Hebrew Daily Prayer Book - Jonathan Sacks

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an end to the factionalism that caused great damage to the Israelites from the biblical era to the end of the Second Temple period. Sound the great shofar: A reference to Isaiah 27:13, “On that day a great shofar will sound". Raise high the banner: Isaiah 11:12, “He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”

      Blessing 11: Justice. A prayer for self-government. The “Judges” in the biblical book of that name were not merely judges in a legal sense; they were leaders of the people (Rabbi Abraham ben HaRambam). The prayer for the restoration of judges, following the ingathering of exiles, is thus a plea for the return of national sovereignty. Remove from us sorrow and sighing – the plaint of a people who have known the full precariousness of being dependent on the goodwill of others.

      Blessing 12: Against Informers. The text of this paragraph underwent several changes during the centuries. Its original object was the sectarianism that split the Jewish world during the late Second Temple period. There were Jews in the Hellenistic age who turned against their own people. Faith (emunah) in Judaism involves the idea of loyalty – to a people and its heritage. This prayer is a protest against disloyalty.

      The Talmud says that, to formulate this prayer, Rabban Gamliel turned to Shmuel HaKatan. Rav Kook pointed out that the only other reference to Shmuel HaKatan in rabbinic literature says that he used to say: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.” Only a person who deeply loved his fellow human beings could be entrusted with the task of constructing this prayer, which must be free of animosity and schadenfreude.

      Blessing 13: The righteous. After mentioning those who harm the Jewish people, we go on to describe those who endow it with greatness: the righteous, the pious, the elders, scholars and converts. The remnant of their scholars is a reference to those Jews who endured religious persecution under the Greeks and Romans, and later in Europe survived the Crusades to the Holocaust. Judaism lost many of its greatest scholars as martyrs.

      Blessing 14: Rebuilding Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the home of the Jewish soul, the place to which we turn in prayer and for whose restoration Jews prayed in every generation. The Book of Psalms has left us an indelible description of how Jews felt when the city fell to the Babylonians in the sixth century bce: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion … May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy” (Psalm 137). Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible.

      Blessing 15: Kingdom of David. David was promised by GOD that the monarchy would always be the heritage of his children. The Davidic monarchy came to an end with the Babylonian conquest. It will be restored in the messianic age. The word “Messiah” in Hebrew means “anointed”; that is, a duly appointed king of Davidic descent.

      Blessing 16: Response to Prayer. An all-inclusive prayer, that our prayers be heard.

      At this point in the silent Amidah, the individual can include any of his or her personal requests.

      Blessing 17: Temple Service. The last three blessings, called by the Sages “Thanksgiving", are linked because they were said by the priests in the Temple (Tamid 5:1). This paragraph was originally a prayer that the day’s sacrifices be accepted. The priests then said Modim, “We give thanks to You” and blessed the people. According to Tosafot, this means that they said the threefold Priestly Blessing, but according to Maimonides it means that they said the prayer beginning “Grant peace.”

      Blessing 18: Thanksgiving. The root y-d-h has three meanings: 1. to bow (see Tar-gum to II Samuel 16:4), hence we bow at the beginning and end of this blessing; 2. to confess or profess; and 3. to thank. The blessing begins as a confession of faith, and moves to thanks for GOD’S blessings which surround us continually. For Your miracles which are with us every day – Nachmanides explained the difference between a “revealed” and a “hidden” miracle. Revealed miracles stand outside the laws of nature; hidden miracles take place within them. GoD is present not only in signs and wonders, but also in the very laws that govern the universe. To see the miraculous in the everyday is part of the Judaic vision, beautifully expressed in these lines.

      Blessing 19: Peace. Shalom means more than the English word “peace”: it also means “completeness, perfection, harmonious interaction". The prophets of Israel were the first in history to conceive of peace as an ideal, most famously in the words of Isaiah: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.” Peace is the ultimate hope of monotheism, with its belief that the world is the product of a single will, not the blind clash of conflicting elements.

       Guard my tongue: A private meditation composed by the fourth-century scholar Mar son of Ravina. It beautifully mirrors the opening meditation, “O LORD, open my lips.” Having asked GOD to teach us what to say in His presence, we now ask Him to teach us what not to say in the presence of other human beings. We ask for help not to respond in kind to those who seek our harm. “The way of the righteous is to suffer humiliation but not to inflict it; to hear themselves insulted but not to reply” (Yoma 23a).

       LAWS OF SHORT FORM OF THE AMIDAH:

      1. The shortened form is used only in cases of genuine emergency, for example, if there is no time to say the full Amidah with concentration, or in the case of one who is seriously ill.

      2. It is not said on the evening after Shabbat or festivals, or when “Grant dew and rain” is said.

       Our Father, our King: A prayer attributed, in its earliest form, to Rabbi Akiva. The opening two words juxtapose the two aspects of our relationship with GOD. He is our King and we are His subjects; He is our parent and we are His children. The first relationship is governed by justice, the second by love, compassion and forgiveness. By placing the words in the reverse order, we mirror both history and faith: history because GOD called us His children (“My child, My firstborn, Israel”) at Mount Sinai before He became Israel’s king; faith because we ask GOD to let His parental love temper the severity of justice.

      TACHANUN: PLEADING WITH GOD This section of the prayers, known as Tachanun, “plea", is a return to private prayer, which began with the silent Amidah. The Siddur preserves a careful balance between the two ways in which we address GOD: as individuals with our personal hopes and fears, and as members of a community whose fate and aspirations we share. First we pray individually (the silent Amidah), then communally (the Leader’s repetition), then individually in Tachanun again.

      Knowing that our time in the direct presence of the supreme King of kings is drawing to an end, we approach Him directly, seeking, as it were, a private audience. Our voices drop; we whisper our deepest thoughts; we express our feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability. We know we are unworthy: we say nothing in our defence except that we have absolute faith in GOD.

      The word Tachanun derives from the root ch-n-n meaning “to show favour, to be gracious, to forgive". What differentiates Tachanun from other modes of prayer is the extent to which we emphasise our failings and our lack of good deeds. We express our dependence on GOD’S unconditional grace and mercy.

      Tachanun is the chamber music rather than the symphony of the soul, and it has a unique intensity of tone.

      The practice of following public prayer with private intercession goes back to Temple times. After the daily sacrifice, “The Levites sang the Psalm [of the day]. When they reached the end of each section [the Psalm was divided into three parts] they blew the shofar and the people prostrated themselves” (Tamid 7:3). Some communities continued the custom of prostration, with face to the ground, even after the destruction of the Temple. We preserve a trace of that gesture by resting our head on our arm and covering

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