Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzer, ancient Egypt, and the Canaanites: But as for this kingdom and the Pope who command, with all their powers, to protect us, and who do protect us and keep us alive and give us sustenance and refuge in their land of their own free will—surely no one will believe that we should repay kindness with evil. Of this kingdom it is said: Pray for the peace of the realm.” Jehiel ben Joseph, Vikuah Rabenu Yehi’el, 12, discussed in Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 108. 25. Cf. BT Babba Kamma 38a. 26. Meklenburg, Siddur derekh ha-hayim. 27. Katan, “Rabbi Aaron Worms,” 190–195. Worms scandalized the traditionally observant by appearing bareheaded in public and drinking milk in a non-Jewish inn.

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28. Encyclopedia Judaica, s. v.”Aaron Worms;” cf. Epstein, Baruch she-amar, 29, which recommends aku’m as the appropriate term, to be understood as a reference to “ancient peoples.” 29. Worms, Me’orai Or, vol. V: Be’er shev’a, 20a. 30. Stern’s responsum selectively quotes Worms, invoking his lengthy list of examples about the usage of goy but ignoring his next remark about nokhri; see Stern, Zecher Yehosaf, 44. 31. Worms, Be’er shev’a, 20a. The suggestion that the offensive blessings should not be recited out loud in public is one contemporary proposal for what modern worshippers should do about the blessing “not a woman” (see p. XXX). 32. See, for exampleJoseph Kosman, Noheg ka-tson Yosef, 20. More important and widely noted were the objections of Abraham Gumbiner, author of the commentary Magen Avraham to the Shulhan arukh. 33. It appears, for example, in Leopold Stein’s Sefer ha-avodah (1860); see Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 77. It was also the preferred resolution of some modern Orthodox authorities, like Abraham Berliner, Randbemerkungen, 15. 34. Luther, Werke, v. 53, 420; Luther, in turn, apparently relied upon the translation of Anton Margarithe (see chapter 1, note 5. 35. Sachs, Tefilat Yeshurun (Berlin, 1860; repr. 1864). Sachs (1808–1864) was a Wissenschaft scholar and careful German writer; see: Meyer, Response to Modernity, 124. This simple and accurate translation was maintained in the successive editions of Sachs’ prayer book, but not otherwise adopted. Sachs was presumably the model for the anonymous English translation “who hath not made me other than an Israelite,” in Tefilat Yisrael (Frankfurt-on-the-Maine [sic], 1876, 9). This volume was printed in Germany for the American market. Some traditional prayer books printed “did not make me a nokhri” in the Hebrew text, but printed “an Israelite” in the Yiddish translation below, e.g. Mahzor ke-minhag Polin, Raisin, Lita (Vienna: Anton von Shmid, 1835). 36. In Orthodox prayer books, these themes were given full expression in the commentary; see the discussion of Joseph Hertz on pp. XXX–XXXX. 37. Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 76; Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, 36. 38. See the proposal of Joseph Saalshutz that the traditional prayers be recited silently, to be followed by a German translation or paraphrase that eliminated all particularistic sentiments, Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, 6, and the description of Maier’s Stuttgart prayer book in Meyer, Response to Modernity, 185. 39. Ibid, 185. For a detailed history and survey of the contents of the European liberal prayer books, see Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform. 40. Maier, Israelitisches gebet- und andachtsbuch (1848), see: Meyer, Response to Modernity, 185. 41. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, 27–30; Meyer, Response to Modernity, 24. 42. See the preface of Samuel Adler to Seder tefilah, ix. 43. Petuchowski, Prayer Book Reform, 49–58. 44. Ibid.

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45. See Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 66; Meyer, Response to Modernity, 186. 46. See Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 77. 47. The first chapter of Petuchowski’s Prayerbook Reform is a chronological bibliography of European Liberal and Reform prayer books through 1967. The analysis in this chapter only includes books first printed before 1914 and assumes that two volumes printed at the same time—for example, one for Sabbaths and one for festivals—treat the texts in question in the same fashion. Subsequent and prior editions are considered similar unless the secondary literature indicates that major changes were instituted. Not included in Petuchowski’s list is Ben Israel, Seder Tefila: Gebutbuch fűr Synagogue und haus. . . . (Brilon, 1872), 2 vols. Ben Israel was the community rabbi in Coblenz. Petuchowski may have considered this volume too traditional for inclusion on his list; cf. the exclusion of Mannheimer’s prayer book, described by Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 67. Ben Israel’s book, which has no German translation at all, includes goy, but prints “who did not make me a woman” in parentheses and small print, along with the last two words of Elohai neshama, resulting in “who restores souls to (deceased corpses),” 84. No alternative is offered. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, 20, mentions “a prayer book published in Coblenz, to which reference is made in the Introduction to the Einheitsgebetbuch, although we have been unable to inspect a copy.” The book in question may be Gebut-und Gesangbuch fűr die Sabbathe und Feste des Jahres eingefuhrt in der israelitischen Gemeinde zu Coblenz (Coblenz: Israelit. Gemeinde zu Coblenz, 1850). Although no editor is listed in the title, the book was edited (and the forward signed) by Rabbi Ben Israel. Israel acknowledges in the Introduction his debt to the prayer books of Heidenheim (modern Orthodox) and the 1848 Israelitisches Gebet-und Andachtsbuch of Maier. Maier’s book was entirely in German and was intended as “private devotions for the individual.” Israel printed some prayers only in Hebrew without benefit of translation. The 1850 volume (p. 55) has nokhri in Hebrew and “not a heathen” in German. The book is in the JTSA library. 48. Werner, Seder Tefilah (Danzig, 1887), 6; Israel, Gebut-und Gesangbuch, 55. The third example is the reissued 1905 Danzig prayer book, edited by Max Freudenthal. This section of the liturgy is reproduced almost identically from the earlier 1887 edition. 49. Marks, Seder ha-Tefilot (London: 1841), 3. Because the service was based on the Sephardic liturgy, this innovative blessing followed the two traditional short blessings which mention Israel:

. . . who girdest Israel with strength. . . . who crownest Israel with glory. . . . who has chosen us to be unto Thee a peculiar people. 50. Deuteronomy 14:2 (King James version): “For thou [art] an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that [are] upon the earth.” Similarly, Exodus 19:5: “They shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.”

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51. Geiger, Devar yom be-yomo (Breslau, 1854), 4. The only prayer book surveyed that copied Geiger’s innovation was Stein, Seder ha-avodah (Mannheim, 1882), by which time Geiger had dropped it from his own liturgy. Geiger’s substitution of “who made me for His service” is a conflation of the verb from the traditional blessing with another expression, “who called us near to His service.” 52. Geiger, Devar yom be-yomo . . . Deutscher ritus (Berlin, 1870), 37. In the 1870 edition Geiger not only shortened the liturgy overall (e.g., dropping the hymn Yigdal from the morning liturgy), but made other changes to avoid particularism. The closing eulogy of the next long blessing was altered from “who rewards the good deeds of His people Israel” to “rewards the good deeds of his creatures” (this change was made in most of the new prayer books). Geiger also excised the Alenu completely. The blessings “crowns Israel with glory” and “girds Israel with strength” are similarly missing from the Berakhot list in Vogelstein, Seder Tefilah (Westfalens, 1894), 12. The blessing “who establishes the earth upon the waters” is also absent (see Vogelstein, p 12). For the controversy surrounding the publication of Vogelstein’s prayer book, see Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, 35–39. Geiger’s abbreviated arrangement of the blessings was retained in the 1891 edition and was reprinted in the Seligman, Tefilot le-khol ha-shanah (Frankfurt, 1929), the Einheitsgebetbuch (“Union Prayer Book of German Liberal Judaism”). The Einheitsgebetbuch was the basis for Kokotek, Prayerbook for Jewish Worship Throughout the Year, (London, 1962) and Seder tov lehodot (Amsterdam, 1964). The Dutch High Holiday volume has the blessings in Geiger’s sequence (plus “who crowns Israel”), whereas the Sabbath edition omits them completely. 53. Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 72. 54. Cf. “ . . . Der mich bestimmt hat zum Israeliten,” Friedmann, Seder ha-avodah (Mannheim, 1868). 55. The incongruity between Hebrew and translation is found, for example, in Mayer, Gebutbuch (Karlsruhe, 1905), which has “made me an Israelite” in Hebrew but “created me to His holy service” (with no mention of “Israel”) in the rhymed poetic translation. Although at first it might appear that the Hebrew was simply copied from an older source and was not of concern to the editor, the Hebrew blessings are arranged in an unusual order, and a new blessing is inserted into the Berakhot group: Yasad eretz al me-khonei-ha, “established the earth on its foundations” in place of the traditional roka ha-aretz al ha-mayim, “sets the earth upon the waters.” The change was made to have the Hebrew blessing conform to contemporary scientific teaching. In later liberal prayer books, this blessing is dropped (as in Gates of Prayer, 286) or modified, as in the free translation “creates the heaven and the earth” in Harlow, Sim Shalom, 11. The ultimate reduction of these blessings to personal categories is in Magonet and Blue, Forms of Prayer, 12; see chapter 9, note 66. 56. Joel, Seder Tefila (Berlin, 1872), 4, and subsequent books edited by Joel. 57. Maier, Seder Tefilah (Stuttgart, 1861), 5; Perles, Seder Tefilah (Munich, 1891), 7. Perles’ volume was modeled on Maier’s. 58. Aub, Seder tefilot kol ha-shanah (Berlin, 1866). The entire paragraph is labeled “Free Revision.”

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59. Seder Tefilot kol ha-shanah (Berlin, 1887), vol. I, 6. Cf. the rhymed poem in Meyer, Gebutbuch (Karlsruhe, 1905), 11, which includes the line “created me to His holy service”; this volume includes an unusual sequence for the Hebrew blessings and a new Hebrew blessing. 60. Phillipson, Neues israelitisches (Berlin, 1864). 61. C. f. Saul Isaac Kaempf, Sihat Yitshak (Prague, 1874), 8. Kaempf was a supporter of Zecharia Frankel; see Encyclopedia Judaica. s.v.”Saul Isaac Kaempf.” An earlier prayer book edited by Kaempf is listed by Petuchowski: Zimrat Yah=Gottesdienstliches Gesangbuch eingefuhrt im israelitischen Temple zu Prag. . . . (Prague, 1849). Abrahams, Companion, viii, explains that these benedictions had a “natural origin” because of the higher position of freemen in the ancient world: But its retention in the Prayer Book has been consistently explained by Jewish authorities as due, not to pride in superior privilege, but to gratitude for higher obligations. Many of the ceremonial duties were not incumbent upon women, and the man, so far from resenting his additional burden, thanked God for it. 62. On Euchel’s translation project, see Meyer, Response to Modernity, 23–25. 63. Euchel, Gebete for hoch deutschen und polnischen Juden. . . . (Konigsberg, 1786; Vienna, 1799). These were reprinted later. A copy in HUC-JIR Cincinnati has no date. The card says: “Apparently reprinted from the Vienna, 1799 ed.” Reprinted in Vienna, 1815. 64. Worms, Be’e Me’orai Or, vol. V: Be’er shev’a, 20a. 65. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 187. 66. Ibid., 123. 67. Ben Israel, Gebet- und Gesangbuch (Coblenz, 1850), prints the blessings in their traditional fashion, with “ . . . did not make a woman” followed by “according to His will” in smaller type. Werner, Israelitisches Gebetbuch (Danzig, 1887) prints both blessings in parentheses, indicating disapproval; Israel, Seder Tefilah (Brilon, 1872), 84, puts “who did not make me a woman” in Hebrew in parentheses, but does not offer any alternative for women to recite. This volume is exclusively in Hebrew. The practice of maintaining the traditional text but marking it as somehow objectionable was instituted by Leopold Stein in his 1860 prayer book (Meyer, Response to Modernity, 186). Petuchowski Prayerbook Reform, 55, describes the practice being used in the 1841 revision of the Hamburg Temple prayer book. The revised edition brought back some traditional texts that had been left out of the original edition, but included them in small type, enclosed in parentheses and without benefit of translation. 68. Stein, Seder ha-avodah (Frankfurt, 1860); Aub, Seder tefilot kol ha-shanah (Berlin, 1866), Friedmann, Seder ha-avodah (Mannheim, 1868); Joel, Israelitisches Gebetbuch für die öffentliche (Berlin, 1872); Die Neue Synagogue in Berlin (Berlin, 1889); Vogelstein, Seder Tefilah (Westfalens, 1894). 69. Maier, Israelitische Gebetordnung (Stuttgart, 1861); Perles, Seder Tefilah (Munich, 1891). Perles’ later book is a newly edited version of Maier’s.

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70. Geiger, for example, moved from “made me for Your service” (Seder tefilah devar-yom be-yomo, Breslau, 1854) to complete elimination (Seder tefilah devar-yom be-yomo, Berlin, 1870). Leopold Stein began with “made me an Israelite,” Seder ha-avodah (Frankfurt, 1860), and later adopted Geiger’s earlier usage (Gebetbuch für israelitische Gemeinden, Mannheim, 1882), by which time Geiger had long moved on. 71. Herzfeld, Tefillat Jisrael (Brunswick, 1855); Maier, Israelitische Gebetordnung (Stuttgart, 1861). 72. Meyer, German-Jewish History, 324.

CHAPTER

9

1. For an introduction to American Jewish history, see Sarna, American Judaism. 2. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 225–226. 3. The abbreviated form of Merzbacher’s book, especially the introductory sections, was widely followed, even if the book itself was not used extensively by others (ibid, 238). Many early editors insisted that the changes they were implementing should not be considered radical or, for proto-Conservative congregations, “reform.” The introduction to Avodat Berith Shalom (Louisville, 1898), 2, opens, “This volume is not a reformed prayer-book. The old liturgy has been abridged by omitting the parts of less devotional value, and made suitable for the use of American conservative congregations . . . with due regard to the ‘Halachah.’” The introductory section of the Sabbath morning service is composed entirely of selections from the Psalms. 4. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 236–238; Friedland, Non-Orthodox Prayerbooks, 19–39. 5. In prayer books that retained a selection of the traditional texts in the morning service, the most popular were Adon Olam, a rhyme affirming the Creator of the universe as one’s personal God; Nishmat, a nonparticularistic hymn of praise to the Creator of nature; the prayer Elohai Neshama, beginning “The soul you have given me, O God, is pure. . . .”; and Baruch she-amar, an abstract ode to the “One who spoke and the world came to be.” Baruch she-amar is technically the opening of the second preliminary section of the liturgy, Pesukei dd’zimrah. None of the Reform prayer books preserved this distinction. See, for example, the introductory section to Huebsch, Seder Tefila (New York, 1872), 86–89, which consists of (1) Opening Prayer, (2) Adon Olam, (3) Elohai Neshama, and (4) Baruch she-amar. All are read by the rabbi. The congregation commissioned Huebsch to edit this book after it rejected using Minhag America; see Meyer, Response to Modernity, 259. 6. Although nineteenth century Jews generally sought to create a Jewish worship experience that, in both external form and religious language, was as congruent as possible with the majority culture around them, they also simultaneously honored their distinctiveness and sense of mission. Michael Meyer proposes that the Elohai Neshama prayer’s opening line, “The soul You have given me, God, is pure” was included as a Jewish refutation of the Christian doctrine of original sin (personal communication). Throughout the Reform liturgy, texts that spoke of the soul were preserved, whereas any that spoke of the body were removed. Consider, for example,

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Abraham Geiger’s selection of the Berakhot blessings (see p. XXX), and the almost universal disappearance of the Asher yatzar prayer, praising God for creating the body with “channels and openings, . . . which open and close” (an exception being Isaac Mayer Wise’s reworking of the prayer to remove all physical imagery, see Tefilot Bnai Yeshurun , 88; http://huc.edu/libraries/collections/ebooks/min-am-ny/wny10.swf ). The American and European Reform emphasis on the eternal life of the soul— although rejecting bodily resurrection—contributed to this discomfort with attention to the body; see Petuchowski, Immortality. However, two other factors were surely also influential: On the one hand, Christianity’s historical teaching that the Church was spiritual—in opposition to Judaism’s purported materiality—led these Jews to promote the spiritual claims of Judaism; on the other, as newly emancipated Jews aspiring to assimilate into and be accepted into bourgeois culture, they shared in a wider social discomfort with physicality. Furthermore, having long been distinguished by physical signs—hair, dress, circumcision—these modernizing Jews were perhaps uncomfortable with their own bodies and wished to draw attention away from their own physicality. In Minhag America, Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900) conflated the popular “spiritual” Elohai Neshama prayer with the most “physical” prayer of the liturgy, Asher Yatzar, the prayer assigned by the Talmud to be recited after using the privy and included in the traditional daily morning liturgy. Wise’s short prayer, in the version for Tefilot Bnai Yeshurun, 100, opens with the traditional text, but in place of the expected “formed man with wisdom and created in him organs and passages,” he inserts “created . . . a pure soul in His image,” resulting in: Praise be rendered unto Thee, O God, our Lord, universal king, who formed man with wisdom, and created in him a pure soul in His image, that he with love may do His will, and behold the goodness of God, in the regions of life. Praised be Thou, O God, who workest wonders. 7. This hope was never realized. Minhag America quickly proved too radical for some and not radical enough for others; Meyer, Response to Modernity, 254–5, 262. 8. Wise, Tefilot Bnai Yeshurun, 102. This is the beginning of the “Morning Prayers”; it is preceded by eight pages of “Introduction to the Morning Service— English and German.” The first edition was simultaneously published in a GermanEnglish-Hebrew version and an English-Hebrew version; see Wachs, American Jewish Liturgies, nn. 66, 69, 75. 9. “[W]ho healest the sick” is not in the traditional Berakhot set; Wise includes it here because it fits his thematic purpose. The posttalmudic Hebrew blessing “gives strength to the weary” was a subject of long dispute regarding whether it should properly be included in the Berakhot set at all; see Halamish, “Strength to the Weary,” 361–377. 10. Wise, Daily Prayer, 8. This section of the prayer book is “Morning Prayers for Private Devotion.” Concern for conformity between the Hebrew and facing English pages apparently declined, resulting in all of the English passage quoted in the previous note being printed on a single page whereas the Shema was printed on the next page of Hebrew text. Wise was an antiabolitionist defender of the South and

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clearly tolerant of the institution of slavery, although as late as 1897 he felt compelled to deny in print that he was “ever a pro-slavery man or favored the institution of slavery at any time.” See Korn, American Jewry, 25–26, 252 n. 58. 11. Friedland, Non-Orthodox Prayerbooks, 115; Friedland, Liberal Jewish Liturgy, 17–49. 12. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 251; Friedland, Liberal Jewish Liturgy, 55–69. 13. Szold, Israelitish Prayer Book, 301. 14. See, for example, “Women’s Rights in Collision with the Prayers,” The Occident, July 1857, 175–180; L. Udler, “Women’s Emancipation (Ger.)” Die Deborah, Jan. 1857, 186–187. 15. Hertz, Authorized Daily Prayer Book, 18–21. 16. Ibid., 19. 17. Berliner, Randbemerkungen, 15. 18. Hertz, Authorized Daily Prayer Book, 21. Italics in original. Passage is attributed to “Mendes” (probably, Harry Pereira Mendes [1852–1937], who was born and raised in Birmingham, England, and served as the rabbi of Sephardic Shearith Israel Congregation in New York City); c.f. Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v.”Mendes.” Hertz follows in the footsteps of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the nineteenth-century exponent of modern Orthodoxy. Along with most other defenders of the historical liturgy, Hirsch, Hirsch Siddur, 12, posits an essentialist nature and destiny for both the people of Israel and for Jewish women: God has equipped every one of His creatures with gifts for specific purposes. In like manner, as we are told by the berakhot [blessings] which follow immediately, He also sent us out among the nations, geared and equipped for the fulfillment of a mission and purpose that is unique and all our own. When the darkness of error still enveloped the nations, the Jewish people had already been sent forth as the wakeners of the dawn, and still walks among the nations as the herald of the new day which is to come for all of mankind. This is not a prayer of thanks that God did not make up heathens, slaves or women. Rather, it calls upon us to contemplate the task which God has imposed upon us by making us free Jewish men, and to pledge ourselves to do justice to this mission. These three aspects of our own status impose upon us duties much more comprehensive than those required of the rest of mankind. And if our women have a smaller number of mitzvot to fulfill than me, they know that the tasks which they must discharge as free Jewish women are no less in accordance with the will and desire of God than are those of their brothers. Similarly, Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), Olat reiyah, 71: “The soul of the male is active, creative and renewing . . . according to its internal essence in its sacred architecture, so superior to the soul of the woman, which is considered like a material requiring form, in contrast to the formative soul,” see Zivun, “Proposal,” 12. The most passionate modern explanation for the importance and validity of these blessings is

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found in Munk, World of Prayer, 29: “The knowledge that he is nearer to God than the gentile who scorns and abuses him has made the Jew strong enough to bear his fate. However, the Bracha by no means assigns a lesser worth to the gentile.” 19. Scherman, Artscroll Siddur, 19. 20. On the ArtScroll publications, see Unterman, “Mixed Blessing;” Levy, ArtScroll. 21. For example, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Yalkut Yosef, I, 185. Sometimes the full version of the blessing was printed in the prayer book while the commentary recommended against this, as in the many editions of Siddur Tefillat ha-Hodesh (the editions are listed in Turgeman, “Siddur Tefillat ha-Hodesh,” 227–229). See the discussion of this issue in Tabory, Benedictions of Self-Identity, 135–136 and notes therein). 22. Aiken, Jewish Woman, 119. The entire chapter is devoted to defending the traditional blessing language. 23. Munk, World of Prayer, 28. 24. This characterization, along with an extensive discussion of the halakhic issues, are in Hauptman, Rereading, 234 ff. 25. Worms, Me’orai Or, vol. V: Be’er shev’a, 20a. 26. Yisrael (men) and Yisraelit (women); see Zivun, “Proposal,” 20. Similarly Ben-Artzi, “An Alternative?” 129–130, and Riskin, “Possibility for Change?,” 139–149. Zivun discusses four different alternatives. 27. Henkin, Bene Banim, 9–10. See Wolowelsky, “Quiet Berakha;” the rejoinder by Feldman, “An Articulate Berakha,” and the subsequent letters to the editor. The case for permitting innovation in prayer is made by Sperber, “Dialogue with God.” Also see the bibliography on the website of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance: http://www.jofa.org/social.php/ritual/prayer/exclusionary. 28. This was based in large part on Silverman’s earlier Sabbath and Festival Services (1936); see Friedland, Non-Orthodox Prayerbooks, 141. 29. Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, 45. 30. Gordis, “In His Image,” 81–85. 31. Ibid., 81. 32. Ibid. 33. Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 165, proposes a more positive reading of the contribution of the censor. 34. Gordis, “‘In His Image,” 82. 35. Ibid. 36. This is similar to the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century efforts to revise the contents of the Kol Nidre formula while scrupulously maintaining the opening words and the melody; see, Petuchowksi, Prayerbook Reform, 334–347. The concern for maintaining the received structure, in contrast to other communities that did not share this value, was a historical difference between the prayer book editors of Babylonia and the Land of Israel, Marx, Early Morning Ritual, 206, n. 103. Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 72. 37. Ellenson, “Mannheimer Prayerbooks,” 72. 38. Gordis, “‘In His Image,” 83.

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39. Gordis’ quotation of documents from the American patrimony in support of his interpretation of Jewish liturgy is similar to the invocation of Shakespeare in Hertz, Authorized Daily Prayer Book, 105. 40. All Conservative movement English translations, starting with the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, use the second person—for example, “hast made me in Thine image.” 41. Gordis, “In His Image,” 83. 42. In the first edition of Sim Shalom, the third blessing reads: . . . she-asani ben-(bat-) chorin. As in older prayer books, the masculine language is presented as normative and the feminine is a parenthetical alternative. A later revision replaced the parentheses with a slash: ben/bat chorin. The affirmative language of the blessings in Sim Shalom, is explained by Hammer, Or Hadash, 65: “Through the ages these blessings have taken on various forms. A Genizah fragment reflecting the ancient service in the Land of Israel reads . . . On the basis of this and in order to avoid any misunderstanding, conservative prayer books have adopted the positive formulas.” 43. See Chaim Stern, “Guide to the Services and Their Themes,” in Hoffman, Gates of Understanding, 171–176. 44. Gates of Prayer, 283. One consequence is that the intellectual and thematic unity of the various services, and their resonance with the structure of the traditional service, are lost as service leaders freely skip large sections of the text. A problem with this design was that, by and large, Reform Jews had not been taught to pray by themselves, and most Reform synagogues were (and remain) socially organized such that people only open their books and pray when cued to do so. As public prayers, the layout of the translation in responsive reading format makes these blessings indistinguishable from any other passage in the liturgy. Reform rabbis and synagogues usually do not invite worshipers to recite the opening sections of the traditional liturgy individually or silently before the formal service begins. By the early years of the twenty-first century, many congregations had ceased using the full-length Gates of Prayer in favor of an abbreviated, gender-neutral version. This abridged edition has a much smaller selection of services and the preliminary morning service is not included at all. Gates of Prayer was succeeded by Mishkan Tefilah in 2008. 45. In Gates of Prayer, passages that are a regular part of the traditional liturgy are often just one among several options. Since the earliest Reform prayer books, this has been a solution to the challenge of keeping the elements of the traditional liturgy while simultaneously shortening the length of the service. Within Gates of Prayer’s “Sabbath Morning Service I,” the closest of the various services in the book to the historical liturgy, each section of the “Morning Blessings” section is numbered to make a selection of one or more alternatives easier. The message of the design is that these units are interchangeable. An innovation of Gates of Prayer is to add a rubric title to each prayer or subsection of the service, in Hebrew and in English—including for liturgical units that were not previously named. (This practice was pioneered by the Reconstructionist prayer books and then used in the Conservative Weekday Prayer Book [1961]; see Friedland, Non-Orthodox Prayerbooks, 148). Lawrence A. Hoffman recalls writing a letter to the

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editorial committee proposing the inclusion of rubrics in the book and believes that Chaim Stern, editor of the prayer book, composed the original rubrics (personal communication). The rubrics consist of the Hebrew name of the prayer and an English translation; the translation corresponds either to the Hebrew or to the theme of the English translation of the prayer. In the Morning Blessings, for example, the blessing for the study of Torah and the passage of Oral Torah that follows it is labeled “La’asok b’divrei Torah” (“To engage in words of Torah”) in Hebrew and “FOR TORAH” in English. The longer prayer that follows the Morning Blessings is labeled “Torah v’mitzvot” in Hebrew and, consistent with classical Reform theology, “FOR CONSCIENCE” in English. The Hebrew title is based on the first paragraph: “She-targilainu be-toratecha vedevakeinu be-mitzvotecha.” The English is derived from the closing paragraph: “Strengthen in us the voice of conscience,” which in turn is the adaptation of “Vedabkanu be-yetzer ha-tov.” Compare Isaac M. Wise’s translation of the eulogy of the Hebrew blessing for the Torah in Minhag America from the literal “who gives the Torah” to “teacher of humanity” in English. In the 1872 edition, it was changed to “We praise Thee, O God, who givest the laws,” 8. During the ninth century, the Gaon Sar Shalom referred to “those ‘gives the sekvi’ blessings.” During the intervening thousand years, the Menahot and Berakhot blessings never gained their own name. Most commonly, they are referred to as the “blessings of (the) Shaharit (service)” or as “the Morning Blessings,” without being differentiated from the larger unit of which they are a part, also commonly called Morning Blessings and sometimes “The One Hundred Blessings.” The editor of Gates of Prayer had to give a title to the combined (and slimmed down) set. Drawing from the pool of liturgical language, the editor adapted a phrase from the Hoda’ah prayer, the penultimate blessing of the Amidah, the theme of which is thanksgiving. The Hoda’ah includes the phrase: “Al nisechah she-be-chol yom imanu (for Your miracles which are with us daily).” The Berakhot/Menahot blessings unit is labeled “Nisim be-khol yom” (daily miracles) and “FOR OUR BLESSINGS” in English. Gates of Prayer, Service I, which makes the greatest effort at a direct translation, renders the Hoda’ah phrase: “For the signs of Your presence we encounter every day,” 311. A literal translation of nes as “miracle” was obviously problematic; as a result, the creative, original association between the Hoda’ah and the Berakhot/Menahot blessings is completely absent in the English. 46. “Blessed is the ETERNAL our God, Ruler of the universe, who has implanted mind and instinct within every living being.

. . . who has made me a Jew. . . . who has made me to be free. . . . opens the eyes of the blind. . . . provides clothes for the naked. . . . brings freedom to the captive. . . . whose power lifts up the fallen. . . . who makes firm each person’s steps. . . . girds our people Israel with strength. . . . who crowns Israel with glory. . . . who gives strength to the weary.

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. . . who removes sleep from the eyes, slumber from the eyelids. (Gates of Prayer, 286). 47. In Hebrew, Yisrael. Nineteenth-century translations typically use “Israelite” whereas, beginning in the early twentieth century, “Jew” lost its pejorative associations and became the more common translation. 48. Compare the medieval commentator Rashi, who suggested that the blessing “not a slave” was included to complete Rabbi Judah’s quorum of three (see chapter 2, note 6). American Conservative rabbi Ben-Zion Bokser, Ha-sidur, 5, similarly simply eliminated this blessing in his 1961 edition of the prayer book, in which the first blessing is translated as “did not make me a heathen.” 49. See Kahn, “High Holiday Liturgy,” 26–27, 31–32. 50. The rejection of the premise that traditional practice is the default standard is a significant contrast with other similar congregations; see Shokeid, Gay Synagogue, and Kahn, “Liturgy of Gay Jews.” 51. For example, the first page of the congregation’s Friday night prayer book, still in use in the early 2000s, included this footnote about the Barchu: “The Ba-r’chu is the formal call to public worship. It is the first of five essential prayers in the Jewish worship service. (The others are the Shema, Mi Chamocha, Amidah and Kaddish)” (Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, Kabbalat Shabbat (San Francisco: n.d. (1978?]). 52. The Morning Blessings as a whole are not a separate unit; the first page is identified as “Shacharit/Morning Service” and individual prayers are given their own rubrics: “Mah Tovu,” “Hymn of Glory,” “Asher Yatzar,” and so forth. The section titled “Morning Blessings” begins with an English translation of Elohai Neshama and continues with the Menahot/Berakhot blessings without interruption. No Hebrew is included for either the Elohai Neshama or the Menahot/Berakhot blessings on the next page. Although the members of the Ritual Committee interviewed could not remember making a specific decision about the exclusion of the Hebrew here, perhaps because the Morning Blessings were read individually in the traditional synagogues in which the leaders grew up, none of them knew a melody. Not knowing a tune for these blessings, they saw no reason to include them in Hebrew, and only included them in English. Another possible reason is that they had rewritten three of the blessings and did not have anyone available who could render the new English compositions into Hebrew. The original Hebrew prayers in the prayer book reflect a strong yearning to pray in Hebrew, but come across as forced translations from the English. 53. The blessings appear here in the traditional Ashkenazic order. Sekvi is translated as “rooster,” consistent with the editors’ general faithfulness to a plain reading of the Hebrew text. Loyal to the tradition, they were not troubled by this anachronistic usage in an urban congregation. Compare with Gates of Prayer’s “planted mind and instinct in every living being.” Gates of Prayer, Service Six, 204–218. 54. “Theological language is either omitted completely from the English or is phrased so as to allow for the possibility of a multiplicity of subjective interpretations” (Stern, “Guide to the Services and Their Themes” in Hoffman, Gates of Understanding, 173). 55. U’becharta, Yom Kippur, 10. 56. Ibid.

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57. The second-person pronoun is used, switching from the third person in the prior phrase, to avoid having to use a gendered third-person pronoun. All references to God in this prayer book are gender neutral. 58. The members of the Ritual Committee who edited this prayer book are the “experts,” and their subtle transvaluation of the received blessing was unnoticed by many, but surely appreciated by some. An exceptionally rich and entirely new edition of the congregation’s prayer book, Siddur Sha’ar Zahav, was published in 2009. 59. U’becharta, Yom Kippur, 180. 60. Hoffman, “Censoring In, Censoring Out,” 19–37. 61. From the second paragraph of the Alenu, U’becharta, Rosh ha-Shana, 110. 62. A second draft edition was printed in 1991 but, for financial reasons, a final edition was never published. Cf. Isaac Mayer Wise’s emendation to asher yatzar, and Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, “New Versions of Kol Nidre,” 334–347. 63. Cf. Isaac Mayer Wise’s emendation to asher yatzar, and Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform, “New Versions of Kol Nidre,” 334–347. 64. See, for example Waskow, Godwrestling. 65. Gen. 32:29. 66. The first modern use of “who made me a woman,” is in Janowitz and Wenig, Siddur nashim. 67. The ultimate reduction of these blessings to personal categories is in Magonet and Blue, Forms of Prayer, 12. Each blessing is introduced by a contextual kavvanah (preparatory meditation). The kavvanot are printed in English; one column follows each one with the Hebrew, the other column with the English. All are about the personal relationship of the worshiper with God. The entire Berakhot set is treated in the same fashion:

When I doubt Your existence or make a god of my desires, let me find you again: . . . who has not made me a stranger to You. When I am frightened to choose or stand alone, strengthen my will to be free. . . . who has not enslaved me. When I despise myself or the world, let me find Your image within me again: . . . who made me as He wanted me. 68. The emphasis on Jewish identity is reinforced by the presentation on the facing English language page of Edmund Fleg’s “I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands no abdication of my mind.” Composed originally in French in 1927 as part of a “letter to my unborn grandson,” it was translated into English and published as part of a longer volume, Why I Am a Jew, and reprinted in Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, 480–485. 69. For example, the blessing “who frees the captive” is labeled: “For the ability to stretch.” Although consistent with the original talmudic statement: “When one stretches himself and sits up, one says: ‘Praised (is the One] who frees the captive,’” this makes little sense when surrounded by other blessings with rubrics such as: “For vision,” “For firm earth to stand upon,” and “For renewed enthusiasm for life.”

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CONCLUSION

1. BT Berakhot 26b. 2. “Religion as a Cultural System” in Interpretation of Cultures, 90. 3. Berger develops his argument though a series of three books: The Social Construction of Reality; The Sacred Canopy; and The Heretical Imperative. 4. Berger, Heretical Imperative, 26. 5. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 451. 6. The first haskamah (approbation) printed in a Hebrew book appeared In Jacob Landau’s Agur (Naples, ca.1490). See Jewish Encyclopedia (www.jewishencyclopedia. com), s.v. “Approbation,” and the detailed discussion of the practice in Venice in Benayahu, Copyright. 7. Sometimes the original word was restored in the space, but in other cases not, and the memory of what was there was destroyed. The Jews shared this ambivalence and were divided between those who sought to restore the expurgated portions to the text and those who saw this content as irrelevant. Similarly the erasure marks of the censors were often light and allowed the readers to read what had been “erased.” (Raz-Krakotzkin, Censor, 141) The idea that the censor’s marks were “light” may be rooted in the fading of the ink over the intervening 500 years. Many censored passages can be seen underneath the censor’s ink today; this does not mean that this was the case in the sixteenth century. 8. Ibid., 165. Compare Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions, 172, n. 7, who takes the opposite position: We should not measure the impact of the Talmud trials by their material implications alone. From now onwards, the study of Jewish law was not immune from outside danger in the consciousness of those engaged in it; the knowledge that their own literature became open to systematic Christian scrutiny must in itself have been oppressive to Jews. 9. Mehlman, Polemics, 259; Raz- Krakotzkin, Censor, 247, n. 31. In the 1561 edition of Kimhi’s commentary on the Bible, each use of “goyim” is replaced by “Babylonians.” The other thereby becomes an “abstract and ethereal entity and thus leads, apparently, to a definition of Jewish culture detached from its anti-Christian dimension” (Raz- Krakotzkin, Censor, 150). Similarly, as late as the nineteenth century, the verses of piyyutim that had been removed from the printed editions of prayer books were printed as separate broadsides that could be kept discretely hidden but removed when needed. Liturgical poems were often composed with each stanza beginning with the next letter of the alphabet; Goldschmidt, “Missing Piyyutim,” 146, notes the examples of poems in which the anti-Christian stanzas, beginning with the letters gimel and zayin, were excluded from the printed editions of prayer books, but separately printed to allow the complete recitation of an alphabetic litany. Raz-Krakotzkin notes how modern Jews have been reluctant to credit the censor with responsibility for “purifying” the text of the prayers:

NOTES TO PAGES

127–133

187

Between 1536 and 1548, a riforma was carried out among the Ashkenazim living in Italy. For it seems one or more of the Italian rabbis . . . was wise enough to “purify” the Selichot [poems] of anything that could provoke the anger of the nations against us, as they saw that the uncircumcised had begun to learn the holy tongue. The change was made “in order to avoid incurring Christian anger” (Samuel David Luzzatto [Italy, 1800–1865], writing to Leopold Zunz, Igrot Shadal, no. 1102). Goldschmidt, a modern Israeli scholar, apologetically explains why the anti-Christian sections were dropped: “It may well be that, in the course of time, the congregations found no reason to recite these verses and found it inappropriate to inspire feelings of hatred and vengeance among the worshippers on the Day of Atonement.” Goldschmidt attributes the removal of the strongly worded verses to the changing sentiments of the community “in the course of time” rather than to censorship (or the fear of censorship). Embarrassed by the fact of their composition, Goldschmidt, “Missing Piyyutim,” 146, is apologetic and asks the reader to “remember the period and the conditions of their composition.” 10. Concomitant with the voluntary creation of new forms in western Europe, eastern European Jews were still subject to external censorship. The only non-Hebrew words in an 1832 prayer book printed in Ostruha (Ostrog), Poland, is the printed note from “Cenzor Leon Borowski.” This prayer book is exceptional in that it fully writes out “who did not make me worshippers [sic] of stars and planets.” Other eastern European prayer books spell out “oved elilim (worshipper of idols) or “oved gilulim (worshipper of [idolatrous] figures),” cf. Mahzor . . . im sheloshah be’urim (Vilna, 1839), 3, and Liebkind, Modlitwy (Warsaw, 1846), 8.

APPENDIX

1. Manuscripts and early sources include Seder Rav Amram, Alfasi, Rabbi Asher, Halakhot Gedolot, etc.; see Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim, Menahot, 108, Bet; c.f. Epstein, Babylonian Talmud (“Soncino edition”), Menahot, 264, n. 4, and The Talmud of Babylonia, tr. Jacob Neusner (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984), Menahot, 29, I.66.B. 2. The primary difference, whether “one must say three things” (Palestinian Talmud) versus “obligated to bless three blessings” (TB and Tosefta) is not consistent within the manuscript traditions. The Tosefta manuscripts testify to both whereas some Talmud manuscripts simply say “three.” The insertion of “blessings” may have occurred later, when what began as a slogan was reconceptualized as an obligation. See Tosefta. ed. Saul Lieberman (Jerusalem: Sifre Vahrman, 1970), 38, 1. 83; Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim, Menaḥot, 108. 3. The interdependence of the versions found in the two Talmuds and in the Tosefta is supported by the virtually identical arrangement of proof texts that are presented in the Palestinian Talmud and the Tosefta. The Tosefta follows these proof texts with a parable:

188

NOTE TO PAGE

133

To what can the matter be compared? To a king of flesh and blood who said to his servant (lit. slave), “Cook me a dish” and he had never cooked a dish ever before, and ultimately he ruins the dish and angers his master. [He instructs him] to hem him a garment and he had never hemmed a garment in his life, and ultimately he soils the shirt and angers his master (Berakhot 6:18). The details of the Tosefta’s parable do not quite fit the situation. It explains why people who are inexperienced at tasks should not try to do them occasionally; it hardly seems to prove why these groups should a priori be excluded from doing them. Jacob Neusner’s gloss: “Thus those who are not properly schooled in the correct observance of the commandments should not attempt to perform them, lest their actions be an affront to God,” only highlights the circularity of the argument (Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Menahot, 41). Neusner may have in mind the halakhic statement that is often included in prayer book commentaries about these blessings: “It is greater to be commanded and to fulfill a mitzvah than not to be commanded and to fulfill the mitzvah” (TB Bava Kama 87a). Although it would appear that this final thrust is aimed at women, the sequence of “gentile, woman, slave” is not consistently maintained in the later sources; many have the order “gentile, slave, woman.” This parable may have originally been associated with a different context where it fit the circumstances more closely.

Bibliography

MANUSCRIPTS

Table B1. Genizah Prayer Books and Prayer Fragments Library and Shelf No.

IMHM Film No.*

Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit T-S 10 H 2.6

18931

T-S 6 H 2.10

18931

T-S 6 H 6.6

18935

T-S 8 H 10.13

18938

T-S 8 H 9.15

19719

T-S 8 H 9.7

19719

T-S H 18.7

18946

T-S NS 110.166

20804

T-S NS 110.42

20804

T-S NS 121.5

27066

T-S NS 121.7

27066

T-S NS 122.103

27067

T-S NS 152.7

30732

T-S NS 155.60

30712

T-S NS 155.99

30712

T-S NS 160.26

31229

T-S NS 160.27

31229

T-S NS 229.2

32486

T-S NS 229.6

32486 (Continued)

190 TABLE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B1. continued

Library and Shelf No.

IMHM Film No.*

T-S NS 230.11

32487

T-S NS 240.4

32497

T-S NS 271.21

32722

British Library Or. 5557 O

6518

National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Antonin B-0933

68936

Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania Halper 172 Cambridge University Library Add 3160:1

17559

Table B2. Prayer Book Manuscripts Library and Manuscript No.

IMHM Film No.*

British Library Add 8996 Add 18691

5056

Add 19944

5013

Add 18692

5058

Add 27029

5707

Add 27072

5753

Cambridge University Library Add 667:1

16997

Add 3160:1

17559

Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Klau Library, Cincinnati HUC 331

18304

HUC 440

18976

HUC 441

18977

HUC 442

18978

Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem JNUL 8 0986

B 46

JNUL 805492

B 75

Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York JTSA 4076

24978

JTSA 4522

25424

BIBLIOGRAPHY TABLE

191

B2. continued

Library and Manuscript No.

IMHM Film No.*

JTSA 4649

25552

JTSA 4653

25556

JTSA 8255

53131

JTSA 8257

54133

JTSA 8402 Mahzor Turin JTSA 8892 Rothschild Mahzor JTSA 8255

53131

Valmadonna Library Trust, London† Valmadonna 1

8860

Valmadonna 10

2392

Bibioteca Estensa Universitaria, Modena, Italy Modena-Estense γ.F.7.14

27770

Montefiore Trust Library, London† Montefiore 214

5184

Montefiore 217

5187

Oxford University, Bodleian Library Heb. f.22

21329

Heb. g.2

21307

Oppenheimer Add 11

22643/4

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris Paris heb. 214

05184

Paris heb. 616

11472

Paris heb. 633

31299

Paris heb. 642

11538

Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, Italy Parma 1744

12971

Parma 1759

12985

Parma 1765

12991

Parma 1776

13002

Parma 1781

14137

Parma 1783

13007

Parma 1785

13009

Parma 1789

13013

Parma 1799

12992

Parma 1909

13066

Parma 1916

13072

Parma 2575

13583 (Continued)

192 TABLE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B2. continued

Library and Manuscript No.

IMHM Film No.*

Parma 2891

13784

Parma 3009/1

13738

Parma 3136

13878

Parma 3518

14025

Sassoon Library, London† Ohel David 294 *Microfilm number at the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Hebrew National and University Library, Jerusalem. †These manuscripts remain identified by these shelf numbers despite having been sold to private collectors.

PRINTED PRAYER BOOKS

This list only includes prayer books cited in the text, or those that informed the conclusions drawn. Aaron ben Jehiel Michael ha-Levi. Mahzor Yerushelayim meirat einayim im ha-perush Mateh Levi. Brooklyn: Bet Mishar Sefarim Yerushalayim, 1950. Adler, Samuel, and Leo Merzbacher. Seder tefilah = The Order of Prayer for Divine Service. New York: Thalmessinger & Cahn, 1863. Albashiri, Yechiya. Sefer ha-tiklal. Edited by Shalom Korach. Jerusalem: Joseph Chabera, 1962. Amar, Chayyim David. Tefilah le-David. Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1981. Anspach, Joel, ed. Rituel des prières journalières a l’usage des Israelites. Metz: W. Hadamard, 1827. Aub, Joseph. Seder tefilot kol ha-shanah = Gebetbuch fur den offentlichen Gottesdienst im ganzen Jahre, nach dem Ritus der neuerbauten grossen Synagoge in Berlin. Berlin: G. Bernstein, 1866. Avodat Berith Shalom = Service of the Berith Shalom Congregation. Louisville: 1898. Baer, Isaac, ed. Seder Avodat Yisrael. Roedelheim: Lehrberger, 1868 [repr. Schocken: Berlin, 1936]. Bernfeld, Issac Tzvi. Siddur tefilah Hatam Sofer. New York: Grossman, 1968. Bloch, Joseph, ed. Sha’are Tefilah. Paris: Fondation Sefer, 1964. Bokser, Ben-Zion. ha-Sidur: le-hol, le-Shabat u’le-yom tov. New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1961. Cohen, Gerson D., Menahem Schmelzer, and Evelyn M. Cohen, eds. The Rothschild Mahzor: Florence, 1492. New York: The Library, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1983. Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. Kabbalat Shabbat. San Francisco: [n.d., 1978?], rev. 1995. Cordovero, Moses. Siddur tefilah ke-minhag Sefarad: ‘im perush tefilah le-Mosheh. Jerusalem: 1963.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

193

Davidson, Israel, et al., eds. Siddur Rav Saedyah. Jerusalem: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1978. Durlacher, E., ed. Seder ha-tefilot. Paris: Chez láuteur, 1876. Eliezer ben Nathan. Siddur ke-minhag Polin, Lita ve-Riisin ve-Mahrin im peirush R’aven. Ostrog: 1817. Elijah ben Solomon. Sidur ha-Gaon Rav Eliyahu. Edited by Naphtali Hertz Halevi. New York: Kol Torah, 1953. Emden, Jacob, ed. Siddur beit Yaakov. Lemberg: 1903. ———. Siddur . . . le-Maharyavets. Edited by Meir ben Zeev Segal. Tel Aviv: 1965. Epstein, Jacob N. Seder Rav Amram siduro u-mesadrav. Berlin: Eshkol, 1928. Epstein, Jehiel Michal ben Abraham, ed. Seder tefilah derekh yesharah. Amsterdam, 1768. ———. Seder tefilah ke-minhag Ashkenazim. . . . Karlsruhe: 1805. Finkelstein, Simon Isaac, ed. Seder tefilah: im beur Siah Yitshak u-maamarim shonim ba-halakhah va-agadah. Jerusalem, 1968. Freudenthal, Max, ed. Seder Tefilah = Israelitisches Gebutbuch fur die neue Synagogue in Danzig. Danzig: der Synagogen-Gemeinde zu Danzig, 1905. Friedmann, Bernhard. Seder ha-avodah = Israelitisches Gebetbuch für die öffentliche und häusliche Andacht. Mannheim: J. Vensheimer, 1868. Frishman, Elyse D., ed. Mishkan t’filah: A Reform Siddur: Weekdays, Shabbat, Festivals, and Other Occasions of Public Worship. New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2007. Frumkin, Aryeh Leib, ed. Seder Rav Amram ha-shalem. Jerusalem: Tzukerman, 1912. Fulop, Krausz, ed. Siddur al kanfe nefesh. Budapest: Roth Lajos Erzseber, 1934. Geiger, Abraham. Israelitisches gebet- und andachtsbuch, zum gebrauche bei der häuslichen und Affentlichen Gottesverehung. Stuttgart: R. Hofbuchdruckerei zu Guttenberg (J. v. Muller), 1848. ———. Seder tefilah devar yom be-yomo = Israelitisches Gebetbuch fur den offentlichen Gotttesdiesnt im ganzen Jahre. Breslau: Julius Hainauer, 1854. ———. Seder tefilah devar-yom be-yomo = Israelitisches Gebetbuch für den öffentlichen Gottesdienst im ganzen Jahre. Berlin: L. Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1870. Goldschmidt, Ernst Daniel, ed. Mahzor le-yamim ha-noraim. Jerusalem: Koren, 1970. ———, ed. Seder Rav Amram. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1971. Goldstein, M. A., ed. Ha-tefilah ve-ha-emuna = Gebet und Glaube. Ein beitrag zur Erklarung und Erlauterung des Gottesdienstes und dessen Gebrauche. Budapest: E. Neumayer, 1890. Harlow, Jules. Siddur Sim shalom: A Prayerbook for Shabbat, Festivals, and Weekdays. New York: Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of America, 1985. Hedegard, David, ed. Seder Rav Amram Gaon. Lund, 1982. Heidenheim, Wolf, ed. Mahzor le-yom rishon ve-shani shel pesach. Roedelheim: W. Heidenheim, 1827. ———, ed. Sefer kerovot hu mahzor. Vienna: Anton E. Schmid, 1827. ——— and Isaac Berlin, eds. Sefer kerovot hu mahzor: le-yom rishon shel Rosh ha-Shanah, ke-minhag Polin. Hannover: 1838. Hertz, Joseph, ed. Authorized Daily Prayer Book. New York: Bloch, 1948.

194

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herzfeld, Levi. Tefillat Jisrael: Das Jisraelitische Gebetbuch nach dem Braunschweiger Ritus. Brunswick: J.H. Meyer, 1874. Hirsch, Samson Raphael, ed. The Hirsch Siddur. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1969. Huebsch, A. Seder tefila = Gebete for den offentlichen Gottesdienst der Tempelgemeinde Ahawath Chesed. New York: 1872. Israel, Ben. Gebet- und Gesangbuch für die Sabbathe und Feste des Jahres. Coblenz: Coblenz Israelitische Gemeinde, 1850. ——— and H. Mayer. Seder tefilah = Gebetbuch für Synagoge und Haus: namentlich in Gemeinden, welche bezüglich des Gottesdienstes Beschlüsse der Rabbiner = Versammlungen in Ausführung gebracht haben. Brilon: M. Friedlander, 1872. Janowitz, Naomi, and Margaret Moers Wenig. Siddur nashim: A Sabbath Prayer Book for Women; Translated and Supplemented with Original and Traditional Material. Providence: [self-published], 1976. Joe1, Manuel. Seder tefilah = Israelitisches Gebutbuch fur die offentliche Andacht des ganzen Jahres. Berlin: L. Herschel, 1872. Kaempf, Saul Isaac, ed. Sihat Yitshak: Israel Gebetbuch. Prague: Samuel Polcheles, 1874. ———. Zimrat Yah = Gottesdienstliches Gesangbuch eingefuhrt im israelitischen Temple zu Prag. Prague, 1849. Kokotek, Jakob J. Prayerbook for Jewish Worship throughout the Year. London: New Liberal Jewish Congregation, 1962. Kook, Abraham Isaac. Seder tefilah im perush olat reiyah. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1985. Landau, Abraham ben Raphael, “Shomea tefila.” In: Sidur tefilah tselota de-Avraham: ‘ al pi nusah ve-seder she-hitpalel . . . Avraham Landa. Jerusalem: Gal-’ed, 1991. Landshuth, Eliezer. Siddur hegyon lev. Koenigsburg: A. Samter, 1845. Lavie, Aliza. Tefilat nashim: pesifas nashi shel tefilot ve-sipurim. Tel Aviv: Yedi’ot aharonot: Sifre hemed, 2005. Lazar, Moshe, ed. Libro de Oracyones: Ferrara Ladino Siddur [1552]. The Sephardic classical library, 11. Lancaster, Calif.: Labyrinthos, 1995. ———, ed. Siddur tefillot: A Woman’s Ladino Prayer Book; Paris B.N., Esp. 66. The Sephardic classical library, 10. Lancaster, Calif.: Labyrinthos, 1995. Levat, Aaron David, ed. Siddur Torah or ve-shaar ha-kolel. Vilna: ha-Almanah ve-haAchim Rom, 1910. Liebkind, Henryk. Modlitwy dla Izraelitów = Tefilot Yisra’el; na dni zwyczajne i uroczyste. Warsaw: Nakładem Jakóba Rothwand, 1846. Luzzatto, Samuel David. Seder tefilah ke-fi minhag . . . Ashkenazim = formulario delle orazioni degli’ Israeliti. Vienna: A. Strauss, 1821. Magonet, Jonathan, and Lionel Blue, eds. Forms of Prayer. London: Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, 1975. Mahazor: ke-minhag Ashkenazim shebe-khol gelilot Itale’ah. Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1823. Mahazor mi-kol ha-shanah k’minhag Polin w’Lita w’Reisin. Ostruha (Ostrog), Poland: Klahr, 1832.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

195

Mahzor . . . im sheloshah be’urim . . . Bet Levi, Mateh Levi, Ma’aśeh oreg. . . . ve-shem ha-kolel meha-be’urim Korban Aharon. . . . Vilna: Menahem b. R. Barukh v’Simhah Zimel, 1839. Mahzor ke-Minhag K’K Ashkenazim. Fuerth: 1779 [repr. Sulzbach, 1809]. Mahzor ke-minhag Polin, Raisin, Liṭa, Pihem, Mehrin v.e-Ungarin: husdar me-ḥadash be-seder na’eh ve-yafeh. Vienna: Anton von Shmid, 1835. Mahzor le-rosh ha-shanah v.e-yom ha-kipurim: ke-minhag Raisin, Liṭa, Polin, Fihem, u-Mahren; im perush leshon ha-k.odesh v.e-im perush leshon Ashkenaz ha-mo-atak. le-lashon meduberet. . . . Zhitomer: H. Lipa veha-Rabani Y.H. Shapira, 1862. Maier, Joseph von. Israelitische Gebetordnung: für Synagoge und Schule, wie zur häuslichen Gottesverehrung. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1861. ———. Seder tefilah = unter Zugrundelegung des Kirchenrat Dr. Maier’schen Gebetbuches zum Gebrauche des israelitischen Gemainde in München herausgegeben. Munich: Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in München, 1891. Marks, David. W. Seder ha-tefilot: Forms of Prayer Used in the West London Synagogue of British Jews: With an English Translation. London: J. Wertheimer, 1841. Mayer, David. Gebetbuch: Für Werktage, Sabbathe, Befreiungsfest, Offenbarungsfest und Laubhüttenfest. Karlsruhe: Verlag des Grossh, Oberrats der Israeliten, 1905. Meklenburg, Jacob Tzvi. Siddur derekh ha-hayim. Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1954. Melamed, Meir Matzliah, ed. Siddur ha-Merkaz: le-fi minhag ha-Sefaradim va-adot ha-Mizrach. Jerusalem: ha-Merkaz ha-hinukhi ha-Sefaradi bi-Yerushalayim, 1983. Netter, Solomon Z., ed. Seder tefilat he-hadash ke-minhag K’K Sefaradim. Vienna: Solomon Netter, 1863. Otsar ha-tefilot. Vilna: Ha-almanah veha-achim Rom, 1914. Perles, Joseph [Perets ben Barukh Asher Perles], ed. Israelitische Gebetordnung= Seder tefilah: unter Zugrundelegung des Kirchenrath Dr. Maierschen Gebetbuches zum Gebrauche der Israelitischen Gemeinde in München herausgegeben. Stuttgart: Adolf Benz, 1876; Munich: 1891. Phillipson, Ludwig. Neues Israelitisches Gebetbuch für die Wochentage, Sabbathe und alle Feste: Zum Gebrauch während des Gottesdienstes und bei der häuslichen Andacht. Berlin: Gerschel, 1864. Riera i Sans, Jaume, ed. El Siddur en català a dels conversos jueus: (s. XV). Barcelona: Reial Academia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, 1993. Sachs, Michael. Gebetbuch fur Israeliten = Tefilat Yeshurun. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1860 [repr. 1864]. Salih, Yahya ben Joseph, ed. Tiklal ets hayim ha-shalem. Jerusalem: H. Sh. Mehabuv, 1972. ———, ed. Tiklal torat avot. Benai Brak: Torat Avot, 1991. Seder Tefilat Yisrael im derekh haim. Altona: Yehudah v’Shmuel Bon, 1831. Seder tov lehodot. Amsterdam: Verbond van Liberaal Religieuze Joden in Nederland, 1964. Seligman, Caesar, Ismar Elbogen, and Hermann Vogelstein, eds. Tefilot le-khol ha-shanah = Gebetbuch fur das ganze Jahr. Frankfurt am Main: M. Lehrberger, 1929.

196

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Scherman, Nosson, and Meir Zlotowitz. Sidur K.ol Ya’ak.ov = the Complete Artscroll Siddur. ArtScroll mesorah series. Brooklyn, N.Y: Mesorah Publications, 1990. Silverman, Morris, ed. Sabbath and Festival Services. Hartford: Fox Press, 1936. ———, ed. Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book. New York: Rabbinical Assembly of America, 1946. Simhah ben Samuel. Mahzor Vitri. Edited by Simeon Hurwitz. Nuremburg: Bulka, 1923. Sofer, Shabbtai. Siddur . . . Maha’r Shabtai Sofer. Edited by David Sats and Isaac Yitzchaki. Baltimore: Yeshivat Ner Yisrael, 1994. Solomon ben Samson of Worms. Siddur Rabenu Shelomoh. Edited by Moshe Herschler. Jerusalem: 1971. Stein, Leopold. Gebetbuch für israelitische Gemeinden. Mannheim: I. Schneider, 1882. ———. Seder ha-’avodah Gebetbuch für israelitische Gemeinden. Nach dem ritus der hauptsynagogue zu Frankfurt. Frankfurt: Druck von J. Lehrberger & Company, 1860. Stern, Chaim. Sha’are tefilah = Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook: Weekdays, Sabbaths, and Festivals, Services and Prayers for Synagogue and Home. New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1975. Stern, S. G., ed. Machsor Die sammtlichen Festgebete der Israeliten. Vienna: Joseph Schlesinger, 1908. Szold, Benjamin, and Marcus Jastrow. Israelitish Prayer Book, for All the Public Services of the Year. Philadelphia: M. Jastrow, 1873. Tal, Shelomo, ed. Nusah ha-tefilah shel Yehude Paras. Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben Tzvi, 1980. Tarnor, Norman. A Book of Jewish Women’s Prayers: Translations from the Yiddish. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1995. Tefilat Yisrael = The Form of Daily Prayers, according to the Custom of the German and Polish Jews with a New Translation in Prose and Verse. Frankfurt-on-the-Maine: J. Kaufmann, 1876. Tefillat Jisrael: Das israelitische Gebetbuch nach dem Braunschweiger Ritus, bearbeitet und übersetzt. Braunschweig: J.H. Meyer, 1855. Tkharek, Abraham ben Aaron Joseph, ed. Siddur bet Avraham. Brooklyn: J. Gotlieb, 1974. Venture, Mardoche, ed. Prieres des jours de Ros-Haschana et du jour de De Kippour, a l’usage des Juifs Portugais ou Espagnols. Paris: Levy, 1807. Vogelstein, Heinemann. Seder tefilah = Israelitisches Gebetbuch. Westfalens: Verbandes der Synagogen-Gemeinden Westfalens, 1894. Werner, Kossman. Seder tefilah = Israelitisches Gebutbuch fur die neue Synagogue in Danzig Danzig: der Synagogen-Gemeinde zu Danzig, 1887. Wise, Isaac Mayer, ed. Minhag America. Cincinnati: Bloch, 1870. ———, ed. Tefilot Bnai Yeshurun = The Divine Service of American Israelites for the Day of Atonement. Cincinnati: Bloch, 1866. ———, ed. The Daily Prayer for American Israelites, as Revised in Conference. Cincinnati: Bloch, 1872 [rev. 1889].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

197

Wohl, Asher, ed. Siddur Beit El. Vilna: Spomnick, 1920. Zeev, Judah Leib. Tefila Zaka. Vienna: A. Schmid, 1815.

COMMENTARIES AND SECONDARY WORKS ON JEWISH PRAYER AND LITURGY

Abrahams, Israel. Companion to the Authorized Daily Prayerbook. New York: Hermon, 1966. Abudarham, David ben Joseph. Sefer Abudarham. Edited by Yehudah Ehrenreich. Cluj-Klausenberg: Weinstein and Friedman, 1927. Adler, E. N. “The Persian Jews: Their Books and Their Ritual.” Jewish Quarterly Review, o.s., 10:4 (July 1898), 584–625. Anonymous. “Women’s Rights in Collision with the Prayers.” The Occident XV (1857): 175–180. Assaf, Simha. “From the Prayer Book of the Land of Israel [Heb.]” in: Sefer Dinaburg: Studies Offered to Ben-Zion Dinaburg, edited by Y. Baer et al. Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1949, 116–131. ———. “Sefer megilat setarim le-Rav Nisim bar Yaakov mi-Kairouan.” Tarbitz 11 (1940): 229–239. Azriel of Gerona. Commentaire sur la liturgie quotidienne. Edited by Gabrielle Sed-Rajna. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974. Beit-Arie, Malachi. “The Blessings for the Limbs [Heb.].” Tarbits 46 (1987): 265–272. ———. The Only Dated Medieval Hebrew Manuscript Written in England (1189 CE). London: Valmadonna Trust Library, 1985. Ben-Artzi, Hagai. “The Blessing: ‘who Did not Make Me a Woman’: Is There an Alternative? [Heb.]” Akdamut 4 (1998): 129–30. Berliner, Abraham. Randbemerkungen zum taglichen Gebetbuche. Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1909. Cassuto, Umberto. “Judeo-Italian Translations of the Liturgy (Fr.).” Revue des Études Juives 89 (1930): 260–280. Chemiel, Hayyim. “Who Did Not Make Me a Gentile [Heb.].” Sinai 93 (1983): 59–62. Cheyne, C. K. “Letter to the Editor.” Academy 42 (1882): 14. Dembitz, Lewis N. Jewish Services in Synagogue and Home. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1898. Ehrlich, Uri. Kol ‘atsmotai tomarnah: ha-safah ha-lo milulit shel ha-tefilah. Sidrat sefarim le-heker ha-Mikra mi-yesodo shel S. Sh. Peri. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999. ———. The Nonverbal Language of Prayer: A New Approach to Jewish Liturgy. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Elbaum, Yaakov. “Concerning Two Textual Emendations in the Alenu Prayer.” Tarbiz 42 (1973): 1–2, 204–208. Elbogen, Ismar. Jewish Liturgy. Edited by Raymond P. Scheidlin. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993. Eliezar of Worms. Peirush siddur ha-tefila la-Rokeach. Edited by Moshe Herschler. Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Rav Hershler, 1992.

198

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eliezer ben Natan. “Siddur ha-meyuchas le-Ravan.” Genuzot: Kovets ‘et li-genuzot rishonim. Edited by Moshe Hershler. Jerusalem: Bet Midrash La-Torah—Makhon Gavoah le-Halakhah Ve-Horaah Shalem, 1984. Ellenson, David. “Emancipation and the Directions of Modern Judaism: The Lessons of Meliz Yosher.” Studia Rosenthaliana 30 (1996): 118–136. ———. “The Mannheimer Prayerbooks and Modern Central European Communal Liturgies.” In: Between Tradition and Culture: The Dialectics of Modern Jewish Religion and Identity. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994, 59–78. ———. “Reform Judaism in Nineteenth Century America: The Evidence of the Prayerbooks.” In: Between Tradition and Culture: The Dialectics of Modern Jewish Religion and Identity. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994, 179–196. Epstein, Baruch Halevi. Baruch she-amar. Tel Aviv: Am Olam, 1968. Feldman, Emanuel. “An Articulate Berakha.” Tradition 294 (1995): 69–74. Fleischer, Ezra. Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Genizah Documents. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988. Freehof, Solomon. “The Structure of Birchos Ha-Shachar.” Hebrew Union College Annual XXIII II (1951): 339–354. Friedland, Eric Lewis. “Jewish Worship since the Period of Its Canonization.” In: The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, 137–145. ———. “Sephardic Influences on the American Jewish Liturgy.” Shofar 11 (1991): 12–21. ———. The Historical and Theological Development of the Non-Orthodox Prayerbooks in the United States. PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1967. Friedland, Eric L. “were Our Mouths Filled with Song”: Studies in Liberal Jewish Liturgy. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, 20. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997. Frish, Daniel. Sefer kavanat ha-berakhot. Jerusalem: D. Frish, 1984. Gagin, Shalom Moses Hai. Samah nefesh: Otsar male mishpete ve-dine berakhot. Jerusalem: Y. N. Levi, 1902. Gaguin, Shemtob. Keter Shem Tov, yakhil bo ta’ame ha-minhagim be-nusah ha-tefilot v-ha-berahot. London: Superior Printers, 1900. Goitein, S. D. Introduction to A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978. Goldschmidt, Ernst Daniel. “A Prayerbook Manuscript from the Fifteenth Century [Heb.].” Kiryat Sefer 20 (1943): 171. ———. “Maimonides Rite of Prayer according to an Oxford Manuscript.” Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 7 (1958): 183–213 [repr. in On Jewish Liturgy, 1978]. ———. On Jewish Liturgy = Mehkere tefilah u-piyut. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978. ———. “On the Romanian Mahzor and Its Customs [Heb.]. Sefunot 8 (1964): 205–236 [repr. in On Jewish Liturgy, 1978]. ———. “Restoration of Missing Piyyutim to the Mahzor for the Day of Atonement [Heb.].” Kiryat Sefer 3 (1955): 146–151.

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199

———. The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1969. Gordis, Robert. “‘In His Image’: A New Blessing, An Old Truth.” Conservative Judaism 40 (1987): 81–85. Groner, Tzvi. “A Blessing which was Forgotten and Restored [Heb.].” Bar Ilan University Yearbook 141 (1977): 94–97. Halamish, Moshe. “An Early Version of Alenu le-Shabeah.” Sinai 110 (1992): 262–265. ———. “The Blessing ‘who Gives Strength to the Weary’ [Heb.].” In: Ha-kabalah ba-tefilah, ba-halakhah uva-minhag. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2000, 447–463. ———. “Unusual Blessings in the Morning Blessings [Heb.].” Ha-kabalah ba-tefilah, ba-halakhah uva-minhag. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2000, 436–46. Hammer, Reuven. Or Hadash: A Commentary on Sidur Sim Shalom le-hol. New York: Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2008. Hanau, Solomon ben Judah, ed. Shaare tefilah. Jessnitz: 1725. Hasida, Israel Isaac. “Towards an Understanding of the Three Blessings.” Sinai 99 (1986): 95–96. Heinemann, Joseph. Prayer in the Talmud. New York: de Gruyter, 1977. Hoffman, Lawrence. A. Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. ———. “Blessings and Their Translation in Current Jewish Liturgies.”Worship 60 (1986): 134–161. ———. “Censoring In, Censoring Out: A Function of Liturgical Language.” In: Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research, edited by Joseph Guttman. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981, 19–37. ———. “How Ritual Means: Ritual Circumcision in Rabbinic Culture and Today.” Studia Liturgica 23 (1993): 78–97. ———. “Jewish Spirituality: the Life of Blessing [Fr.].” Concilium 229 (1990): 33–47. ———. “Reconstructing Ritual.” In: The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, 34–41. ———. “Setting the Boundaries for Prayerbook Criticism: Paradigm and Technique.” Journal of Reform Judaism 32 (1995): 39–60. ———, ed. Sha’are binah = Gates of Understanding: A Companion Volume to Shaarei Tefillah. New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1977. ———. The Canonization of the Synagogue Service. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. ——— and Nancy Weiner. “The Liturgical State of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.” European Judaism 24 (1991): 10–21. Jacobson, Issachar. Netiv binah. Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1964. Jawitz, Wolf. Mekor ha-berakhot. Jerusalem: Kiryah Neemanah, 1965. Jochnowitz, George. “ . . . Who Made Me a Woman.” Commentary 71 (1981): 63–64. Kahn, Yoel. “The Liturgy of Gay and Lesbian Jews.” In: Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish, edited by Andy Rose and Christy Balka. Philadelphia: Beacon, 1989, 182–197.

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———. “Wrestling with God’s Image in the High Holiday Liturgy.” CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly LVI/II (Spring 2009): 26–38. Kaufmann, David. “The Oldest Three Benedictions [Ger.]” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 37 (1893): 14–18. Langer, Ruth. To Worship God Properly: Tensions between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1998. Lardner, Gerald V. “‘Hoffman’s Laws’: A Proposal.” In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy. Valparaiso, Ind.: The Academy, 1989, 142–146. Lazar, Moshe. “La traduction hébraïco-provençale du rituel.” In : Mélanges de langue et de littérature du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance offerts à Jean Frappier. Geneva: Droz, 1970, 575–561. Leneen, Jacob. “A Mahzor of the School of Rashi in the Cambridge University Library.” Revue Etudes Juives 12 (1966): 127–129. Luzzatto, Samuel David. Mavo le-mahzor bene Roma. Edited by Daniel Goldschmidt. Tel Aviv: D’vir, 1966. Mann, Jacob. “Changes in the Divine Service of the Synagogue Due to Religious Persecutions.” Hebrew Union College Annual IV (1927): 241–310. ———. “Geniza Fragments of the Palestinian Order of Service.” Hebrew Union College Annual II (1925): 269–279. Marx, Alexander. “Untersuchungen zum Siddur des Gaon R. Amram.” In: Jahrbuch Jűdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 5 (1907). Hebrew section, 1–38. Marx, Dalia Sara. Early Morning Ritual in Jewish Liturgy. PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2005. Millgram, Abraham. Jewish Worship. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1971. Mintz-Manor, Ophir. “Why Are You Giving an Opening to the Heretics? Towards a Solution of the Question of Censorship in Piyyutim for Shavuot.” Tarbits 70 (2001): 3–4, 637–644. Mitchell, H. Murray. “Une Prière Judeo-Persane.” Academy 41 (1892): 616–617. Munk, Eliezer. The World of Prayer. New York: P. Feldheim, 1963. Petuchowski, Jakob J. “From Censorship Prevention to Theological Reform: A Study in the Modern Jewish Prayerbook. Hebrew Union College Annual XL/XLI (1960): 299–324. ———. Prayerbook Reform in Europe. New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968. ———, ed. The Sabbath Prayer Book of the Hebrew Union College Jerusalem: A Description. Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College, 1964. Reif, Stefan C. “Liturgical Difficulties and Geniza Manuscripts.” In: Studies in Judaism and Islam Presented to S. D. Goiten, edited by S. D. Goiten, S. D., Shelomo Morag, Issachar Ben-Ami, and Norman A. Stillman. Jerusalem: 1981, 99–122. ———. Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. Shabbethai Sofer and His Prayer-book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

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201

———. “The Early History of Jewish Worship.” In: The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and. Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, 109–136. ———, and Shulamit Reif. The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance. Cambridge University Library Genizah series, 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Riegler, Michael, and Judith R. Baskin. “May the Writer Be Strong:’ Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts Copied by and for Women. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 16 (2008): 9–28. Riskin, S. “The Blessing ‘who Did Not Make Me a Woman’: Is There a Possibility for Change? [Heb.]” In: Li-heyot ishah Yehudiyah: divre ha-kenes ha-benleumi ha-rishon, ishah ve-Yahadutah, edited by Margalit Shilo. Jerusalem: Urim, 1999, 139–149. Sarason, Richard. “On the Use of Method in the Modern Study of Jewish Liturgy.” In: Approaches to Ancient Judaism, edited by William Scott Green. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978, 97–172. Schechter, Abraham I. Studies in Jewish Liturgy: Based on a Unique Manuscript Entitled Seder Hibbur Berakot. Philadelphia: Dropsie, 1930. Schechter, Solomon. “A Version of the Kaddish [Heb.].” Tehilah le-David = Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an David Kaufmann. Edited by Marcus Brann and Ferdinand Rosenthal. Breslau: F. S. Shottlender, 1900. Schuck, Salomon, ed. Siddur Rashban: Mekore ha-tefilot mehabrehen u-zemanan. Vienna:J. Schlesinger, 1894. Signer, Michael A. “The Poetics of Liturgy.” In: The Changing Face of Jewish and Christian Worship in North America, edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, 184–198. Stern, Chaim, and A. Stanley Dreyfus. “Notes to Shaarei Tefillah.” In: Sha’arai Binah = Gates of Understanding, edited by Lawrence Hoffman. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1977, 177–270. Tabory, Joseph. Reshimat maamarim be inyenai tefilah ve-moadim. Kiryat Sefer. Supplement to vol. 64. Jerusalem: Bet ha-Sefarim ha-Leumi, 1992. ———. “The Benedictions of Self-Identity and the Changing Status of Women and of Orthodoxy.” Kenishta 11 (2001): 107–138. Tal, Shelomo. The Prayerbook and Its Evolution: Answers to Questions Following the Publication of Siddur Rinat Yisrael. Jerusalem: N. Tal, 1984. Ta-Shma, Israel M. Minhag Ashkenaz ha-kadmon: heker ve-iyun. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992. Ta-Shma, Israel M., Halakhah, minhag u-metsiut be-Ashkenaz, 1000–1350. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996. Wachs, Sharona R. American Jewish Liturgies: A Bibliography of American Jewish Liturgy from the Establishment of the Press in the Colonies through 1925. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997. Wieder, Naphtali. “Changes in the Forms of Prayer under the Influence of Foreign Languages [Heb.].” Sinai 81 (1977): 40–42.

202

BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. Formation of Jewish Liturgy in the East and the West, 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mechon Ben-Tzvi, 1998. ———. Islamic Influences on Jewish Worship [Heb.] Oxford: Sifriyat Mizrah u-Maarav, 1947. ———. “On the Blessings ‘Goy’, ‘Eved’, ‘Ishah’, ‘Behama’ and ‘Bor’ [Heb.].” Sinai 85 (1984): 97–115. ———. “On the Text of the Alenu [Heb.].” Tarbits 44 (1974): 203–204. ———. “One Hundred Blessings = Birchot ha-Shachar [Heb.]” Sinai 44 (1959): 258–260. ———. “Permutations of an Anti-Christian and Anti-Moslem Gematria [Heb.]” Sinai 86 (1975): 1–14. ———. “The Form ‘rabun’ in Hebrew Sources [Heb.].” Leshonenu 27/28: 217–218. Weiner, Robert. Baer’s Siddur: An Analysis of Baer’s Authoritative Prayer Book Commentary (rabbinic thesis). New York: HUC-JIR, 2000. Weinfeld, Moshe. “The Morning Prayers in Qumran and in the Conventional Jewish Liturgy.” Revue de Qumran 13 (1988): 481–494. Wolowelsky, Joel. “‘Who Has Not Made Me a Woman:’ A Quiet Berakha.” Tradition 294 (1995): 61–68. Yashar, M. “The Blessing ‘who Did Not Make Me a Gentile.’” Sinai 51 (1962): 50–59. Yehuda bar Yakar. Commentary on the Prayers and Blessings [Heb.]. Edited by Shmuel Yerushalmi. Jerusalem: Meorai Yisrael, 1969. Zahavy, Tzvee. “A New Approach to Early Jewish Prayer.” In: History of Judaism. The Next Ten Years, edited by M. Bokser Baruch. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980, 45–60. ———. Studies in Jewish Prayer. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990. Zimmels, J. “The Question of the Additions to the Siddur of Rav Amram Gaon [Heb.]” Sinai 18 (1946): 262–283. Zivun, Gili. “‘Who Did Not Make Me a Woman’ and ‘who Made According to His Will’: A Proposal for a Different Blessing [Heb.].” In: Women in Halakhic Discourse [Heb.], edited by Hanah Halpern and Micah D. Safrai. Jerusalem: Urim, 1998, 5–25.

WORKS ON JEWISH LAW AND PRACTICE

Aaron ben Jacob ha-Kohen of Lunel. Orhot hayim. Edited by Mosheh ben Elyakim Shlezinger. Israel: 1980. Abraham ben David. Hasagot ha-Rabad le-mishneh torah. Edited by Betzalel Naor. Jerusalem: B. Naor, 1984. ———. Teshuvot u-fesakim. Edited by Yosef Kafah. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1964. Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne. Sefer ha-eshkol. Edited by B. H. Auerbach. Tel Aviv: 1964. Abraham ben Maimonides. “Chapter 24 and A Portion of Chapter 25 from Sefer al-Kefaiyah.” In: Festschrift zu Israel Lewy’s siebzigstem Geburtstag, edited by S. Openstein. Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1911, 33–55.

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203

Abraham ben Moses. Teshuvot. Edited by S. D. Goiten. Jerusalem: Mikitse Nirdamim, 1937. Abraham of Lunel. Ha-manhig. Edited by Yitzchak Raphael. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1978. Abudarham, David ben Joseph. Perush ha-berakhot ve-hatefilot Abudarham ha-shalem. Edited by Shelomo Verthaimer. Jerusalem: Usha, 1958. Alfasi, Isaac bar Jacob. Hilkhot Rav Alfasi. Edited by Nissan Sachs. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1969. Algazi, Yisrael Yaakov. Sefer Shilmai Tzibur. Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1987. Anau, Tsedakiah ben Abraham. Shibbolei ha-leket ha-shalem. New York: Sura, 1966. Anau, Yehiel ben Yekuthiel ben Benjamin. Tanya rabati. Edited by Gedalie Felder. New York: G. Felder, 1975. Arama, Isaac ben Moses. Akedat Yitshak. Lemberg: A. Y. Madpis, 1868. Asher ben Jehiel. Tosfot ha-Rosh le-Berakhot. Melbourne: S. Edvin, 1990. Asher of Lunel. “Sefer ha-minhagot.” Sifran shel Rishonim. Edited by Assaf Simcha. Jerusalem, 1935, 121–74. Azulai, Chayim Yosef. Kesher gudal. Jerusalem: Ma’ayn Chochma, 1956. Bedarshi, Manoach ben Simeon. Sefer ha-menuhah. Edited by Eleazar Horvitz. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1970. Brody, Robert, ed. Teshuvot Rav Natronai bar Hilai Ga’on. Jerusalem: Mekhon Ofek, 1994. Danzig, Abraham ben Jehiel Michal, and Aaron Joseph Bloch. Haye Adam. New York, 1967. David ben Judah. The Book of Mirrors = Sefer mar’ot ha-zove’ot. Edited by Daniel Matt. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982. Duran, Simeon ben Zemach. Ha-tashbets. Amsterdam: Meir Kreskas, 1738. Eleazar ben Judah of Worms. Ha-rokeah ha-gadol. Jerusalem: Otsar ha-poskim, 1966. Eliezer ben Joel ha Levi of Bonn. Sefer Rabiya. Edited by Avigdor Aptowitzer. Brooklyn: Makhon Hari Fishel li-derishat ha-Talmud, 1982. Ellinson, Getsel. ha-Ishah veha-mitsvot. Jerusalem: Sifriyat Eliner, 1977. Epstein, Isidore, ed. The Babylonian Talmud. London: Soncino Press, 1935. Felder, Gedalie. Yesode Yeshurun. Toronto: LaSalle Press, 1954. Felder, Gedalie. “Pri Yeshurun.” In: Jehiel ben Jekuthiel ben Benjamin Anau, Tanya Rabati. New York: G. Felder, 1975. Friedman, Israel Hayyim. Likute Maharih. Brooklyn: Bet Mishar Ve-hotsaat Sefarim Yerushalayim, 1964. Halberstam, S. J. (Solomon Joachim), ed. “Pirkei rabeinu ha-kodesh.” In: Ha-likutim III. Edited by Eliezer Grunhut. Jerusalem: 1898, 33–93. Hayyim Ben Moses Ibn Attar. Or ha-hayim. Judaic Classics Deluxe Edition. CD-ROM. Chicago: Davka, 2005. Henkin, Yehudah Hertsel. Bene banim. Jerusalem: Hamehaber, 2004. Hildesheimer, J., ed. Halachoth gedoloth nach dem Texte der Handschrift der Vaticana. Berlin: Mekitse Nirdamim, 1888. Horowitz, Chaim Meir, ed. Pirkei de-Rabi Eliezar. Jerusalem: Makor, 1972.

204

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horowitz, Isaiah. Shnei Luchot ha-Berit. Judaic Classics Deluxe Edition CD-ROM. Chicago: Davka, 2005. Ibn Gabbai, Meir ben Ezekiel ibn Constantine. Tolaat Yaakov. Lvov: 1799. Ibn Shuab, Joshua. Derashot al ha-torah. Cracow: 1573. Isaac ben Abba Mari. Ha-ittur. Vilna: 1874. Israel ibn Al-Nakawa. Menorat ha-meor. Edited by H. G. Enelow. New York: Bloch, 1929. Jacob ben Judah of London. Etz hayyim. Edited by Israel Brodie. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1961. Jaffe, Mordechai ben Abraham. Levush. Berdichev: 1818. Joseph ben Moses. Leket yosher. Edited by Jacob Freimann. Jerusalem: 1963. Judah ben Barzillai. Sefer ha-itim. Edited by Yaakov Shor. Cracow: Mekitse Nirdamim, 1903. Judah ben Samuel. Sefer hasidim. Edited by Jacob Freimann. Frankfurt: Veirmann, 1924. Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Netivot Olam. Judaic Classics Deluxe Edition CD-ROM. Chicago: Davka, 2005. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus ben Meir. Even bohan. Edited by Abraham Meir Habermann. Tel Aviv: Mahbarot le-sifrut, 1956. Kayara, Shimon, ed. Halakhot gedolot: According to ms. Venice 308 [Heb.] Jerusalem: Makhon Ohr ha-Mizrach, 1991. Kimhi, David. Sefer ha-shorashim le-Rabi David ben Yosef Kimhi ha-Sefaradi. Edited by Johann Heinrich Biesenthal and F. Lebrecht. Jerusalem: 1966. Kluger, Solomon. Sheelot u-teshuvot ha-elef lekha shelomah. Bilgoraj: N. Kronenberg, 1931. Kook, Abraham Isaac. Orot ha-kodesh. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1963. Kosman, Joseph. Noheg ka-tson Yosef: dinim, minhagim u-farperaot. Tel Aviv: 1968. Landau, Jacob ben Judah. Ha-agur ha-shalem. Edited by Moshe Hershler. Jerusalem: Moznayim, 1960. Lewin, Benjamin. Metivot. Jerusalem: 1934. ———. Otzar ha-geonim. Haifa: 1928. Lieberman, Saul. Tosefta. Jerusalem: Sifre Vahrman, 1970. ———. Tosefta ki-feshuta. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955. Machir ben Abba Mari. Yalkut Makhiri. Edited by Judah Spira. Jerusalem: 1964. Maimonides, Moses. Kovets teshuvot ha-Rambam ve-igrotav. Leipzig: 1859. Maimonides, Moses. Mishneh Torah. Mechon Mamre, 2010. http://www.mechonmamre.org/i/0.htm. Medini, Hayyim Hezekiah. Sadei chemed. Brooklyn: Kehat, 1959. Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg. Teshuvot, pesakim u-minhagim. Edited by Isak Farkas Kahana. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1957. Meiri, Menahem. Hidushei ha-Meiri. Warsaw: 1912. Meiri, Menahem ben Solomon. Magen Avot. Edited by I. Last. London: Y. Naroditski, 1909. Meyuchas, Moses Mordechai, ed. Sha’are teshuvah ha-Geonim: teshuvot ha-Geonim. Pittsburgh: Mechon ha-Rambam, 1946.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

205

Moses ben Jacob of Coucy. Sefer mitzvot gadol. Jerusalem: Mechon Yerushalayim, 1993. Nazir, Joseph ben Hayim Moses ha-Levi. Mateh Yosef . . . she’elot u-teshuvot. Constantinople: Yonah ben Ya’akov, 1717. Ornstein, Yaakov. Yeshuot Yaakov. Zholkva: M. Z. Meir Hofer, 1827. Pardo, David Samul, ed. Sifrei. Jerusalem: Mechon Lev Sameach, 1990. Ratner, Baer. Ahavat Tziyon ve-Yerushalayim. Vilna: Rom, 1901. Recanati, Menahem. Perush al ha-Torah. Jerusalem: Etya, 1960. ———. Sefer ta’amai ha-mitsvot ve-peirush ha-berachot. Basel: 1581. Seder meah berakhot. Livorno: 1652. Solomon ben Isaac. Sefer ha-pardes. Edited by Yehudah Ehrenreich. Bene Berak: Yahadut, 1980. Stern, Joseph Zehariah. Sheelot u-teshuvot zekher Yehosaf. Jerusalem: 1968. Suslin, Alexander. Ha-agudah. Jerusalem: A. Brizel, 1966. Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Weiss, Isaac. Dor dor ve-dorshav. Berlin: Plat u-Minqus, 1923. Worms, Aaron. Me’ore or. Metz: L. Hadar, 1818. Yosef, Ovadia. Yalkut Yosef. Jerusalem: Yeshivat Hazon Ovadyah, 1985.

GENERAL WORKS—JEWISH

Abrahams, Israel. By-Paths in Hebrew Bookland. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1920. Adelman, Howard. “Rabbis and Reality: Public Activities of Jewish Women in Italy during the Renaissance and Catholic Restoration.” Jewish History 51 (1991): 30–32. Assaf, Simha. Beoholei Ya’akov: Essays on the Cultural Life of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1943. Azulai, Abraham ben Mordecai. Sefer hesed le-Avraham: hatsaot ve-hakdamot le-sefer ha-Zohar. Jerusalem: 1967. Baron, Salo W. Social and Religious History of the Jews. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952. Beinart, Haim. Records of the Trials of the Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real. Jerusalem: Israel Nation Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974. Benayahu, Meir. Copyright, Authorization and Imprimatour for Hebrew Books Printed in Venice. Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben Zvi, 1971. ———. Hebrew Printing at Cremona: Its History and Bibliography. Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben Tzvi, 1971. Benjamin of Tudela. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Edited by M. N. Adler. New York: Feldheim, 1964. Benveniste, Hayyim. Sha’are keneset ha-gedolah. Jerusalem: Ha-Ktav Institute, 1989. Berliner, Abraham, “Censorship and Confiscation of Hebrew Books in the Papal States.” In: Ketavim nivharim. Jerusalem, 1891. Biale, David. “Counter-History and Jewish Polemics Against Christianity: The Sefer toldot yeshu and the Sefer zerubavel.” Jewish Social Studies 61 (1999): 130–145.

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GENERAL WORKS

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1955, 137–306 Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Sullivan, Lawrence Eugene. Icanachu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Trompf, G. W. “On Attitudes Towards Women in Paul and Palinist Literature: I Corinthian 11:3–16 and Its Context.” Catholic Bible Quarterly 42 (1980): 196–215. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols. Chicago: Aldine, 1967. ———. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1966.

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Index

Abraham bar Nathan of Lunel, 64 Abraham, Rabbi, son of Maimonides, 28, 80–84, 91, 124 Abudarham, David, 67 “A human being and not one of the brutes,” 9, 65 Aha bar Jacob, 20, 21 Aku ’m: see Oved kokavim v’mazalot Alenu (prayer), 48, 49 Anti-Christian numerological explanation of, 48 Alfasi, Isaac, 79, 80, 81 Al-Nakawa, Israel ben Joseph, 63 American rite, 106 Amoraim, 19, 30 Amram Gaon, 29, 30, 31, 42, 62, 81 “An Athenian,” 11 Anim Zemirot (prayer), 117 Anti-Christian references in liturgy, denial of, 50, 98 Apologetics, 49, 74, 95, 96, 103, 108, 109 Apologetics, in Orthodox commentaries, 95, 103, 106, 109 Apologists, Jewish, 49 Arba Turim (Jacob ben Asher), 67 Artscroll prayer books, 109–110 Asher of Lunel, 65, 66, 69, 91

Asher yatzar (prayer), 66 Ashkenazic rite, 94 Ashreinu (prayer), 118 Aub, Joseph, 102 Authenticity of the received text, 6, 21, 22, 59, 63, 76, 94, 122, 123, 128, 129 Authorized Daily Prayer Book (Hertz), 108 Auto-da-fé, 46 Avignon, 53 Avodat Yisrael (Baer), 94, 96 Avodat Yisrael (Szold and Jastrow), 107 Avot 2:6 (Mishnah), 38 Babylonia, 27, 31, 35 Babylonian liturgy, 28 Babylonian Talmud, 19, 22, 38, 62, 63, 79 Berakhot 60b, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 32, 41, 61, 79, 82, 91, 126 Influence of, 36, 41, 63 Menahot 43b, 4, 5, 10, 19, 24, 25, 30, 37, 65, 80, 130–2 Baer, Seligman Isaac, 94, 96 Baptism, 13, 14, 15 Barbarians, 9 Bavaria, 69 Be’er Sheva (Rabbi Aaron Worms), 98

216

INDEX

Bedarshi, Manoah, 84, 91 Beit ha-Behira (Ha-Meiri), 63 Berakhot blessings, 25, 29, 37, 41, 61, 126 Absent from Palestinian Talmud, 41 And Persian prayer book, 32 As liturgical unit, 42, 91 Combined with Menahot blessings, 23, 27, 28 Eliezer of Worms and, 83 In early Reform liturgy, 101, 106, 107 In Or Hadash, 121 Issac Alfasi and, 80 Maimonides and, 80 Moved to synagogue, 34 Properly recited at home, 30, 33, 34, 37, 81, 83 Recited daily, 24 Transformed from private to public prayers, 91 Berger, Peter, 123 Berliner, Abraham, 109, 111 Bilti m’daber (one who does not speak), 57 Birkhat ha-Mazon (Grace after Meals prayer), 66 Blasphemy, 45, 47, 48, 53 Blessing formula, positive and not negative, 10, 12, 16, 36, 37, 38, 39, 51, 52 Blessing in vain, 20, 64, 76, 80, 95, 99, 113 Blessing variants: see individual blessings Blessings Of praise, 24, 29, 81, 91 Should match their corresponding action, 29, 33, 80, 91 Forbidden if not in the Talmud, 67, 82, 110 Book burning, 45, 46, 47 “Boor does not fear sin” (Mishnah, Avot 2:5), 31, 38, 63 “Born a man and not a woman,” 9 “Born a man and not an animal,” 10, 11 Buber, Martin, 118 Canaanite slave, 65, 76, 85, 88 Censor, Jews as, 58 Censor, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 57, 97, 111, 124 Converts as, 48 Censored texts Space left for missing words, 4, 53, 57 Valued by later generations, 4, 59, 98, 109, 111

Censoring in, 119 Censorship, 5, 19, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 59, 61, 62, 98, 111 And Pope Leo X, 47 As alternative to loss of books, 46 As Christian-Jewish dialogue, 47, 49 Gratitude for, 111 In Germany, 93 In Russia, 93 Jewish cooperation with, 57 Physical evidence of responses to, 51 Pre-publication, 47, 57 Textual replacements, 57 Christians, not idolaters, 46 Church (Roman Catholic), 45, 53, 64, 126 And censorship, 19, 46, 47, 48, 49, 126, 127 Construction of sacred history by, 45 Opposed to use of goy, 45, 51 Church fathers, 14 Circumcision, 12, 14, 39, 66 Coblenz, 103 Codes, 4, 27, 62, 73, 79 Colossians 3:11, 14, 15 Commandments, 24, 85, 88 As divine service, 76, 110 As Jewish male privilege, 73, 85, 88, 96, 111 Gentiles not obligated by, 84, 96 Reward for fulfilling, 83, 84, 88, 96 Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, 115, 116, 117 Affirmative action to increase women’s leadership at, 115, 121 Commitment to feminism at, 115 Role of Ritual Committee, 115 Conservative movement, 105, 108, 110, 112, 113 Converts to Christianity, 48 Cordovero, Moses, 79, 85, 87, 88–90 I Corinthians 12:13, 14, 15 “Creator of the fruit of the vine,” 24 Cremona, 50 Dagger of Faith against Moslems and Jews (Martini), 47 Daily prayer sustains creation, 89 Daily prayer sustains social reality, 92 Declaration of Independence, 113 Deletion of problematic texts By early Reformers, 95, 100, 104

INDEX

In Gates of Prayer, 114 Rejected by Conservative movement, 112 Demonic forces: see Temurot Deuteronomy Dt. 10:12, 24 Dt. 14:2, 101 Diogenes Laertius, 10, 11, 12 Discomforting passages Deleted, 100 Put in parentheses, 100 Put in smaller type, 100, 108 Disputations, 46, 53, 98 Of Barcelona, 46 Of Paris, 98 Divine Name, 67, 120 Recite blessing without, 110 Divine providence, 64, 97 Doubt, included in liturgy, 117 Early Church, 6, 14, 15, 125 Edom, as ancient idolaters, 50 Egypt, 5, 27, 29, 35, 82, 84 Egyptian rite, 36 Einhorn, David, 106, 107 Election, 48, 99, 101, 107, 109 Of Israel, 48, 99, 101, 107 Of Jewish women, 107 Eliezar of Worms, 83 Ellenson, David, 101 Elohai Neshama (prayer), 66, 83, 84, 115 Emancipation, 93, 94, 96 Enlightenment, 6 Erasure Of boundaries in gnostic eschatology, 15 Of comparison between Jew and gentile, 102 Of gender boundaries, 16, 103 Of identity boundaries by early Church, 14 Of Jewish distinctiveness, 104 Erasure (physical), 51, 53, 57, 58, 64, 126, 127 Of patron’s name, 71 Euchel, Isaac, 103 Euphemisms, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 59, 95, 127, 128 As “ancient variants,” 49, 112 Exodus Ex. 21:8, 87 Ex. 22:17, 68 Ex. 9:20, 90

217

Expurgation, 46, 47, 48, 49, 57, 58, 59 Farissol, Abraham, 53, 54, 55, 71, 72, 73 Fatamid caliphate, 35 Ferrara, 53, 55, 71 Florence, 53 Frankfurt, 103 Fustat, 5, 35 Jews of, 35 Galatians 3:27–28, 13, 14, 15, 39 Gates of Prayer, 107, 113–114, 117, 121–122 Gay and lesbian Jews, 115, 118 Geertz, Clifford, 123 Geiger, Abraham, 101, 102, 112 Gelb, Max, 113 Gemara: see Babylonian Talmud Gendered pronouns in translation, 121 Genizah, 5, 35, 36 Genizah manuscripts, 5, 12, 28, 36, 38, 41, 51, 63, 64, 65, 67, 83, 125 Dateability of, 21, 36 Fragmentary nature of, 27 Geonic period, 24, 27, 34 Geonim, 27, 28, 31, 34 German Jews, 103, 105 Germany, 61, 83, 100, 101, 103, 105, 108, 126 Gershom of Soncino, 48 Gersolimitano, Domenic, 48 Ginzberg, Louis, 21, 22 Goldstein, Jonathan, 13 Gordis, Robert, 111, 112, 113 Goy, 13, 19, 46, 49, 62, 64, 71, 95, 99, 103, 108, 127 Change in meaning, 95, 96, 98, 99 Replaced by euphemisms, 49, 51, 52, 57, 109 “The nations (goyim) are as nothing before Him” (Isaiah 40:17), 30, 31, 62, 97 Goyah, 70, 71 Goyai ha-aratzot (nations of the earth), 49 Greek rite, 5 “Greek and not a barbarian,” 9, 10, 11 Gutenberg, Johannes, 47 Haggadah, 114 Hai Gaon, 31, 82, 83

218

INDEX

Halakhah, 62, 63, 76, 79, 85, 88, 95, 103, 113, 114, 119 And liturgical change, 115 Halakhic authorities, 74 Halakhic status of women and slaves, 20 Halakhic texts, 62, 85 Halakhic worldview, 76, 79, 92, 110 Halakhot Gedolot, 28 Hamburg Temple prayer book, 100 Ha-Meiri, see Meiri, Menahem ben Solomon Hasidei Ashkenaz, 83 Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), 103 Heathen As other, 6 As translation for goy, 99, 103, 108, 109 As translation for nokhri, 99 Hegyon Lev, 107 Heide, 99 Heidenheim, Wolf, 94, 96 Heinemann, Joseph, 37, 38 Hellenism and Judaism, 13 Hellenistic aphorisms, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 21, 39, 66, 76, 124 As identity statement, 6, 10, 12, 129 Hellenistic culture, 9, 13, 17, 50, 125 Hermippus, 10, 11 Hertz, Joseph, 108–109, 114 Hilkhot ha-Rif (Alfasi), 79 Hiyya ben Rabbi Avia, Rabbi, 24 Hoffman, Lawrence, 6, 119 Holy Office: see Inquisition Homosexuality, 118, 119 Ibn Gabbai, Meir, 85–87, 88 Idolater As other, 97 Inferior to slave, 65 Idolatrous worship, 87, 89 Immortality of the soul, 97, 98 Index of Forbidden Books, 47 Index of Trent, 48 Infidel, as term for Moslems, 53 Inquisition, 47, 48, 58, 111 Interpretation of Cultures, The (Geertz), 123 Isaiah 30:7, 89 Isaiah 40:17, 97

Israel, Ben, 103 Israelite slave, 65, 89 Israelitisches Gebet und Andachtsbuch (Maier), 100 Isserlein, Israel, 69 Italian rite, 94, 99, 108, 110, 128 Jacob ben Asher, 67, 74, 98 Jacob’s name changed to Israel (Gen. 32:29), 120 Jastrow, Marcus, 107 Jerusalem Talmud: see Palestinian Talmud Jesus, 14, 43, 45, 48 Jewish identity, 100, 122, 127 And Jewish peoplehood, 121 Jewish immigration to America, 105 Jewish renewal movement, 119, 121 Jews and Christians, against the other, 52, 97 Jews and Moslems, as other to Christians, 47, 53 Jews of Rome, petition to have seized books returned, 50 Jews permanently punished for rejecting Jesus, 64 Jews as enemies of Christ, 53 Joel 3:5, 87 Joel, Manuel, 102 Joseph ben Moses, 69 Joshua ibn Shuab, 85 Kabbalah, 66, 67, 84, 85 Kabbalists, 61, 67, 69, 70, 72, 84, 87, 88, 114 Karaites, 35 Karo, Joseph, 31, 67 Kimhi, David, 95 King David, 24, 30, 123 King James I of Aragon, 46 Kol Nidre (prayer), 48 Kuthite (Kuti), 48, 51, 52, 58 Landau, Jacob ben Judah, 61 Leaders of the Great Assembly, 91, 123 Leket Yosher, 69, 70 Lieberman, Saul, 16, 21, 22 Lucena (Spain), 28 Luther, Martin, 99 Luzzatto, Samuel David, 95

INDEX

Machzor U’vecharta Bachaiyim, 115–119 Mahzor Vitri, 63 Maier, Joseph, 100, 102, 103 Maimonides, Moses, 28, 79, 80, 81, 84, 91 Mannheimer, Isaac, 95 Mantua, 53, 71 Marks, D.W., 101, 102 Martini, Raymond, 46 Master narrative, 4, 5, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125 Ha-Meiri, Menahem ben Solomon, 50, 63 Meklenburg, Jacob Tzvi, 96–99 Menahot blessings And Berakhot blessings, as a single unit, 3, 25, 27, 28, 32, 36, 42, 80, 91, 115 And identity formation, 4 As a unit of three, 63, 67, 112 As Jewish identity statement, 4, 6, 12, 13, 39, 59, 119, 125, 127 As personal prayer, 31, 37, 62, 80, 83, 114 As private prayer in the synagogue, 28, 41 As unit of four, 62–63 Babylonian style, 36, 57, 65, 69, 125 Babylonian versions, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38 Esoteric interpretations, 48, 65, 68, 69, 70, 85, 127 In second person, 37 Italian formulation, 54, 71 Kabbalistic interpretation, 65, 66, 85, 126 Not recited only once in a lifetime, 89 Only recited when one encounters a non-Jew, woman or slave, 81, 84, 91 Palestinian style, 36, 57, 71, 125 Palestinian versions, 12, 22, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 51, 52, 62, 64, 128 And use of boor, 20, 21, 31 And use of “human and not a beast,” 15, 57, 65, 69 Authority of, 20 Consistent with Galatians, 16 Missing Berakhot blessings, 37, 40 Recited in the plural, 83 Should be said in a whisper, 110 Should be skipped entirely, 110 Structure of literary unit, 16, 120

219

Menorat ha-Meor, 63 Merzbacher, Leo, 105 Messiah, coming of, 118 Metz, 98 Minhag America (Wise), 106, 107, 113 Miracles of Daily Life (prayer), 114 Mishkan Tefilah, 100, 121, 122 Mishnah, 38, 126 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), Hilchot Tefilah (Laws of Prayer), 80, 81, 82 Mission of Israel, 99, 102, 104, 107, 109, 110, 121 Transferred to individual, 101, 104 Mitzvah, mitzvot: see Commandments Morning Blessings Organized on stylistic grounds, 41, 64 Recited at home, 31, 80, 114 Recital moved from home to synagogue, 24, 29, 32, 33, 34, 91 Recited daily, 24, 27, 34, 81, 85, 86, 91 Using feminine gender, 120 Moses, 4, 123 Moses, Isaac, 107 Moslems, 39, 53 Musaf (prayer), 115 Nachmanides, Moses, 46 Nag Hammadi: see Tripartite Tractate Name of patron erased, 71 Napoleon, 98 Napoleonic Sanhedrin, 98 Natronai bar Hilai Gaon, Rav, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 42, 67, 91, 80, 114 Nehemiah 9:5–6, 32 New Testament, 13, 39, 45 “NISIM B’CHOL YOM—For Daily Miracles” (prayer), 121 Noahide laws, 96, 98 Non-Talmudic blessings, 67 Olat Tamid (Einhorn), 106, 107 “One Hundred Blessings” (prayer unit), 30, 33 One hundred blessings daily, 26, 29, 30, 31, 67, 80, 91, 123, 125 “Opens the eyes of the blind,” 3, 23, 82, 84 Or Einayim (Peniel), 50 Or Hadash, 120, 121 Order of Prayer (Merzbacher), 105

220

INDEX

Orthodox Jews, 104, 108, 109, 109, 110, 111 Feminists, 110 Women, 110 Oved elilim (worshiper of idols), 52, 95 Oved kokavim ve’mazalot (worshippers of stars and planets), 52, 98, 124 Palestinian liturgy, 5, 12, 27, 28, 35, 37, 65 Palestinian rite, 36 Parallel to Hellenistic, 36 Palestinian Talmud, 12, 15, 20, 24, 30, 31, 36, 37, 38, 41, 126, 130 Berakhot, 31 Berakhot 9:2, 130 Parallel Lives (Plutarch), 10 Paul, 6, 13, 14, 15, 123 Peniel, Shelomoh ben Abraham, 50 Persian wars, 9 Pesukei d’Zimra (prayer), 33, 82, 106 Peter (German convert), 48 Petition for return of seized books, 50 Phillipson, Ludwig, 102 Pirkei Avot, 63 Pirkei Rabenu ha-Kodesh, 62, 63 Piyyutim, 5, 100, 115 Plato, 10, 11 Plutarch, 10, 11 Polish rite, 106 Pope Clement IV, 46 Pope Julius III, 47 Pope Leo X, 47 Pope Paul III, 49 Präger, Moses, 103 Prayer books American Reform, 107 Catalonian, 61 French, 5, 63, 98, 103 In Conservative synagogues, 108 Italian, 49, 55, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 73 Judeo-Spanish, 55 Modern Orthodox, 96, 103, 107, 108, 109, 112 Non-Orthodox, 99, 107, 109, 111 Proto-modern Orthodox, 128 Shuadit, 70, 73 Spanish, 55 Prayer book translations, 94, 95, 101, 109 English, 105, 107, 115 German, 16, 103, 107

Italian, 95 Shuadit, 70 Printing press, 47, 94, 124 Proto-Christian baptismal liturgies, 15 Proto-Conservative prayer books, 96, 107, 128 Proto-feminist texts, 73 Psalm 100, 106 Pugio fidei adversus Mauros and Iudaeos (Dagger of Faith against Moslems and Jews) (Martini), 47 Pumbedita (Babylonia), 27 Purim, 24 “Que me crió en su judezmo,” 55 Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, 95, 98 Rabbi Judah, 10, 84, 126, 128 Rabbi Meir, 3, 4, 21, 24, 33, 58, 91, 126, 128 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki), 75, 76 Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, 124–125 Recanati, Menahem, 67, 68, 69, 70 Recitation of the Shema (prayer), 88 Reform movement in America, 101, 105, 113, 114, 115, 121 Reform movement in Germany, 101 Reform synagogues, use of movement prayer books, 108 Reformers, 95, 96, 99, 100, 104, 105, 114, 120 Abridged entire sections of the liturgy, 100 And excessive length of the worship service, 100 Renewal movement, 119 Responsa, 4, 27, 62, 73 Responsum of Joseph Zecharia Stern, 96 Responsum of Rabbi Abraham to the Jews of Yemen, 82 Responsum of Rav Natronai, 28, 29, 30, 34, 42, 80, 91, 114 Responsum of Sar Shalom, 28, 66, 70 Rite, 5, 6, 33, 94, 124, 128 Ritual uncleanness, 29, 32, 87, 92 Romanian rite, 5, 63 Rome, 94 Rothschild Mahzor, 57 Saadia Gaon, Rav, 30, 31, 32, 62, 82, 83 Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book (Silverman), 110

INDEX

Sar Shalom, Gaon, 28, 66, 70 Satanow, Isaac, 96 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 16 Scroll of Esther, 24 Seder Rav Amram (Amram), 29, 30 Sefarad (Spain), 30 Sefer ha-Minhagot (Asher of Lunel), 65 Sefer ha-Zikkuk, 48 Sefirot, 88, 89, 90 Self-censorship by Jews, 46, 48, 49 Sephardic Jews, 61, 93 Sephardic practice, 30, 61 Sephardic rite, 61, 94 Serfs, Jews as, 64 Servi camarae nostrae (servants of the royal treasury), 64 Seven Noahide commandments: see Noahide laws Shakespeare, William, 109 Shema (prayer), 38, 106, 118 Shulhan Arukh (Karo), 31, 32, 43, 67 Sicilian rites, 5 Siddur Saadia (Saadia), 30, 31, 42 Siddur Sim Shalom, 113 Silverman, Morris, 110 Sleep, as “a sixtieth part of death,” 85 Socrates, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22 Solomon ben Samson of Worms, 83, 84 Soul Ascends nightly to heaven, 86, 89 Daily restoration to the body, 23, 69, 85, 86, 87, 89, 115, 116 Origins of, 85, 117, 118 Purity of, 32, 68, 83, 86, 87 Threatened nightly, 6, 69, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 126 Transmigration of, 67, 68, 90 Unique to humans, 66 Souls Absent in beasts, 66 Of men, 85, 87, 89, 90 Of women, 86, 88 Spain, 30, 48, 63, 79 Spiritual resistance, 59, 76, 127 Stein, Leopold, 93, 103 Stern, Joseph Zehariah, 96 Structure of traditional service Disregarded, 100 Maintained, 100, 101, 106, 112 Sura (Babylonia), 27, 28, 29, 30

221

Synagogue, 3, 5, 35 As male space, 88 Berakhot blessings in, 34 Changes in practice, 94 Excessive length of the worship service in, 100 Recital of blessings in, 10, 23, 24, 83, 91, 92 Disapproval of, 81, 82 In Spain, 30 Recital of private prayers in, 28, 34 Searched by Inquisition, 47 Szold, Benjamin, 107 Tabory, Joseph, 128 Tallit (prayer shawl), 23 Talmud: see also Babylonian Talmud As blasphemy against Christianity, 45 Censorship of, 19 Church and, 45, 126 Tannaim, 30, 68, 83 Tefilla (prayer), 82 Tefillin (phylacteries), 88 Temple Emanu-El of New York, 105 Temurot (demonic forces), 87, 89, 90 Thales, 10, 11 Time-bound commandments Slaves not obligated to fulfill, 65, 88, 89 Women not obligated to fulfill, 31, 64, 65, 74, 75, 76, 84, 88, 89, 110 Tola’at Yaakov (ibn Gabbai), 85 Tosefta, 10, 21, 31, 38, 63, 74, 126 Berakhot 6:18, 10 Transfiguration as a slave, 90 Transfiguration as a woman, 90 Translation, 47, 49, 71, 101, 102, 115, 119, 127 Direct, 71, 115, 120 Gendered pronouns in, 120 German, 16, 95, 101, 103 Non-literal, 99, 100, 101, 103, 119, 120, 128 Omitted, 95, 100, 103 On facing page, 95, 100 Vernacular, as priority for early Reformers, 101 Tripartite Tractate, 14, 15 Tziduk ha-din (prayer), 67 Tzitzit (ritual fringes), 88

222

INDEX

Union Prayer Book, 107, 113 Venice, 49 Vilna Gaon, see Elijah of Vilna Virgin Mary, 45 Washing of the hands, 23, 24, 29, 32 Weiss, Isaac Hirsch, 11, 12, 13, 16, 22 “Who bestowest renewed strength on the feeble one,” 106 “Who brings forth bread from the earth,” 24 “Who called me to His service,” 121 “Who clothes the naked,” 23, 102 “Who crownest Israel with the diadem of their priestly mission,” 107 “Who crownest Israel with the majesty of truth,” 107 “Who crowns Israel with glory,” 23, 107, 121 “Who did not make me a beast,” 21, 36, 37, 39, 51, 57, 58, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73 “Who did not make me a boor,” 4, 10, 20, 31, 38, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 124, 126 as response to censorship, 57 “Who did not make me a gentile,” 10, 16, 21, 32, 37, 68, 93, 94, 95, 97, 109 As identity marker, 49, 102 As reference to Moslems, 39 Censored, 49, 51 Changed to affirmative, 5, 49, 51, 55, 127 In Farissol manuscripts, 54 In Gates of Prayer, 114 In the Babylonian Talmud, 12, 19 In the Palestinain Talmud, 31 Justification for, 84, 85, 96, 97, 109 Maintained, 59 Missing in liberal prayer books, 100 Omitted, 51, 58 Omitted in translation, 95 Parallel to Hellenistic texts, 12, 21, 77 Replaced by “boor,” 57 Said just once in a lifetime, 86–87 Said upon seeing a gentile, 81, 83 “Who did not make me a gentile of the (gentile) nations of the earth,” 64, 95 “Who did not make me a heathen,” 103

“Who did not make me a maidservant or a slave,” 71 “Who did not make me a man,” 70 “Who did not make me a slave,” 20, 31, 32, 36, 62, 63, 65, 75, 76, 80, 103, 106, 113 And Babylonian Talmud, 12, 62, 64 As blessing in vain, 64 As later addition, 12 As replacement for “not a beast,” 21, 68 In modern prayer books, 117 Justification for, 65, 76, 84, 85 Recast in positive language, 114 Recited just once in a lifetime, 87 Recited on awakening, 83 Recited on seeing a slave, 82 Removed after Civil War, 107 “Who did not make me a slave to humans,” 64 “Who did not make me a woman,” 4, 5, 10, 28, 31, 32, 70, 80, 118, 119, 126 And changing role of women, 102 And Conservative prayer book, 112, 113 Called a “public embarrassment,” 110 Eliminated, 103, 108, 113 Justifications for, 74, 75, 76, 84, 85, 96, 107–109 Origins, 66 Parallel in Hellenistic sources, 21, 73, 77 Petition against its reintroduction, 103 Recited only once in a lifetime, 87 Replacement for, 69, 117 Said upon seeing a woman, 82 Women should omit, 28, 67 “Who did not make me an Aramean,” 52 “Who did not make me an idolater,” 95 “Who did not make me an idol-worshipping gentile,” 95 “Who did not make me an Ishmaelite,” 52, 53 “Who did not make me bilti m’daber (one who does not speak),” 57 “Who did not make me of the nations of the earth but from Your people Israel,” 41 “[Who did not make me] Nichtisraeliten,” 99 “Who frees the captive,” 23, 82 “Who gives the sekvi (rooster) the ability to distinguish between day and night,” 23, 28, 32, 41, 42, 67, 83, 84, 116, 117

INDEX

“Who girdest Israel with the strength of faith,” 107 “Who girds Israel with glory,” 80 “Who girds Israel with strength,” 23, 107, 121 “Who gives strength to the weary,” 116 “Who has chosen us to be unto Thee a peculiar people,” 101 “Who has commanded us concerning washing the hands,” 24 “Who has commanded us to read the Megillah,” 24 “Who has led me to my Jewish heritage,” 116 “Who has made each of us unique, and all of us according to Your will,” 116–117 “Who has made me free,” 111, 114, 121 “Who has made me worthy that I should belong to those who confess your Holy Name,” 102 “Who has provided all my needs,” 23 “Who hast deigned me to be an Israelite,” 106 “[Who hast not deigned me] to be a slave,” 106 “Who hast made me according to Thy will,” 109 “Who hast made me in Thine image,” 111 “Who heals the sick,” 106 “Who made me an Israelite,” 3, 76, 102, 103, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112, 120, 121, 124, 128 And Vilna Gaon, 98 As outcome of censorship, 5, 59 As replacement for Menahot blessings, 103, 107, 109, 113 As preferred text in liberal prayer books, 101, 102 As replacement text, 51, 53, 99 In printed editions of the Talmud, 19 In Farissol manuscripts, 54 In commentary only, 95 In Hebrew only, 102 Used before formal censorship, 55 “Who made me an Israelite and not a gentile,” 12, 13, 37 “Who made me (one who is) circumcised and not uncircumcised,” 12, 37, 39, 52, 99

223

“Who made me a human and not a beast,” 12, 15, 21, 36, 37, 39, 51, 65, 69 “Who made me a Jew,” 114, 116, 120, 121, 124, 127 As replacement text, 51 In Italian prayer books, 59 Justified by appeal to censored sources, 49, 112 As replacement for three blessings, 110 “Who made me a Jew and not a gentile,” 13, 16, 77 “Who made me a Jew and not a Greek,” 13 “Who made me a man,” 51 “Who made me a man and not a woman,” 12, 37, 39 “Who made me a woman and not a man,” 71 “Who made me a woman,” 70, 71, 77, 121 “Who made me according to His will,” 67, 69, 71, 76, 103, 110, 117, 118 “Who made me according to Your will,” 108 “Who made me an Israelite,” 3, 76, 102, 103, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112, 120, 121, 124, 128 And Vilna Gaon, 98 As outcome of censorship, 5, 59 As preferred text in liberal prayer books, 101, 102 As replacement text, 51, 53, 99 As replacement for Menahot blessings, 103, 107, 109, 113 In commentary only, 95 In Farissol manuscripts, 54 In Hebrew only, 102 In printed editions of the Talmud, 19 Used before formal censorship, 55 “Who made me an Israelite and not a gentile,” 12, 13, 37, 38, 51, 54 “Who made me an Israelite and not a Kuthite,” 50 “Who made me an Israelite and not an Ishmaelite,” 52, 54 “Who made me in the image of God,” 121 “Who makes firm human steps,” 23 “Who prepares a person’s steps,” 80 “Who provides for all my needs,” 23, 80 “Who raises the bowed,” 23

224

INDEX

“Who spread the earth upon the waters,” 23 Wieder, Naphtali, 38, 39, 64, 128 Wife is servant to her husband, 75 Wise, Isaac Mayer, 106, 107, 113 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 94, 95, 103 And creation of critical editions of the prayer book, 94 Women, Absence from synagogue, 103 As scribes or authors, 70 Iinvisibility of, 66, 70 In kabbalistic circles, 69 Inscribed themselves in liturgy, 70 Mission of, 110 Spiritual superiority of over men, 110 Women and slaves Are not obligated to recite blessings, 31, 74, 76, 80 Share the same status, 20, 75

Women’s acceptance of the harsh decree, 46, 67, 71, 73, 74, 76, 109 Women’s blessing, missing completely, 103, 114 Worldview, 70, 76, 77, 85, 124–126 Worms, Aaron, 98, 99, 103, 110 Yehiel ben Joseph of Paris, 98 Yehuda bar Yakar, 65, 74 Yemen, Jews of, 82 Yom Kippur, 48, 119 “You birth me in freedom,” 120 “You created me a woman,” 120 “You encourage me to wrestle with my faith,” 120 “You make my form in Your image,” 120 Zohar, 86, 87 Zoroastrian Persians, and identity blessings, 10, 17