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Rabbinic Tefilla Colloquium II

The Current Study Unit -- by R.Kimelman (Unit 6)

THE SHEMA' LITURGY

Welcome back to our ongoing study of the liturgy.

(For those just joining us: there is no need to review the last semester's material. If you are inclined to do so, however, go to the archive and take a look at the units on the Shema in Colloquium I.)

In this unit on the Shema liturgy, we will focus on the Barukh shem kvod malkhuto le-olom va-ed ("Blessed be the name of His glorious sovereignty forever and ever"). This strophe was inserted after the Shema verse, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one" to assure that its recitation be understood as an act of realizing divine sovereignty. It thus functioned similarly to the mode of recitation of the Shema called Pores et Shema that we discussed in the previous post. As you read this, you might want to consider what we could do to make the concept of divine sovereignty real to our congregants, or even to reflect on the more provocative issue of whether the metaphor of God as sovereign is as applicable now as it was then.

In actuality, the insertion Barukh shem kvod malkhuto le-olom va-ed was quite an audacious innovation, for it interrupted the flow of the biblical Shema with a nonbiblical element. It is the distinction between the biblical material(de-oraita) and the nonbiblical (de-rabbanan) which provides the original explanation for the practice of reciting it silently.

Despite the universal acceptance of this blessing formula, its meaning and origin are clouded in obscurity. According to the Mishnah and Tosefta, it functioned in the Second Temple either as a response to the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, or as the "amen" after a blessing. According to Sifre Deuteronomy and amoraic literature, it served as the response to Israel's recitation of the Shema verse by the angels (a notion that may account for the claim that Moses heard it from the angels upon arriving on high), by Moses, or by Jacob. It also functioned to compensate for the recitation of an unnecessary blessing. The formula is widely attested to in Heikhalot literature as part of angelic liturgies in response to the Kedushah, or to various divine names, or just as a conclusion. Its primary settings hence are either the Temple of tannaitic literature, or the Shema and/or angels of amoraic and Heikhalot literature. The exception is the tannaitic Sifre which lines up with amoraic literature, which makes sense since the relevant citation belongs to the anonymous, probably amoraic, part of the Sifre. In sum, the strophe has in the main three hoary settings, namely, the angels, the Temple, or biblical heroes.

The claim that this blessing formula with its mention of sovereignty (malkhuto) in the fourth word functioned as a liturgical response in the Second Temple presents an interesting challenge. According to the Tosefta, the response is based on Nehemia 9:5: "Bless the Lord your God who is from eternity to eternity. " This verse contains all the elements of our blessing formula except for mention of malkhuto. Based on the cited verse, the response should have been just: "Blessed be His glorious name forever," just as the invitation to "Bless the Lord your God who is from eternity to eternity" (Nehemia 9:5) was implemented by "And they blessed the name of your glory," probably by saying the same or "Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel (or: our God) from eternity to eternity" (I Chronicles 16:36). Maimonides, sensitive to the incongruity of responding to a blessing that makes no mention of kingship with one that does, rules that the response to the priestly benediction is "Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel from eternity to eternity," even though elsewhere he affirms the talmudic position that when the precentor says: "Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel from eternity to eternity, Blessed are You Redeemer of Israel," the people respond: "Blessed be the name of His glorious sovereignty forever and ever."

The blessing of God's name was a standard way of beginning a prayer in Second Temple times. The elements of such blessings are "blessing," "name," and "forever." There is no mention of kingship. Such is the case in the aforecited Nehemia 9:5, and Daniel 2:20 which reads: "May the name of God be blessed forever and ever." Even in Psalm 145, the only biblical psalm to call "my God the king," it mentions these three elements without mentioning kingship in the blessing of God's name. After the strophe, "I will extol You, my God, the king," it continues only with "and bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I bless You and praise Your name forever and ever" (1-2). Similarly Psalm 113:2 states: "Let the name of the Lord be blessed now and forever." The two cases of actual blessing formulae in the Psalter that contain "name" simply state: "Blessed be His glorious name forever" (72:19) and "Blessed be the name of the Lord from now and forevermore" (113:2). Psalm 17 does mention "king" ("Lord, You are our king forever and ever"), but does not begin with "blessed" nor contain "name". The blessing formulae of extra-biblical literature follow the same pattern of mentioning "blessing," "name," and "forever."

The blessing formulae in extra-biblical literature also mention "blessing," "name," and "forever." Tobit 3:11-15 begins: "Blessed are You, merciful God. Blessed is Your name forever;" 8:5-7 begins: "Blessed are You, O God of our ancestors, and blessed is Your name in all generations forever;" and 11:14 begins: "Blessed be God and blessed be His great name." The Prayer of Azariah also begins: "Blessed are You, O Lord, God of our ancestors and worthy of praise and glorious is Your name forever" (1:3). Similarly, I Enoch says: "Blessed are You, and blessed is the name of the Lord of the spirits forever and ever" (39:14), and "Blessed is He, and blessed is the name of the Lord of the spirits forever and ever"(61:11). At Qumran, The War Scroll 18:6 just reads: "Blessed is your name, God of gods/angels." The blessing of God's name forever also became a response. The responsorial in the Qumran version of Psalm 145 is: "Blessed is He and blessed is His name forever." In the Kaddish it is: Yehei shmei rabbah mevorach le-olom va-ed ("May His great name be blessed forever"). This responsorial, despite the absence of "kingship," was considered equivalent to the Barukh shem kvod malkhuto le-olom va-ed as it substitutes for it in the targumic version of Jacob's response to his sons' saying of the Shema verse.

The one case that does mention kingship is Targum Neofiti to Genesis 49:2 which retains the term Hebrew kvod in the Aramaic and prefixes to the word for kingship the genitive form. Both peculiarities testify to the artificiality of the effort to render shem kvod malkhuto into Aramaic. In doing so, it underscores the difficulty of translating two consecutive construct forms. Similarly, R. Sa`adya Gaon, in his The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, after referring to this formula as "praises applied to the attribute of an attribute," renders the formula into Arabic as if it read, "Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom" (2:12). Thus two major cognate languages of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic testify to the difficulty in understanding the formula as is.

There are four pre-70 C.E. exceptions where blessing formulae contain references to divine sovereignty. None of them, however, mention "name." Tobit 13:1 reads: "Blessed be God, who lives forever, for His kingdom lasts throughout all ages," and Song of Solomon 5:19 reads: "Blessed be the glory of God, for He is our king." Similar renderings appear in the Qumran Daily Prayers, one of which is a blessing of the angelic heavenly liturgy.

There is so far no evidence from the literature of the Second Temple period of a blessing that includes both name and kingship. Had the Temple response included both, their absence elsewhere would be inexplicable. No blessing formula would be better known or imitated more than the Temple's. Since no single element of the strophe inserted after the Shema verse is unique nor any element specifically linked to the Temple, there is little reason to assume that in combination it was limited to the Temple. The Qumran Daily Prayers alone contains some thirty blessing formulae without a mention of kingship. The infrequency of the mention of kingship in the blessing formulae of the liturgy, with the greatest affinity to post-Temple rabbinic liturgy, attests to its rarity.

The thesis that the kingship formulation was introduced as a polemic against the claims of kingship of the Hasmoneans, especially of Alexander Jannai, of the Sadducees, of Herod, or any other political figure for that matter, is all the more unlikely in light of its absence elsewhere. It is of course possible that the motif of kingship was limited to the Sabbath or to the Temple (i.e., to the holy), either in time -- as in Qumran, or in space -- as in the Temple. In any case, the only alleged example of a blessing containing both "name and "kingship" in the Second Temple period is the rabbinic claim of Second Temple practice.

It is thus possible to speculate that the Temple response may have been just Barukh shem kvodo le-olom ve-ed based on Psalm 72:10 or Nehemia 9:5 Such a response is apropos to hearing the name of God. That is, after hearing the name of God uttered in the Temple, all the people responded with: "Blessed is the name of his glory forever and ever." Indeed, Targum Jonathan to Deuteronomy 6:5 has as Jacob's response the Targum to Psalms 72:10 almost verbatim. Apparently, when the recitation of the Shema verse became an act of realization of divine sovereignty, Psalm 72:10 was accordingly adapted by expanding shem kvodo to shem kvod malkhuto.

This suggestion would explain the absence of any mention of kingship in the response of the kaddish which may be dated to Temple times, to which it was equivalent. The subsequent prominence of the kingship motif in the Shema and in the rabbinic blessing formulary reflects a post-Temple reality that we intend to take up in our discussion of the rabbinically sanctioned blessing formulary.

Whatever the case, it is clear that the insertion of "Blessed be the name of His glorious sovereignty forever and ever" serves to underscore the conceptualization of the recitation of the verse as an act of the realization of divine sovereignty. The fact that it may have had no precedent in previous liturgical practice evinces how concerned the rabbis were to make sure that all Israel would understand that, in their recitation of the Shema, they were committing themselves to accept and proclaim the sovereignty of the God of Israel.

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