August 28th: Ki Tavo
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
This week’s portion has a timeless element. “When we come into the Land…” refers to the ancient Israelites entrance into the Promised Land, but have we not entered many lands—and situations—in our people’s long history? We enter, pay attention, and then bring our “portable homeland” of Judaism into its new environment.
As in the Torah, a first step is remembering our origins: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt with meager numbers… and the Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and awesome power…and brought us to this place…a land flowing with milk and honey.” We are bidden to look for the blessings in our new location and to give thanks to God. “Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me.” (Deuteronomy 26.1-10)
Of course, times and places have changed, and today even in the Land of Israel, our thanks to God are expressed in ways other than offering sacrifices. After the Temple was destroyed, our Sages were faced with finding an alternative to the sacrifices of the Temple, and they eventually developed a service with prayers. Putting together this prayer service turned out to be a multi-century process, and perhaps the most important part of the process was the composition of the prayer that takes the place of the sacrifice itself. It is a rather long prayer—a series of blessings known as Tefillah: The Prayer or Amidah: the Standing Prayer.
Today (after some 1900 years of liturgical development), we have two main versions of this Amidah. The Sabbath (and Holy Day) version has seven blessings, and the weekday version of has nineteen blessings (though it is called Shemoneh Esreh, Hebrew for eighteen!).
Why the differences? Some explain that the middle thirteen blessings are supplications, and that it is improper to ask God for things on Shabbat. These supplications should wait for a weekday when “work” is permitted, and thus the middle thirteen blessings are removed on Shabbat and replaced with a single blessing that thanks God for Shabbat.
Though this is a frequent explanation, it has never made sense to me. If one looks through the traditional Shabbat and Holy Day services, there are lots of requests and petitions. From the Mi Sheberach prayer for those called up for Aliyot and the Mi Sheberach prayer for those who are ill, to the Sim Shalom prayer’s request that God visit us with the Divine Presence, to numerous requests that God open our hearts to Torah (Ahavah Rabba, Beh Ana Rachetz, etc.), we ask God for all kinds of things on Shabbat. It continues in the traditional Birkat Hamazon where we ask God for sustenance, protection, holiness, and peace. All three types of prayer—Praise, Thanks, and Supplication—are part of traditional Shabbat worship, and so the notion that we should not ask God for things on Shabbat is not supported by the prayer texts themselves.
Why, then, are the Amidah prayers different? The short answer is that we do not know. Though the Rabbis in the Talmud discuss some things about the worship service, they do not give us many details or examples of the services they prayed. And, whatever they prayed in Talmudic days, the earliest actual prayer books we have are from several centuries after the Talmud. In the early days, it seems that praying was improvisational—with the prayer leader improvising on set themes and then the congregation answering “Amen” to join their intentions with the words spoken. When some of these improvised prayers were eventually recorded, there were many regional variations of the themes the Rabbis had set. Prayer book editors, it seems, had to choose from among the creative efforts available and wrestle them into a kind of standardized liturgy. Standardization, however, was apparently an elusive goal, and one can still see quite a bit of worship diversity among the many traditional prayer books available.
A quick example comes from the history of Hassidism. When Hassidism began in the 16th Century, one of the controversies with the Rabbinic Authorities was their use of a different liturgy. Whereas the “standard” was the Ashkenazic Siddur, the early Hassidim used Nusach Sefarad, a different composition and compilation of prayers. This was not Sephardic, the term used for the Jews of the Mediterranean Basin and their practice, but Sefarad, an Ashkenazic but different prayer book that the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples preferred. While we all pray to the same God, even among the most pious of Jews, prayers and practices present diversity.
As for the differences between the weekday and Sabbath Amidah, a number of theories offer possible explanations. The one that makes the most sense to me is that our current composition is the result of efforts to standardize the prayer service. Some Jews prayed an Amidah with eighteen blessings—calling it Shemoneh Esreh (eighteen), while other Jews prayed an Amidah with nineteen blessings. Still others prayed an Amidah with seven blessings. In an attempt to coordinate and unify Jewish worship, there was perhaps a compromise in which the nineteen blessing Amidah became standard for daily prayer—while the name Shemoneh Esreh (eighteen) was assigned to preserve that tradition. Then, the seven-blessing Amidah was assigned to Shabbat. Thus were all three traditions honored and incorporated.
A similar motivation and technique may also have been behind some other liturgical oddities. Why, for instance, are there different middle verses for Mi Chamocha in evening and morning services? And why does the Ahavah/Divine Love prayer that precedes Shema have different versions in the evening (Ahavat Olam) and in the morning (Ahavah Rabbah)? The themes are the same, but the texts are different. Perhaps the different prayer texts developed in different places but at some point were coordinated in a moment of liturgical standardization and compromise.
Though these are just theories—proposed from clues in a rather scanty record, they fit into the well-known patterns of Jewish life. There have been times of great creativity and diversity, and there have been times of consolidation and standardization. Ours is a living and ever-evolving religious civilization, one in which Jews root ourselves in the past, strive to live consciously with God in the present, and prepare to encounter God in new and enhanced ways in the future. As we read in Adon Olam:
“V’hu hayah, v’hu hoveh, v’hu yih’yeh b’tif’arah.
God was, God is, and God will always be glorious.”