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debka_notion) wrote2007-11-16 11:12 am
debka_notion) wrote2007-11-16 11:12 am
My Morning's Excitement
After integrating seminar today, a couple of us were talking about liturgical additions permissible in WLSS (the main JTS minyan), and I mentioned that I'd been once scolded for saying 'ezrat Sarah rather than pokeid Sarah, and when someone asked why, I said that it wasn't in the book, which was in fact the reason I was given for why it was not acceptable.
All of a sudden, our teacher, who is also the head of the JTS library (yes, this fact is relevant, as you'll see momentarily), asks us if we have 5 minutes, and to put our bags down. All of a sudden, we're following him into the rare book room. So he sat us down, and showed us a handwritten siddur from 1475, written for a bride, where the scribe had written שעשיתני אישה ולא איש (for you made me a woman and not a man) rather than the usual form found in traditional siddurim שעשהני כרצונו (who made me according to his will). (Note that the liturgy used in Conservative siddurim just glosses over the gender difference entirely by taking all negative terminology out of it, and instead has שעשני בצלמו- who has created me in his image.) I'd read about this particular version of the text in an article that I read for liturgy in college, but seeing it for real was pretty incredible.
All of a sudden, our teacher, who is also the head of the JTS library (yes, this fact is relevant, as you'll see momentarily), asks us if we have 5 minutes, and to put our bags down. All of a sudden, we're following him into the rare book room. So he sat us down, and showed us a handwritten siddur from 1475, written for a bride, where the scribe had written שעשיתני אישה ולא איש (for you made me a woman and not a man) rather than the usual form found in traditional siddurim שעשהני כרצונו (who made me according to his will). (Note that the liturgy used in Conservative siddurim just glosses over the gender difference entirely by taking all negative terminology out of it, and instead has שעשני בצלמו- who has created me in his image.) I'd read about this particular version of the text in an article that I read for liturgy in college, but seeing it for real was pretty incredible.
no subject
Not particularly, since that list in that order appears in the Bavli on Nazir 23b, Sanhedrin 105b, and Horayot 10b. (Granted, I haven't checked the manuscripts.) Nevertheless, I have heard several people put Leah first. (I see the attraction, but I think if one is trying to balance the competing values of adherence to the tradition [= getting the psychological comfort of being connected to a tradition and the communal cohension that comes from connecting with a canon] with the value of this particular liturgical change, it seems to make sense to cling to any precedents in that canon that one can find.)
(BTW, an interesting support for including Bilha & Zilpa can be found in Esther Rabbah 1:12 where they are included on the list of _six_ imahot; see also Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 1:7 -- I don't know off the top of my head which is earlier.)
Also, according to the teshuva that makes that distinction between petiha and hatima, the reasoning is not that there is precedent for changing the petiha, but rather that since one is permitted to insert a piyyut for צורכי רבים, kal va-homer one may insert eight words in the middle. (Also note that there is a debate over the meaning of that phrase, i.e., does it need to be a piyyut for צורכי רבים or does there need to be צורכי רבים for a piyyut [that is not necessarily about צורכי רבים].) Be-mehilat kevod mori ve-rebbi ba`al mehaber ha-teshuva, I find that a weak kal va-homer, since inserting a piyyut after a unit of text is quite different than interrupting a phrase.