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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.
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From:
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I do about what your bother does, although as I learned it, the list of 'tov' related words is 'heitiv, tovat, tov, tov" which nicely uses the same word for Leah and Rachel.
The order of matriarchs used to really bother me- because as I first learned it in the Reform world, Leah does come first in their lists. I get the whole "we like to privilege the same one who texts have privileged before" thing, but it does still bother me.
I just had the beginning of an argument about including Bilhah and Zilpah with a classmate on Friday. He does it, and wants to do so when he leads davening here on Tuesday. I think it's a problem- we have no indication that they were monotheists or monolatrists, let alone that they had any particular special relationship with G-d (and yes, I think the matriarchs did, I know some folks will disagree with me there).
From:
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"monotheists or monolatrists"
I'm not sure it matters. I think the point is to have a metaphor for the universe that is not ultimately capricious, in which one's actions have predictable consequences and therefore ought to matter. Whether or not there are lesser gods floating around should be irrelevent to that metaphor.
And see below my response in which I cite Esther Rabbah and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana who include Bilhah & Zilpa on the list. (Again, this is all support for shitot with which I disagree me-ikkaram.)
From:
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First prove that they existed....
From:
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