Berakhot 107

1:
This mishnah continues a thread that lay beneath the surface of the previous mishnah. We saw that the differences of opinion in the previous mishnah concerning the insertion of Havdalah were caused by the still fluid state of the actual text of the Amidah at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century CE. Essential to our understanding of this present mishnah is the fact that the text of the Amidah was not a fixed, written text that anyone could read from a prayer-book, as is our modern custom. The parameters of the Amidah, of course, were clearly set forth: the first berakhah was to contain reference to the "Founding Parents", the second berakhah was to contain reference to "the Resuscitation of the Dead", the third berakhah was to contain reference to the awesome Holiness of the Deity – and so forth. Furthermore, the format of the blessing that concluded each berakhah was (probably) fixed. But apart from those indications the worshipper was on his or her own, and each individual had to "fill in the blanks" to the best of their ability. For most people – then as now – such an ability was not great, and that is why the custom grew up of having a representative of the congregation repeat the Amidah out loud, so that the less able could listen to this recitation and answer Amen at the end of each berakhah, thus fulfilling their duty.

2:
When the public recitation of the Amidah was thus, in effect, a constant "impromptu" improvisation on the part of the cantor, the door was left wide open for the inclusion of undesirable – or even heretical – ideas, and surreptitious or clandestine attempts to gain acceptance for them. We have already noted [Berakhot 085] the efforts of Rabban Gamli'el to prevent the early "Jewish" Christians from using the Amidah to further the messianic claims of their persuasion.

3:
The reisha [first section] of our mishnah is given in the Gemara as a separate mishnah, and it contains three examples of renditions that the sages found problematic. (We may assume that the three examples given by the mishnah were either actual cases or exemplify actual cases.) We have on several occasions mentioned that the discussion in the Gemara [Berakhot 33b] dates to a period that is a couple of centuries later than the mishnah itself. The silencing and immediate (and ignominious?) replacement of a cantor who committed an outrage such as Thank You, Thank You (instead of the acceptable "We thank You" that opens the penultimate berakhah to this day) is easily understood by the sages of the Gemara. The repetition of the phrase, for sensitive ears ready and tuned, would have displayed a clear Gnostic dissonance. Gnosticism was an alien philosophy that plagued Judaism (and early Christianity to an even greater extent). The main problem with it from the Jewish point of view was that for practical purposes it created two separate "heavenly powers" that were fighting for the control of mankind, "the good" and "the bad". Apart from the fact that such a notion removes the onus for our behaviour from ourselves and transfers it to some 'heavenly power', it also has more than a whiff of dualism about it: there are two deities, not one. Thus our mishnah says, in effect, that any cantor who even hints in his improvisations of the Amidah that he is tainted by Gnostic tendencies is to be immediately and unceremoniously replaced.

4:
Another of the problematic phrases mentioned by the mishnah, May Your Name be recalled for goodness, is also connected with Gnosticism (or some similar alien philosophy) in all probability. The suffering Job [2:10] reprimands his wife for her impiety at being prepared to accept all the good things that God had meted out to them, but to balk at the first sign of adversity: "Shall we accept the good from God and not accept the bad?" he asks. In Chapter Nine of our present tractate we shall learn that "A person must praise God for the bad [that happens to us] just as for the good". (This is why there is a berakhah to be recited even when hearing of the death of a loved one.) A cantor who improvises "May Your Name be recalled for good" might be suggesting "for good – and not for bad" – another whiff of Gnosticism!

To be continued.