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First Jewish Prayer-Book
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Stefan C. Reif |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 How did Jewish liturgy develop from the rituals of a few scholars and small communities to become an established pattern of blessings, prayers, services and festivals? Stefan C. Reif, Director of Genizah Research and Head of the Oriental Division at Cambridge University Library, suggests that forms of domestic and academic liturgy moved slowly into the synagogue and formal prayer-books. He shows how it was not long before liturgical Hebrew emerged as the chosen medium of prayer, with a few elements in Aramaic that had long been associated with a particular prayer. |
 t was in the context of a newly emerging liturgical situation that the Jewish prayer-book made its first appearance. Leading scholars, among them the later geonim (the heads of the ancient talmudic academies of Babylonia, recognised as the leading religious and spiritual authorities by most of the world's Jewish population during the late-6th to mid-11th centuries), issued guidelines on what should constitute the regular blessings and prayers and answered questions about the validity of particular customs. They systematically applied the various principles that occur from time to time in the Talmud (a compilation of the Oral Law which is the accepted authority for Orthodox Jews) to numerous parts of the liturgy and offered definitions of what qualified to be included under the headings of each of the different, liturgical categories. They and their successors in a much wider geographical area, ultimately taking in countries as far apart as England in the west and Persia in the east, laid down detailed regulations for prayer and attempted to explain its theoretical basis and its historical evolution. Some types of accretion to the basic talmudic framework were firmly rejected while others were welcomed and sanctioned. Novelty was not always the critical issue; it might also be the matter of the thematic relevance of an interpretation to the basic content of the benediction. In those cases where what they regarded as an unsatisfactory custom had established itself too stubbornly to be dislodged, a new interpretation was given to it that could justify its retention even in the light of the strictest categorisations. |
Two new types of liturgical composition had made their way into the regular practice and were, during the centuries now under discussion, given specific places in the standard prayers. The piyyutim or liturgical poems, the earliest forms of which had first made their appearance in the Holy Land in the latter part of the talmudic age, having to a certain extent overcome much Babylonian animosity towards them, were incorporated into those sections of the liturgy with which they could incontrovertibly be linked. Their structure, content and language were, however, gradually brought under control in the process and their degree of creativity thereby reduced, with the result that their composers ultimately had to find other outlets for their originality and aesthetic expression. What started out as daring novelties sometimes ultimately ended their existence as irrelevant appendages to statutory prayer. A similar limitation came to be imposed upon prayers of the more mystical bent. There was more than a little hesitation about the incorporation of such supernatural pieces as those to be found in the hekhaloth and merkavah literature. Certain compositions were allowed to enter, or remain, in such contexts as the recitation of the trisagion or qedushah (as standardised in the Babylonian rite in general) but there was a clear trend towards a policy of restricting any unfettered development and adoption in the synagogue. It is not yet established in which context mystical hymnology operated but there can be little doubt of its active relationship with more standard liturgy and of the fact that its originally Palestinian forms were adapted for wider use in Babylon. Systems of vocalisation and cantillation, albeit in more than one form, had been drawn up for the reading of the Hebrew Bible and the use of specific liturgical melodies was so well established by the twelfth century that the famous proselyte, Obadiah, known from various Genizah fragments, could record a number of these without the need for any explanation or introduction. There were even problems about the attempted importation of non-Jewish musical items. |
It was at this immediate post-geonic stage, too, that individual communities, or sets of communities, merged what they had inherited as their established liturgical custom with what they were told by their authorities was acceptable and produced an identifiable nusah or rite of their own. These rites, generally referred to by the geographical areas in which they were practised, e.g. French, German, Italian, North African, Spanish, Yemenite and Romanian, differed from each other in detail but were all substantially based on the format and content earlier dictated by the Babylonian authorities of the late geonic period. Minor and vestigial elements of non-Babylonian provenance occasionally appeared but a great deal more of the non-standard was lost than was retained. |
As far as the text of the major prayers is concerned, there was a reluctance to approve any subtractions or additions. Clear rules were laid down for how many benedictions, and of what form and content, were to accompany particular prayers and how much variation from the norm was to be permitted to take account of special occasions such as sabbaths, festivals and fasts, some allowances always being made for variety between rites. When, in spite of a reluctance to sanction post-talmudic benedictions, the geonic authorities felt a polemical need (for whatever reason) to boost the status of a particular ceremony, as in the case of the lighting of sabbath lamps, they grudgingly approved the recitation of the blessing but were clearly ill at ease in justifying it on their own liturgical terms. A concern for precise language, grammar, vocalisation and punctuation began to be expressed and was a factor in the liturgical editions from then until the modern period. Liturgical Hebrew emerged as the chosen medium of prayer and, at least in the major communities influenced by the authority of the Babylonian Talmud and the codification of its halakhah, Aramaic was used only when it had so long been associated with a particular prayer that it appeared to be an act of revolution to alter it. Once a siddur (daily prayer-book) existed as a Jewish literary entity, it was not long before commentaries on its contents became a feature of rabbinic scholarship. |
An even more interesting feature of the late geonic and early mediaeval periods is the transfer of what had originally been domestic or academic liturgy into the synagogue and its incorporation into the standard prayer-book. Benedictions relating to morning activities such as rising, washing and dressing, ultimately entered the communal liturgy, as did the recitation of psalms by way of preparation for prayer proper. The qaddish, the 'aleynu, the praises associated with the academy such as the qedushah, even the qiddush and havdalah which were still recited at home, became integral parts of the synagogal liturgy and reasons were advanced to justify their retention there, or sometimes, indeed, to challenge it. Whether the individual prayers of earlier geonic centuries had been the remnants of an original, fixed liturgy that had survived the onslaught of hazzanic and piyyutic activity, or had always represented valid variations, in one form or another, dating from talmudic times, what was now incorporated into the prayer-book became acceptable rite while the remainder was consigned to an oblivion from which only Genizah research has fortuitously rescued it. The synagogue itself became a more elaborate affair and a degree of ceremonial was introduced of which there is little mention in the talmudic sources. A regular cantor and choir, special seats for dignitaries, processions, use of the Torah scroll, tallith and tefillin as integral parts of the ritual, had all now become familiar elements, in one context or another, of communal worship in the synagogue. As the institution grew in communal and liturgical significance, so it became necessary to provide it with a distinguished history. It is perhaps for this reason that the claim was made that the first synagogue was built in Nehardea in the sixth century BCE from stones brought from the Jerusalem Temple. When Sherira made such a statement, he was telling us more about tenth century Babylonian attitudes to the synagogue than about its authentic historical origins. Formal ceremonies associated with rites de passage were not yet inveigling themselves into the synagogue but the process of evolution had begun that would in the long term lead to such a development. |
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