Tefillah 031

1:
With the completion of the introductory section, P^esuké d^ezimra, the service now moves on to the next section of worship, K^eri'at Sh^ema, the recitation of the Shema. This section of the service consists of four parts:

• Invitation to worship

• The benedictions which precede the Shema

• The the paragraphs of the Shema itself

• The benediction which follows the Shema

The subject of our present shiur is the first of the four above items: the invitation to worship.

2:
Whenever the Shema is ritually recited in public it is preceeded by the statutory invitation to worship. The cantor calls out to the assembled congregation: Bar^ekhu et Adonai ha-m^evorakh and the congregation responds Barukh Adonai ha-m^evorakh l^e'olam va'ed. The Cantor's call to worship means quite simply in English: "Praise God who should be praised". And the response of the congregation means: "Praised be God who should be praised for evermore".

3:
This short item of the ritual is very ancient. It is already mentioned quite incidentally as an integral part of the service in the Mishnah [Berakhot 7:3], so it must have already been an accepted formula long before the compilation of the Mishnah at the beginning of the 3rd century CE. Clearly, this invitation marks the original point where public worship began. (We have mentioned on several occasions that everything that precedes this part of the service was a later addition.) Bar^ekhu, as it is called, is one of several ritual items which are known collectively as D^evarim shebik^edushah. (The term may be translated as "items of sanctity".) This term designates items of the liturgy which are only recited at public worship, and are therefore omitted by the individual who is praying privately. Of course, this consideration raises the question of what constitutes public worship as opposed to private worship.

4:
Ancient tradition designated the number of ten worshippers or more as constituting public worship; less than ten people are considered to be praying privately even if they are praying together. The designation of the number ten must be very ancient indeed, because the attempts by the sages to link the number to a biblical source are rather convoluted. I shall try to present the matter as succinctly as possible. The Hebrew word for 'congregation' that is now used is Kahal or its cognate form Kehillah. But this root is used almost exclusively in the bible to designate 'assembly'. The biblical word that nearest approaches our modern concept of 'congregation' is edah.

5:
Most people are familiar with the story of how Moses sent twelve prominent Israelites to reconnoitre the Land of Israel and how these men brought back a very disconcerting report: the land is beautiful but we could never conquer the people living there. But this report was only a majority opinion; there was also a minority opinion presented by two members of the delegation who thought that with God's help victory was possible. However, the majority opinion was enough to dishearten the people, who were now filled with the despair of disappointment and frustration. This thoroughly negative attitude angered God:

The Torah here describes the 'community', edah as being wicked, which must perforce exclude the two people whose minority opinion was positive. Since the original delegation consisted of twelve men the 'wicked community' must consist of ten. Hence, say the sages, the Torah defines a congregation as consisting of at least ten people. (I have mentioned on many occasions that often the proof-texts offered by the sages are so weak that we must assume that the custom under discussion was very ancient indeed and the sages were searching for 'a peg' upon which to hang the already established custom.) Thus the minyan (number) of people who constitute a congregation is ten.

6:
We must now investigate why the sages decided that D^evarim shebik^edushah, "items of sanctity", must be restricted to public worship only, in the presence of a minyan. In the Torah [Leviticus 22:32] God says "I shall be sanctified among the Israelites". Elsewhere in the Torah [Numbers 16:21] God warns the Israelites to separate themselves from Koraĥ and his associates: "Separate yourselves from among this community" of sinners. Here we have two verses in which the word 'among' appears. Rabbinic hermeneutics suggested that the fact that the word 'among' appears in both verses creates an ideational connection between them: God is to be sanctified only 'among' the congregation and the congregation consists of ten people, as we have seen above. (I repeat yet again that all that this very weak feat of hermeneutic acrobatics proves is that the custom that D^evarim shebik^edushah are recited only in the presence of a minyan is very ancient indeed.)

To be continued.

I have received a most instructive message from my colleague Randy Konigsberg. Since his message is concerned with various apsects of P^esuké d^ezimra I hasten to present it to you while the topic is still reasonably relevant to our discussions. He writes:

1. First of all, there is a wonderful article in an obscure French bible journal by Eliezer Slomovik, a wonderful teacher of mine at the University of Judaism who very recently passed away. He never became a Rabbi (Slobotka Yeshiva before the war) but taught many rabbinical students who all thought the world of him. His article … insists that the titles to all the Psalms are midrashic and are not and never were part of the Psalms themselves. Rabbi David Leiber (editor of the Etz Hayyim commentary) and others thought that it proved its thesis. Slomovick was a very private and humble man and had it published as obscurly as it could be and never mentioned it. It just kept coming up in other classes until we finally insisted on seeing a copy. I still have it. You mention a couple of times in the lessons that you are unsure why the titles were chosen, the fact is they were assigned later.
2. Rabbi Reuvan Hammer taught recently at a RA convention that the Psalm for Shabbat (92) is not chosen for its content, rather because it is two sections of seven verses each with a transition verse in between. It is the number of verses that make it a "psalm for Shabbat" not the content.
3. I have examined lesson 20 a couple of times and can not find where you talk about Psalm 100, Mizmor l'Todah.
4. Rabbi Reuvan Kimmelman of Brandeis has an unusual take on Ashrei. I admit that his opinions are always far fetched but interesting so I share it with you. There are three anomolies with Ashrei, it has two verses prior to the beginning of Psalm 145. It as one verse after the Psalm ends and its title: "Tehilah L'David". The two opening verses start with "Ashrei", as if they could not decide which one to use. Why those verses? because they begin with Ashrei, the first word in the book of Psalms. The final verse ends with "halleluya" the last word in the book of Psalms, the acrostic insures that every letter of the Aleph Bet is used (I agree the missing Nun verse fell out, but it must have happened long ago since there are no manuscripts I know that have it). Ashrei is the only Psalm that carrys the title "Tehilah", that is the only Psalm that carries the same name as the book of Psalms "Tehillim" Thus Ashrei was seen, at some point, as the "title track" of the book of Psalms so they added the first and last words of the book and symbolically made it so that by saying the Ashrei you recite every psalm from Ashrei to Halleluyah and every letter in between. It is a clever abbreivation of the entire book of Psalms, and may explain why it was said three times a day. Rabbi Kimmelman also noted to our class that Psalm 150, the last psalm, was much like the end of a concert, where the leader thanks the members of the "band" and thanks "kol HaNeshama" the listeners for being a "wonderful audience".

I respond:

As far as item 3 is concerned. Since the basis of our study of the Sabbath Morning Service I have tried to omit all material that is not directly associated with the Shabbat service. Psalm 100 is not recited on Shabbat so I refrained from mentioning it.