To Worship God Properly: Tensions Between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism

by Ruth Langer

A major influence on the development of rabbinic liturgical custom after the destruction of the Temple was the need to establish that this innovative worship of the heart was as acceptable to God as biblically prescribed sacrificial worship. Later Jewish communities and their leaders continually refined the details of the system they inherited to reflect their changing understandings of acceptable, meaningful, and constructive worship. These understandings have in turn been shaped not only by liturgical halakhah and active custom, but by new intellectual and social currents and by the vicissitudes of Jewish history.

Ruth Langer uses the tools of historical scholarship and anthropological study of ritual to analyze some of the dynamics that have shaped Jewish liturgical law and determined the broader outlines of the prayer life of the Jews. After a consideration of the talmudic issues upon which the acceptability of prayer depends, she offers a basic list of legal principles derived by later generations from talmudic literature to ensure that prayer takes the form of blessings composed according to a very specific pattern and invoking God in a very precise way. She then investigates the development and implementation of the corollary that invoking this blessing formula in ways that deviate from the specific directions of the Talmud constitutes precisely inefficacious and even dangerous prayer.

Questions about appropriate prayer language go beyond the blessing formula to the contents of the prayers themselves. Langer analyzes the battles fought over the legitimacy of inserting liturgical poetry into the fixed texts of the statutory liturgy and over the requirement of community for the proper recitation of certain prayers, specifically those that include the angelic liturgy. Although in each of these controversies the rabbis compromised by reinterpreting either legal theory or custom―or both―to bring them into harmony, their solutions have never been monolithic or simple. In its lucid illumination of those complexities, To Worship God Properly adds to our understanding of the history of Jewish liturgy and the general history of rabbinic leadership and law.

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough book that took me approximately forever as I did not really have the proper knowledge base for it going in. On the other hand, it's clearly well researched and written. Finally, it sparked some interesting thoughts on (1) How do we worship God properly, and (2) The tensions between liturgical law the custom...in Judaism, but also in my own Christian tradition.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read more than one book about Jewish prayer, and fewer books about its historical roots. What makes this dense, scholarly book different is its focus on close calls: issues that divided medieval rabbis, usually because there were differences between early rabbinic sources and community custom. Langer focuses on three issues:

1. Blessings not mentioned in the Talmud. Some language in the writings of 9th-c. Babylonian rabbis (often referred to as "geonim") prohibited such blessings. But even geonim quickly carved out exceptions to this principle: R. Sherira Gaon defended blessings over the Sabbath candles, reasoning that because the obligation to light was well-established, one may infer the obligation to make a blessing. However, other post-Talmudic blessings were more controversial, and the less popular ones gradually died out over time due to a combination of public apathy and rabbinic opposition. On the other hand, rabbis justified a few more popular blessings by either (a) giving community custom more weight or (b) assuming that some lost older tradition might have justified it.
2. Piyuttim (liturgical poems) in synagogue services. In the days before prayerbooks became widespread, less knowledgeable Jews could not understand ordinary prayers but could remember songs more easily. So they became popular in the Middle Ages. But this created a halachic problem: the Mishnah, after discussing the Shema prayer, writes: "where they said to shorten it, one may not lengthen it." Ashkenzic rabbis (from France, Germany and Italy) argued that this language should be interpreted to prohibit additions to liturgy generally, while others construed it far more narrowly, reasoning that (1) the Mishnah was not meant to cover all prayers, (2) piyuttim were really a form of Torah study rather than of prayer, and (3) that customs were generally entitled to deference. However, Spanish rabbis were more divided, both on technical grounds and because overlong services reduced synagogue decorum. After the rise of kabbalah in the 16th century, congregations began to cut back on piyyutim (though not totally eliminate them) for three reasons. First, kabbalists disfavored liturgical innovation because they believed that getting liturgy exactly right had positive spiritual consequences. Second, the printing of prayerbooks led to standardization, so an individual community's custom was likely to be unprinted and thus forgotten. Third, as piyyutim became outdated, communities simply lost interest in them, at the same time printing made it easier for people to understand mandatory prayers.
3. Individual recitations of kedushah (prayers involving the phrase "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts" ) without a minyan. The Mishnah rules that certain prayers cannot be said without a minyan (10 men). The Talmud expands this list to include the kedushah said in the context of the amidah (a long prayer said three times a day). However, some other prayers also include the kedushah phrases- can they be said individually? It was a common custom to do so; without printed prayerbooks, Jews who were able to memorize a prayer for synagogue use were unlikely to remember to ignore that prayer at home. Throughout the Middle Ages, rabbis were divided about this issue. Some rabbis interpreted the Talmudic rule to include all versions of the kedushah, especially mystics who worried that Jews were inappropriately parroting the angels who originally used this language (Isaiah 6:3). Others sought to confine the Talmudic rule to its original context. The 16th century Shulchan Aruch resolved the dispute by splitting the difference, suggesting that one could recite the verses with a different melody; at a time when mysticism was popular, this compromise "removed most mystical concerns about an unqualified liturgical rendition of, and participation in, the angelic liturgy."

I generally thought this was well-written for a highly technical book. However, I do wish the author had included more prayers in the appendix, so less knowledgeable readers could understand her discussion more easily.