Tefillah 079

1:
Now that the Torah reading ceremony has been concluded with the return of the Torah scroll to the ark the Shabbat morning service now continues with the Additional Service, Musaf. It is commonly assumed that the first item in this service is the recital of half-kaddish [Siddur Sim Shalom page 155; Siddur Va'ani Tefillati page 381], but this is not so. The fact that modern custom has decreed that most rabbis choose to deliver their sermon after the Torah scroll has been returned to the ark creates the impression of an interval, after which a new section of the service starts. But, in fact, this is not the case. The sermon, or Dvar Torah is part and parcel of the Torah reading ceremony; in fact, it concludes it; and when the cantor recites half-kaddish this is the sign that that part of the proceedings is now concluded. We have previously discussed the use of kaddish as a liturgical punction mark: see Tefillah 030, explanation #88, for example.

2:
The quotation from Rambam's Mishneh Torah which heads this section of our study makes it quite clear that all the services (except possibly the Evening Service) correspond to the regular sacrificial ritual in the Bet Mikdash. However, this connection is obfuscated in the case of the three daily services because no overt mention is made in them of the connection with the sacrificial cult. To all intents and purposes the connection between these services and the animal sacrifices that used to be offered in the Bet Mikdash is limited to the time when these services take place: the Morning Service, Shaĥarit, corresponds to the dawn sacrifice and the Afternoon Service, Minĥah, corresponds to the sacrifice which was offered every day during the afternoon. (Tradition has it that the Evening Service derives from the time when, during the night, the priests would incinerate all the meat, fat and limbs from the daily sacrifices that the fire had not completely consumed; historically speaking this is not the case, but this is not the subject of our present concern.

3:
However, as far as the Additional Service is concerned the connection between it and the ancient sacrificial cult is obvious. This is because it only exists because of the additional sacrifices that were offered on festive days. (Indeed, classical Reform abolished the Additional Service for this reason.) The additonal sacrifices were offered on every Shabbat, every Rosh Ĥodesh (New Moon), all seven days of Passover, Shavu'ot (Pentecost), Rosh ha-Shanah (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), all seven days of Sukkot (Tabernacles) and the one day of Shemini Atzeret (commonly considered to be the last day of Sukkot). Thus it is that on all these days – and there are approximately ninety of them every year – there is an additional service. The details of the sacrifices to be offered in each case may be found in the book of Numbers, chapters 28 and 29.

4:
Let us take the instruction for Shabbat as a first example:

And, by way of contrast, here are the instructions for the first day of Sukkot:

5:
Very early on it became the custom to make the recitation of these details the cornerstone of the Amidah for the Additional Service. It is quite clear that in Eretz-Israel, at least, the four Amidot for Shabbat, for example, were originally identical. However, the sages were very disapproving of someone repeating the same words all the time. The Mishnah [Berakhot 4:4] quotes approvingly the words of Rabbi Eli'ezer:

And Rashi [Berakhot 29b] explains that the fixed text of which Rabbi Eli'ezer so disapproves means that the worshipper

This prompts the sages to determine that in every Amidah the worshipper must say (at least) something new. In the Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Berakhot 36a] we are told that Rabbi Zeira asked Rabbi Yosé what that requirement means; and Rabbi Yosé replied:

Clearly, Rabbi Yosé was referring to making a difference between what one had said during the Shaĥarit Amidah to what one was now going to say during the Musaf Amidah. This indicates that already in Talmudic times references to the sacrificial cultus were considered to be de rigueur for the Additional Service.

6:
This tradition of declaiming the sacrifices appropriate to the occasion brought in its wake associative thoughts that hardened into ritual, and the heart of the Musaf Amidah became a plea for the rebuilding of the Bet Mikdash and the restoration of the sacrificial cult. For example, the traditional text for the Musaf Amidah on Shabbat reads – in part – as follows:

And there follows the quotation of the Sabbath additional sacrifices that we have quoted above. On festivals the yearning for the restoration of the Bet Mikdash and its sacrifices was made even more pronounced.

7:
It was only in modern times that the tenor, drift and content of the traditional Musaf service became problematic for the vast majority of Conservative Jews who do not yearn for a restoration of the sacrificial cultus. We shall, God willing, examine the various ways in which this problem was addressed over the decades in our next Shiur.