obviously, many of the early post-biblical prayers were deeply influenced by Hechalot (“Palace”) and Merkavah (“Chariot”) mysticism, two esoteric systems that charted the mysteries of creation, the angelic orders, and the innermost chambers of the Divine glory.
Undoubtedly, though, the most significant mystical contribution to the prayers is the Kedushah, said in three different forms, most notably during the Leader’s repetition of the Amidah. We have noted the two major tributaries of prayer: the spontaneous prayers said by figures in the Hebrew Bible, and the sacrificial service in the Temple. Mysticism is the third, and its most sublime expression is the Kedushah, based on the mystical visions of Isaiah (6) and Ezekiel (1–3). There are times in the prayers when we are like prophets, others when we are like priests, but there is no more daring leap of faith than during the Kedushah, when we act out the role of angels singing praises to GOD in His innermost chambers.
Familiarity breeds inattention, and we can all too easily pass over the Kedushah without noticing its astonishing drama. “The ministering angels do not begin to sing praises in heaven until Israel sings praises down here on earth” (Chullin 91b). “You”, said GOD through Isaiah, “are My witnesses” (Isaiah 43:10). Israel is “the people I formed for Myself that they might declare My praise” (43:21). We are GOD’S angels on earth, His emissaries and ambassadors. The Jewish people, always small and vulnerable, have nonetheless been singled out for the most exalted mission ever entrusted to humankind: to be witnesses, in ourselves, to something beyond ourselves: to be GOD’S “signal of transcendence” in a world in which His presence is often hidden.
This is a mystical idea, and like all mysticism it hovers at the edge of intelligibility. Mysticism is the attempt to say the unsayable, know the unknowable, to reach out in language to a reality that lies beyond the scope of language. Often in the course of history, mysticism has tended to devalue the world of the senses in favour of a more exalted realm of disembodied spirituality. Jewish mysticism did not take this course. Instead it chose to bathe our life on earth in the dazzling light of the Divine radiance (zohar, the title of Judaism’s most famous mystical text).
7. RELIVING HISTORY
HISTORY, TOO, HAS LEFT ITS MARK on the Siddur. There are passages, indicated in the Commentary, that were born in the aftermath of tragedy or miraculous redemption. This edition of the Siddur also includes suggested orders of service for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut and Yom Yerushalayim, marking the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, and the Six Day War of 1967.
No less significantly, the synagogue service invites us at many points to re-enact history. The Verses of Praise begin with the song of celebration sung by King David when he brought the Ark to Jerusalem. The verses we sing when we take the Torah scroll from the Ark and return it recall the Israelites’ journeys through the wilderness, when they carried the Ark with them. In one of the most fascinating transitions in the service, as we move from private meditation to public prayer (pages 358–362), we recall three epic moments of nation-formation: when David gathered the people to charge them with the task of building the Temple; when Ezra convened a national assembly to renew the covenant after the return from Babylonian exile; and when Moses led the Israelites through the Reed Sea. Even the three steps forward we take as we begin the Amidah recall the three biblical episodes in which people stepped forward (vayigash) as a prelude to prayer: Abraham pleading for the cities of the plain, Judah pleading with Joseph for Benjamin to be set free, and Elijah invoking GOD against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
We are a people defined by history. We carry our past with us. We relive it in ritual and prayer. We are not lonely individuals, disconnected with past and present. We are characters in the world’s oldest continuous story, charged with writing its next chapter and handing it on to those who come after us. The Siddur is, among other things, a book of Jewish memory.
8. PRAYER AND FAITH
THE SIDDUR IS ALSO THE BOOK OF Jewish faith. Scholars of Judaism, noting that it contains little systematic theology, have sometimes concluded that it is a religion of deeds not creeds, acts not beliefs. They were wrong because they were searching in the wrong place. They were looking for a library of works like Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. They should have looked instead at the prayer book. The home of Jewish belief is the Siddur.
At several points, the prayers have been shaped in response to theological controversy. The opening statement in the morning service after Bar’chu, “who forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates all”, is a protest against dualism, which had a considerable following in the first centuries CE in the form of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Its presence can be traced in the ancient documents discovered in the 1940s, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices. Against dualism, with its vision of perpetual cosmic struggle, Judaism insists that all reality derives from a single source.
The second paragraph of the Amidah, with its fivefold reference to the resurrection of the dead, reflects the ancient controversy between the Pharisees and Sadducees. The morning prayer, “My GOD, the soul You placed in me is pure” (page 16), may be directed against the Pauline doctrine of original sin. The Mishnah chapter, “With what wicks may we light?” (page 298), was probably inserted as part of the polemic against the Karaite sect. The Ten Commandments, said daily as part of the Temple service immediately after the Shema, was removed from the prayers when it was used by sectarians to argue that only these ten commandments were commanded by GOD.
The fact that Jewish faith was written into the prayers, rather than analysed in works of theology, is of immense significance. We do not analyse our faith: we pray it. We do not philosophise about truth: we sing it. Even Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Jewish faith – the most famous creed in the history of Judaism -only entered the mainstream of Jewish consciousness when they were turned into a song and included in the Siddur as the hymn known as Yigdal. For Judaism, theology becomes real when it becomes prayer. We do not talk about GOD. We talk to GOD.
I have known many atheists. My doctoral supervisor, the late Sir Bernard Williams, described as the most brilliant mind in Britain, was one. He was a good, caring, deeply moral human being, but he could not understand my faith at all. For him, life was ultimately tragic. The universe was blind to our presence, deaf to our prayers, indifferent to our hopes. There is no meaning beyond that which human beings construct for themselves. We are dust on the surface of infinity.
I understood that vision, yet in the end I could not share his belief that it is somehow more honest to despair than to trust, to see existence as an accident rather than as invested with a meaning we strive to discover. Sir Bernard loved ancient Greece; I loved biblical Israel. Greece gave the world tragedy; Israel taught it hope. A people, a person, who can pray is one who, even in the darkest night of the soul, can never ultimately lose hope.
9. PRAYER AND SACRIFICE
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PRAYER and sacrifice is deep. As we have seen, sacrifice is not the only forerunner of our prayers; many prayers were spoken by figures in the Bible. These were said without any accompanying offering. Yet the sacrificial system is a major tributary of the Jewish river of prayer. After the destruction of the Second Temple, prayer became a substitute for sacrifice. It is avodah she-be-lev, “the sacrificial service of the heart”. Yet it is just this feature of the prayers that many find difficult to understand or find uplifting. What, then, was sacrifice?
The Hebrew word for sacrifice is korban, which comes from a root that means “to come, or bring close”. The essential problem to which sacrifice is an answer is: how can we come close to GOD? This is a profound question – perhaps the question of the religious life – not simply because of the
