All:
May His great name be blessed for ever and all time.
Leader:
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, raised and honoured, uplifted and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond any blessing, song, praise and consolation uttered in the world – and say: Amen.
LAWS OF THE AMIDAH:
1. The Amidah is said standing, facing Jerusalem (in practice, this usually means facing the synagogue wall containing the Ark), with feet together.
2. During the Amidah, we must be especially conscious of standing in the presence of GOD. To symbolise entry to the Divine presence, we take three steps forward before beginning the prayer (having first taken three steps back), and at the end bow and take three steps back, bowing first left, then right, then forward.
3. At four points during the Amidah (indicated by the symbol
4. The Amidah is said quietly. We alone should be able to hear what we are saying (based on the biblical precedent of Hannah whose “lips moved but her voice was not heard", I Samuel 1:13). It should be said with complete concentration.
5. If, before one has finished the silent Amidah, the Leader begins the repetition and reaches Kedushah, one should pause, listen with full attention to the Kedushah, and then return to one’s prayer. One should not interrupt one’s own prayer by saying the congregational responses aloud.
AMIDAH: THE STANDING PRAYER
The Amidah is the summit of prayer: in it, we enter the holy of holies of religious experience. We say it standing because we are conscious of being in the unmediated presence of GOD. The name Amidah is also related to its earliest setting: prayers said by the people of the Ma’amad, groups of laymen who, in Second Temple times, accompanied their local “watch” (mishmar) of priests who officiated in the Temple on a one-in-24-week rota. The Ma’amad was one of the prototypes of congregational prayer.
According to tradition, the Amidah in embryonic form dates back to the Great Assembly in the time of Ezra following the Jews’ return from Babylon. Several centuries later, it was canonised in a fuller form by Shimon HaPakuli in the days of Rabban Gamliel II.
It is often called the Shemoneh Esreh, “Eighteen", because it originally consisted of eighteen blessings (now, nineteen). It has a three-part structure: 1. praise (blessings 1–3); 2. requests (blessings 4–16); and 3. thanks (17–19). Each of these has a tripartite form. The first and last sections each contain three blessings. The middle section is composed of twelve blessings, six personal requests and six collective ones. The first three personal requests are for spiritual goods (wisdom, repentance and forgiveness). The second are for physical goods (deliverance, healing and livelihood). The first three national requests are for physical events (ingathering of exiles, justice, and an end to internal conflicts). The second three are for the nation’s spiritual needs (the righteous and pious, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the restoration of the Davidic monarchy). One blessing, “Listen to our voice” (the sixteenth, last of the “request” blessings), stands outside this structure because it is a prayer about prayer itself. It is also the point at which individuals can add their personal requests.
Blessing 1: Patriarchs. In these opening chords we refer back to the dawn of our people’s history – the days of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In so doing, we echo Moses, who constantly referred to the patriarchs when praying for forgiveness for the people. GOD’S love for, and covenant with, those who first heard His call is the supreme ground on which we stand when we turn to Him in prayer. The paragraph ends with a reference to Abraham, who was the first person to heed GOD’S call. For Your sake, O GOD of life – the phrase literally means “Living God". The translation, however, conveys the poetic structure of this short but powerful prayer: four phrases, each ending with the word chayyim, “life.”
Blessing 2: Divine might. The fivefold reference to the resurrection of the dead reflects the controversy between the Sadducees and Pharisees in the late Second Temple era. The Sadducees rejected belief in resurrection; the Pharisees, whose heirs we are, affirmed it. Belief that those who died will one day live again is one of Judaism’s great principles of hope, set out in the vision of Ezekiel of the valley of dry bones that came to life once more. Jews kept hope alive; hope kept the Jewish people alive.
Kedushah. The Kedushah is the supreme moment of holiness in prayer. It takes several different forms. Common to them all is that they are built around the two supreme mystical visions in the Hebrew Bible, of Isaiah (6) and Ezekiel (1–3). The prophet sees GOD enthroned in glory, surrounded by angels singing His praises. Isaiah hears them singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts: the whole world is filled with His glory.” Ezekiel (3:12) hears them singing, “Blessed is the Lord’s glory from His place.” Together they constitute the most sublime expression of prayer as praise in the presence of GOD.
In the morning, Kedushah is said three times at different points in the service. There is Kedushat Yotzer, which appears in the first of the three Shema blessings (page 62), Kedushah de-Amidah, said here during the Leader’s repetition; and Kedushah de-Sidra, towards the end of the service. The first and third do not require a minyan and are said sitting. The second requires a minyan and is said standing. The reason is that the first and third are descriptions of the song of the angels; the second is a re-enactment. We stand, feet together, rising on our toes, as if we too were angels.
In the Kedushah we move beyond the priestly prayer-as-sacrifice and the prophetic prayer-as-dialogue to prayer as a mystic experience. So holy is it that in Israel in ancient times it was said only on Shabbat and festivals. The Zohar interprets Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending (Genesis 28:12), as a metaphor for prayer, and this, too, is part of the meaning of Kedushah. We have climbed the ladder from earth to heaven. As the leader repeats the prayer on behalf of the entire community, we reach the summit of religious experience.
Blessing 3: Holiness. The threefold reference to holiness (“You are holy and Your name is holy, and holy ones praise You daily”) mirrors the threefold declaration of the angels in Isaiah’s vision: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts”. Kadosh, “holy", means “set apart, distinct". When used of GOD, it refers to His transcendence, the fact that He stands outside nature, creating and sustaining it. When used of Israel, it means that we too are summoned to stand apart from the idols of the age, living instead in close and continuous proximity to GOD.
The first three paragraphs of the Amidah form a composite unit. The first speaks of the beginning of covenantal time in the days of the patriarchs. The second is about the end of time: resurrection. The third is about holiness, beyond space and time.
Blessing 4: Knowledge. This is the first of the “request” blessings. King Solomon, when asked by GOD to name the thing he most desired (i Kings 3:5–15), asked for wisdom; so do we. Knowledge
