My Morning's Excitement

[debka_notion]

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.

Comments

[elfsdh.livejournal.com]

To some degree, I wonder what the author/editor of the 15th century siddur was thinking שעשיתני אישה ולא איש (and by extension, שעשאני איש ולא אשה, the more archaic phrasing) means.

Ignoring whether it's proper or not in any of its current formulations (I vascillate on the issue, but it's a subject for an actual long post): While מגן אברהם ושרה has parallelism, it destroys the Biblical reference in the text (Gen 15:1). עזרת שרה is what's published in the Reform siddur (and was there long before the egal edition of Sim Shalom), and, as far as I can tell, is intended to parallel the liturgical text מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן. And, פוקד שרה is a Biblical reference to Gen 21:1. I don't remember if the Sim Shalom inclusive text rephrases the preceding line as מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן ופוקד, which would seem like what it should do to maintain parallelism.

[cynara-linnaea.livejournal.com]

It does. Actually, I believe they have it as "Melech ozer uphoked umoshia umagen."

[masteraleph.livejournal.com]

Interesting. My understanding had always been that פוקד שרה was the original in "matriarchal variations," and that עזרת שרה was the later change. I'm not sure about the reasoning of paralleling מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן, though- not that it's wrong, I've just never heard it. There are at least two other reasons that I can think of: one is that God is referred to using a similar title with Yitzchak (i.e. it's not uniquely Sarah). The other one, which I've heard elsewhere but can't confirm its veracity, was a discomfort with PKD as a verb since it's used in "Poked avon avot al banim v'al b'nai banim, al shileishim v'al ribeiim" in Shmot 34:7.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that עזרת שרה was around well before פוקד שרה just based on when texts published with them came out (I was given a text with עזרת שרה in it in I think 7th grade- certainly before my bat mitzvah). But that order would also make sense as far as the way change tends to happen in movements...

The latter reason for discomfort with פוקד is the one that I generally hear...

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

"The latter reason for discomfort with פוקד is the one that I generally hear..."

Really?! But it's a word that can mean both things! (I just checked Even-Shoshan's Konkordatziyah Hadasha who lists three meanings, the first being זכר לטובה, with 35 entries, and the second being זכר לרעה, ענש, with 69 entries.)

(OK, I understand about connotation vs. denotation, but why should the use of "poked Sarah" evoke Ex. 34:7 as opposed to Gen. 21:1?)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I think the issue isn't that it only evokes one of those, but that it does evoke both and that the since one is something we'd quite like Not to happen, it isn't such a great term. And since there are nearly double the number of uses for the less pleasant meaning, from your numbers- well, I sort of see what they mean.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I really think connotatively it's 1 vs. 1. (I mean, it's not like people could cite other verses off the top of their head where פקד is used _either_ negatively or positively!) So I don't quite understand why one should lose the Biblical reference simply because a word brings both positive and negative connotations to mind. (This is obviously le-shitat those who countenance the addition of this phrase, which I do not.) Additionally, עזר is never used in reference to Sarah (as far as I could tell), neither in the Tanakh nor in the Midrash. (But I'd be happy to be corrected on this point.)

(Also, regarding "something we'd quite like Not to happen" -- my chevruta pointed out that perhaps it's necessary to problematize the discomfort people feel with מידת הדין -- not that we should be hankering for it, but rather that we ought to see דין as part of a balanced theology/religious psychology.)