Tefillah 011

28:
The last element in the section of the early morning prayers is a comparatively late addition, and, indeed, has not been accepted at all in several traditions. (For instance, Baer, in his definitive rendition of classic Ashkenazi ritual, Avodat Yisra'el [1868] omits this element entirely.) Psalm 30 [Sim Shalom, page 81, Va'ani Tefillati, page 30] was added to this part of the service by Kabbalists. Persistant rumour has it that it was included following the personal example of Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz [1555-1630], better known by his sobriquet Shelah.

29:
Ostensibly, Psalm 30 is what its title suggests: A Psalm Song of the Dedication of the House. However, the title does not seem to connect in any meaningful manner with the content, which is a paean of praise to God by a devotee who has been rescued from some dire personal catastrophe. This being the case it is even more strange that the kabbalists should have sought to insert this psalm at this point in the service. Several suggestions have been put forward as to the interpretive meaning that the kabbalists ascribed to this psalm – none of them, to my mind, really convincing. My own thoughts on this subject are that the psalm was seen – or interpreted – as a reference to a re-awakening to life after sleep. Even the rather 'loose' rendition offered in Sim Shalom illustrates the point:

In the Gemara [Berakhot 60b] the sages included a benediction to be recited just before going to sleep, and this benediction included the prayer that God "enlighten my eyes lest I sleep death". This was prompted by the belief of the sages that "sleep is one sixtieth of death" [Berakhot 57b] – meaning that sleep is an adumbration of death. This was a common thought in ancient times: the Roman poet Catullus included in one of his love poems the thought that nox est perpetua una dormienda – there comes a perpetual night which must be slept through.

30:
So we must ask ourselves why this psalm has been retained in Conservative circles when its basis seems to be so flimsy and several authorities omit it altogether. It is true that Va'ani Tefillati hints that the psalm may be omitted with a rubric that reads: "there are congregations who preface Psalm 30 and Mourner's Kaddish to" the next section of the service, and this suggests that there may be congregations who do not do so; but Sim Shalom leaves no doubt: "all services continue here". It seems to me that the rubric in Va'ani Tefillati has let the cat out of the bag: what endears Psalm 30 to those worshippers who have arrived at this early stage in the proceedings is yet another opportunity for mourners to recite the Kaddish which has been appended to it. So, it will come as no surprise if I say quite categorically that those who wish to curtail the service may omit Psalm 30 with absolute impunity! (At a later stage we shall have something to say about the rather dubious custom of multiplying the occasions on which Kaddish is recited.)

31:
At long last we have reached the end of the earliest section of the service. I have already mentioned in a previous shiur that we must accept that the modern worshipper is different from his or her ancestors in that they delighted in spending many a long hour in synagogue, extending their prayers as much as possible, whereas we prefer our devotions to be as short as is meaningfully possible. The earliest sages crafted our prayer services so that they would be quite brief; many people today would like to see a return to shorter services. Even the Shulĥan Arukh itself [Oraĥ Ĥayyim 1:6] admits that

So my own advice for those who feel this way would be as follows:

• Restore the whole of this section to private worship in the home before leaving for synagogue;
• Omit all the later accretions and recite only Birkhot ha-Shaĥar [Early Morning Blessings] and Birkhot ha-Torah [Torah blessings and study]. These may be found in Va'ani Tefillati on pages 15-20 and in Sim Shalom on pages 63-66.
• Those who prefer to retain these passages in the synagogue ritual can make a judicious selection from all the passages that have been added through the ages.

My comments last time about the use of non-Conservative prayer-books in Conservative congregations has produced a wealth of reaction. Rather than make an injudicious selection from all the instructive comments that you have forwarded to me, before we continue to the next section of the service, as our next shiur, I shall offer all of the comments I have received on this topic for your consideration.

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In Tefillah 009 I responded to a comment concerning incongruity. Derek Fields writes:

I think that both you and Michael Lewyn are mistaken. Our prayer, at its heart, is for the restoration of the Bet HaMikdash, which is one of the few tangible “certainties” that we believe will result with the coming of the Messiah. What would we do with a rebuilt Bet HaMikdash? It is not, after all, a Bet Knesset. The only model that we have for its use is our tradition. The two major functions of the Bet HaMikdash in which Klal Yisrael participated were the atonement on Yom Kippur and the corpus of sacrifices that were offered daily and for special occasions. When we pray for the restoration of sacrifice to the Bet HaMikdash, I think that we have simply taken the one concrete sign that the Messiah has come and given it expression in our prayers. Certainly, there are past generations, and some few in our current generation, who would have welcomed the restoration of sacrifices for their own sake. The rest of us, I suspect, are willing to pray for the restoration of the Bet HaMikdash in the Messianic age.

I respond:

We shall relate to the issue of the rebuilding of the Bet Mikdash when we reach the Musaf (Additional) service.

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Michael Epstein writes:

Can I assume V'ani Tefilati does not come with an English Translation?

I respond:

Va'ani Tefillati is a siddur that was commissioned by the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel and the Masorti Movement for the use of Masorti Jews in Israel. It is, perhaps, one of the very few Conservative prayerbooks ever published that contains not one word of English. I am told that it has also become quite popular among Conservative Jews living in the diaspora; presumably these are Jews who can dispense with a translation.