CLAL Rabbinic Community On Line

Amidah
This is the third installment to the CLAL liturgy colloquim. The first two dealt with the Ashre. Since we are doing the Minhah service first we shall continue with the Amidah. The first installment will focus on the the middle eight blessings, namely blessings 4-12 of the "Eighteen Benedictions." You of course are still free to post remarks on the Ashre as well as the Amidah. It would be very helpful to hear from those who have taught some of the material to their congregation and got reponses. As was the Ashre piece, the post is without footnotes. The footnotes can be found in my published piece, "The Literary Structure of the Amidah and the Rhetoric of Redemption," Echoes of Many Texts: Essays Honoring Lou H. Silberman on His Eightieth Birthday, eds. W.G. Dever and E. J. Wright, Brown Judaic Studies. pp. 171-218.

Some of the issues worth discussing include:

The Amidah: Its Literary Structure and Its Rhetoric of Redemption

1. Abstract:

The nineteen blessings of the Amidah constitute an argument for redemption. Thefirst blessing of the opening triad (1-3) presents the argument for a redeemer,the second makes the case for resurrection, and the third brings about the acclamation of God's kingship on earth. All three affirm divine sovereignty. Presenting God as Lord over history, Lord over nature and death, and Lord over heaven and earth in sequence bolsters the hope of redemption.

The second half (10-15) delineates the order of national redemption. It commences with the great shofar's blast of freedom, announcing the ingathering of the exiles, and culminates in the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Since the motifs are all biblical, the novel contribution of the liturgy to the idea of national redemption lies in their linguistic formulation, in their sequence, and in their uncompromising emphasis on divine involvement. All three converge to make the point that God alone is the redeemer.

Blessings 17 and 18 also advance the drama of redemption by focusing on God'sreturn to Zion and the ensuing universal recognition. Thus the Amidah advancesfrom personal (4-7) through national (10-15) to universal redemption (18), each stage involving the progressive realization of divine sovereignty. With blessing 19, the Amidah fleshes out the priestly benediction, ending on a note of peace.

When the Amidah -- with its theme of future redemption -- was welded to the end of the liturgy of the Shema -- with its theme of past redemption, the memory of past redemption provided the liturgical springboard to future redemption, creating a single integrated rabbinic liturgy.

2. Prologue:

There is no communal or statutory service without an Amidah. As the first such service to emerge after the destruction of the Second Temple, it was designated ha-tefillah, "the prayer," that is, of the community. There are different variations for special days. The Sabbath and Festival versions each contain seven blessings, the High Holiday Musaf comprises nine, and fast days -- twentyfour. The weekday version now consists of nineteen blessings. While still consisting of eighteen, it became known as Shemoneh Esreh, the Hebrew for eighteen, a term still in use. Since the Amidah now comprises nineteen blessings and is recited while standing, the name Amidah, "standing," has rightfully gained in usage.

The Amidah was not created ex nihilo. Comprised of elements some of which hark back to the Second Temple period, indeed maybe to the Temple service itself, it crystallizes an extended process of liturgical composition. According to the Talmud, the number of blessings, topics, and their order, were fixed in Yavneh under the auspices of Rabban Gamaliel, who also mandated their daily recitation for the individual. Apparently, a set liturgy had been a communal, not individual, obligation comparable to the public readings of the Torah, and limited to Holidays and Sabbaths as it apparently was at Qumran. By mandating a fixed sequence, the tannaitic Rabbis formalized the Amidah as liturgy. A similar phenomenon occurred with regard to the Hallel, the lectionary reading of the Megillah, the Shema` and the liturgical structure of the Day of Atonement.

Whether or not the units that went into creating the Amidah reflect various historical events or an extended process of coalescing of Temple and non-Temple elements, the Yavnean order emerges as a purposeful collage. Despite the various formulations of the individual units, the order remains constant throughout the various versions including those of the Genizah. A fixed overall structure between the sections along with a fixed sequence within each section points to common organizing principles. The task of the interpreter is to uncover them and to explicate their role in the structure of the Amidah.

Many attempts to uncover the underlying structure of the Amidah are predicated on the significance of the number 18 in the "Eighteen Blessings." These attempts include the drawing of correlations between the eighteen blessings and the eighteen vertebrae of the spine, eighteen matters of the Sanctuary, eighteen pivotal events in Jewish history, or eighteen select biblical texts. R. Saadya Gaon came up with twelve different reasons for this number of blessings.

None of these correlations explain the literary structure of the Amidah. Indeed, the focus on the number eighteen as cipher of the Amidah diverts attention from the literary structure by presuming that the project of understanding the Amidah is like that of deciphering a code. The task of the literary understanding of the Amidah, however, is not by reference to some external code, but rather by grasping the Amidah as a composition with its own internal agendum. Although the findings of philology along with historical and form-critical approaches are helpful in understanding individual blessings, they contribute little to the task of constructing the overall meaning of the Amidah. Such a task demands an additional concern with the interplay of ideas and rhetorical techniques.

The initial attempts to understand the literary structure of the Amidah were made by the first generation of talmudic rabbis known as amoraim. In the mid-third century, R. Joshua b. Levi argued that the structure of the Amidah consists of a beginning and ending triad of blessings of praise with a middle section of requests. His contemporary, R. Hanina nuanced this scheme, saying:"The first [blessings] are like a slave who organizes his praise before his master; the middle are like a slave who requests his allotment from his master;and the latter are like a slave who received his allotment from his master and takes his leave." 

Although R. Hanina shares R. Joshua's characterization of the first two units,the last constitutes an expression of gratitude in the course of making closing remarks. Some six hundred years later, R. Saadya Gaon in contrast argued that the first triad consists of gratitude for the past, the middle part of requests for the future, and the last triad of acknowledgement of divine power. Two centuries later, in the 1100s, Maimonides refined R. Hanina's analysis by stating explicitly that the third part constitutes gratitude. His scheme states: "The first three blessings consists of praises of God, the last three of thanksgiving to Him, whereas the middle blessings are petitions." Most subsequent discussions of the Amidah adopted the Maimonidean formulation with its emphasis on the thanksgiving theme for the final triad.

All of these schemes are based on the tripartite division of the Amidah and the assumption of a common modality of prayer for each unit such as praise or petition. The benefit of the tripartite division is the impression of symmetry. According to it, the Amidah divides into two units of three and one of twelve. The emphasis on three conforms with that of other tannaitic liturgical units such as the original Grace after Meals, the Shema` and its blessings, and the three middle blessings of the High Holiday liturgy, and of course the three blessings of the Temple service as recorded in M. Tamid 5:1.

The validity of a division based on the distinction between praise/thanksgiving and petition, however, is questionable. Unlike the number three, it does not account for other tannaitic liturgical units. It does not even account totally for the Amidah. According to it, the first triad should be exclusively praise,but, as we shall see, it contains oblique petitions for redemption and resurrection. The description of the last triad as only thanksgiving is also misleading. Blessing 17 petitions that our worship be acceptable; blessing 18 begins with the petition "May our eyes behold Your merciful return to Zion;" and blessing 19 begins with the petition "Grant peace." Clearly, this triad is more petition than thanksgiving, a fact that helps account for the medieval tradition of characterizing both triads as petionary as well as the whole Amidah. Even if it were true that the opening triad is mostly praise, the last triad mostly thanksgiving, and the middle mostly petition, the formula praise-petition-thanksgiving would still be too schematized for understanding the Amidah as presently constituted.

In order to salvage the talmudic three-fold classification, various Gaonim suggested that the requests in the opening and closing triad be subsumed under the category of praise as they are collective as opposed to personal. Salvaging the relevance of the traditional rubrics of praise and petition by categorizing collective petition under praise is problematic. The request for agricultural prosperity of blessing 9, for example, is no less collective than the request of God to return to Zion of blessing 18, or the request to grant peace of blessing 19. In fact, a major intertext of the Amidah, Psalm 103, mixes freely individual and collective concerns. There is thus little reason to maintain that the Amidah was originally constructed on the basis of a distinction between praise and petition.

This is not to deny the existence of prayers that are total doxologies or praise, only to note that once petition is introduced the distinction becomes blurred. Praise, thanksgiving, and petition too often presume and entail each other to allow for unqualified categorical distinctions. The Bible itself is full of cases where "address, petition, motivation ... are all expressed via declarations of praise." In actuality, what thanksgiving and praise are to the past, petition is to the future. Since they are so often intertwined in petitionary prayer, it is wiser to predicate the meaning of the clustering of blessings on content rather than on genre or the nature of the formulation. The classification by subject matter rather than by modality, such as praise or petition, would account for the fact that the blessings of the first triad arein some versions formulated as petitions.

3. The Intermediate Blessings:

Since the opening and closing triads of blessings are extant in all versions ofthe Amidah and may have preceded the composition of the nineteen-blessing Amidah, let us begin our analysis of the daily Amidah with its distinctive intermediate blessings.

These thirteen blessings consists of prayers for:

4. knowledge
5. return to God (= repentance)
6. forgiveness
7. deliverance
8. healing
9. year of (agricultural) prosperity
10. ingathering of the exiles
11. restoration of proper judges/leaders
12. destruction of the wicked
13. support of the righteous
14. rebuilding of Jerusalem
15. restoration of the Davidic line (the Palestinian ritual combines 14 and15)
16. acceptance of prayer.

Such a disparate list of requests is a clear challenge to any theory ofcoherence claiming to embrace them all. Nonetheless, the Talmud perceives them as a unit with a mandatory sequence, a phenomenon that indicates literary or conceptual coherence. Building upon the efforts of late third century amoraim,the Talmud accounts for the sequence through a combination of logical linkages and biblical correspondences. This oscillation between logical connections and verse correspondences provides a basis for the linear sequencing of each blessing of the intermediate blessings without providing any single pattern or explanation of the petitions as a whole.

The amoraic treatment of the Amidah parallels their treatment of the Mishnah. In both cases, the amoraim supply the verses that link the Amidah or the Mishnah to Scripture without supplying an overall scheme for their structure. The concern in both cases is with establishing the tannaitic text as derivativeof Scripture.

The medieval and modern periods produced several theories for the overall scheme of the Amidah. These theories explicate the Amidah in terms of its own internal agendum and not just in terms of its biblical antecedents. In the tenth century, Saadya Gaon saw the petitions as examples of the full gamut of human needs, each one paradigmatic of a category. In the twelfth century, Judah Halevi understood the linkage between blessings 4-7 as a series of petitions "about the needs of all Israel and about the needs of the individual containedwithin them." Later in that century, Maimonides integrated the two, saying: "The intermediate blessings contain the request of all things, for they are archetypes of the desires of each person and the needs of the community."

Rabbenu Bahya b. Asher, in the next century, saw the first six as constituting human needs, and the second as constituting the six stages of Israel's restoration to its former glory. His contemporary, R. Jacob b. Asher, allocated the first set of six (4-9) to individual needs and the last set of six (10-15)to collective needs. He also adds the idea that both sets are structured sequentially. For him, the first set represents the sequence of developments in the life of the individual; the second in the life of the nation. He also seesan artful symmetrical arrangement between 4-9 and 10-15 that reveals a causal relationship. Thus blessing 4 does not only precede blessing 5, but is linkedto blessing 10. Similarly, blessing 5 does not only precede blessing 6, but is linked to blessing 11 and so on up to 9 and 15.

Although this theory of the relationship between the two sets did not strike roots in subsequent scholarship, the division into two sets of six succeeded in informing much of the modern discussion. The theory of an internal sequence within each set also has much to say for it and will be developed below. The division into two sets of six was further divided by Eliezer Levi, in the middle of the twentieth century, into two triads each; the first comprising spiritual(4-6) and physical (7-9) needs, whereas the second comprising the prerequisitesof national rebuilding (10-12) and the elements of their realization (13-15). The symmetry of dividing twelve blessings into sets of six which in turn are divided into units of three is most impressive, but ultimately not successful as we shall see.

Other comprehensive theories for the intermediate blessings include seeing them as replicating the rite of expiation of the blood offering on the altar, or as indicating the future collective needs of the messianic era, or as modelled on Greek civic prayers, or as reflecting the kabbalistic sefirotic system. Since these theories do not deal with the Amidah as a literary unit with its own internal agenda they need not detain us.

In contrast, a comprehensive theory that does grasp the Amidah in literary terms is that of Ezra Fleischer. He describes the intermediate blessings as: "a chronologically organized plan, in logical sequence, for the rebuilding ofthe nation from its post-destruction historical reality to its spiritual and political restoration in the ideal future .... Thus they pray that God grant them the knowledge to understand their situation ("He who grants knowledge" [blessing 4]), to know why their world fell apart, and their temple was destroyed, and their independence taken from them. Were they granted the knowledge -- they would realize that their iniquities caused their punishment and they would repent ("He who desires repentance" [blessing 5]); by the merit of their repentance God would make atonement for their iniquities and forgive them ("He who multiplies repentance" [blessing 6]). The pardoning of their iniquities would open the gate to the repair of their condition. God would redeem them (in the present) from every trouble, adversary, and tribulation ("He who redeems Israel" [blessing 7]), and heal their sick ("He who heals His people Israel" [blessing 8]), and give them sustenance to endure their subjugation until the end time ("He who blesses the years"). Up to here, the restoration ofthe national condition in the present, which is temporary, necessary but not sufficient for the true restoration of the nation is not in the present but the future, in which, at the end of a gradual and slow process, she shall return to her former state and merit again her independence. This eschatological process has the following stages," [i.e., the next cluster of blessings].

The advantage of reading blessings 4-9 in this way is that they comprise a single story line somewhat parallel to blessings 10-15. The result is the appearance of the middle section being divided into two symmetrical halves. Indeed, Fleischer goes on to say that the first half is really an introductory blessing plus five, whereas the second part consists of five blessings plus aconcluding one. What begins as a set of 1+5 ends as set of 5+1. Fleischer's symmetry is as impressive as Levi's.

The weakness of Fleischer's theory is not in its literary structure, but in its anchoring of meaning in historical events. The cogency of the analysis is too dependent upon the Amidah being composed in the immediate wake of the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and as a reaction to it. Predicating literary analysis on too close an adherence to a historical happening is always fraught with danger. Modern literary analysis has highlighted the gap between historical happenings and their literary formulation. Moreover, any single motif can be made to fit a variety of historical backgrounds. A blessing for knowledge, for instance, is far too common to be limited to a specific historical moment in time. As such, it constitutes a staple of Qumran, Christian, and Rabbinic prayer independent of any connection to any specific event of history. By arguing for a historical specificity for the blessing of knowledge, Fleischer's position becomes subject to the critique levelled against the classic critical-historical method for its historical reductionism, namely,the reducing of liturgical formulations to reflexes of historical events.

The analysis can also be faulted for its total reliance on the peroration(hitum/hatimah) of the blessings without due consideration of their content. Admittedly, any analysis of the blessing must be based on the peroration, as it is the key to its meaning as well as its most stable part. Still, it may not disregard the body of the blessing whatever its variations. Fleischer's total disregard of the body of the blessing could be taking it cue from his speciality, namely, early piyyutim. Only by such disregard of the body of the fourth blessing could Fleischer consider the knowledge therein to be of their political plight and the theological explanation thereof. On the contrary, the Amidah makes no explicit reference to the destruction nor to any explanation. At most, the destruction and exile only become implicit in blessings ten to fifteen which deal with the restoration. Since they do not even enter the consciousness of the worshiper till after the first six intermediate blessings,they cannot be used to explain any of them, surely not the first. Without reference to such knowledge or its explanation elsewhere in the Amidah, no reader could be expected to grasp the point of the blessing.

It appears that Fleischer is misled by the comparison between the theme of the daily Amidah and that of the Musaf pilgrimage holiday liturgy which states: "Because of our sins we were exiled from our land." There is, however, no warrant for reading the former through the prism of the latter.

On the contrary, explicit references to the destruction and the exile are conspicuous by their absence. As opposed to the multitude of biblical prayers that focus on "delivery from the danger of death, from threat of enemies, from natual disasters, etc.," the Amidah neither focuses on hardship, deprivation, oroppression. Accept for the destruction of the wicked, there is hardly a negative note sounded. Like any mania, parallelomania can distort our vision. Despite their obvious hermeneutical importance, they should not be allowed to compromise the distinctiveness of a composition.

Fleischer is right, however, in emphasizing how much the meaning of a blessing is derivative of its sequence. He repeatedly underscores the meaning of a blessing in the light of its location in the Amidah. Since the fixed sequence of the Amidah attests to an organizing principle, it is clear that the meaning of an individual blessing may be as much dependent upon its locations as its content. In the case of 4 and 5, however, the divinely granted knowledge of the former is not to be applied to their social and religious reality, but to theTorah of the latter.

His contention that blessings 7-9 constitute a remedy of the national conditionis also difficult. Whereas all agree that the meaning of blessing 7 is problematic (see infra), it is hard to imagine blessings of healing and agricultural prosperity becoming symptomatic of the national condition in the wake of the destruction. Such blessings are far too general and universal to be locked into any specific historical condition. Indeed, they are probably not even Israel-specific, for though the Babylonian version of blessing 8 concludes with "He who heals the sick of His people Israel," the Palestinian version has only "He who heals the sick." Similarly, the prosperity of blessing 9 is brought about by proper rainfall for the world in general and not just for the Land of Israel.

Indeed were these the salient deficiencies of post-Temple Israel, their remedy would have been prominent in the upcoming eschatological blessings. There is, however, no mention of them at all. Clearly, blessings 8-9 reflect the human condition, not limited to any specific historical context.

Fleischer's theory in general assumes that the Babylonian version is closer to the original than the Palestinian. Babylon, for him, was more conservative and more meticulous with regard to halakhic obligation while free from the liturgical ferment spawned by the religious poetry that was constantly tampering with liturgical texts in Palestine. He argues against the existence of a fluid text since it would be too demanding for most to recite eighteen blessings daily in a fixed sequence without a fixed text. In my opinion, the differences between what passes as the Babylonian and Palestinian rescensions are too great to permit the assumption of a single fixed text.

Still, the argument that people could not be expected to pray daily such a long prayer without a fixed text has merit. The problem lies with our ignorance of when the Amidah moved from the academy to the synagogue. To argue, as Fleisher does, from Rabban's Gamaliel's ruling about the daily praying of eighteen blessings to a pervasive yea universal practice in the late first century is far too facile. Fleischer's picture of Rabban Gamaliel's authority in particular and of the rabbis in general is based on realities that were emerging in the third century, not the first. And even when the Amidah became a synagogue norm, it may not yet have become a widely practiced individual obligation beyond the academy. As the practice spread the need for fixed formulations of the Yavnean order became apparent. One of these achieved hegemony in Palestine, the other in Babylon, though an absolute division of the two is unwarranted. It is thus quite possible that the two rescensions in their basic formulation are coeval, neither being the sole original text. Thus the following analysis of the Amidahof the Babylonian rescension is done in tandem with the Palestinian rescension.

A. Blessings 4-7:

Fleischer is undoubtedly correct in clustering the blessings into units in order to discern a coherent conceptual framework. The more common way of dividing the first section, however, is to subsume the first half (4-6) under the rubric ofspiritual/moral needs and the second half (7-9) under the rubric of material/physical needs, as if to confirm Seneca's counsel: "Pray for a sound mind and for good health, first of the soul and then of the body."

The problem with this division is the subsuming of blessing 7 under material needs. The difficulty with most theories of coherence lies in determining the meaning of the deliverance in blessing 7 and in deciding whether it should be aligned with the preceding blessings (4-6) or with the succeeding ones (8-9).

An alternative, which supports the latter division, holds that blessing 7 is linked with what follows, since the deliverance here connotes the future resurrection that will be accompanied by a healing of persons as well as of the land. Others, however, find it hard to conceive of it as national or universal in scope, or linked to resurrection, since it follows three blessings that deal with the individual situation, and since it may once have served as a blessing of gratitude for release from tribulation, prison, or captivity. For them, such a background bespeaks its individual orientation.

There is much to be said for understanding this deliverance as individual. First, the biblical roots of the blessing reinforce the individual dimension of the deliverance theme. According to Ps. 103:3-4, the reasons for "blessing the Lord for all His benefits" include His forgiving iniquity, healing diseases, and redeeming life from the pit. These themes correspond respectively to blessings 6, 8, and 7. According to the Talmud, this would have been the order were it not for the verse, "His heart will understand, repent, and be healed" (Isa.6:10), implying that in the wake of understanding (blessing 4) and repentance(blessing 5) comes healing - the healing of forgiveness. It is this healing which generates the sense of redemption that is incorporated in blessing 7. The initial step of this process is shared by the psalmist: "O Lord, have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against You" (Ps. 41:5). The next step is spelled out in The Prayer of Manasseh: "You, O Lord .... In the multitude of Your mercies appointed repentance as the salvation for sinners."

The sequence of the blessings also argues for the individual orientation of blessing 7. Preceded by a blessing on forgiveness and succeeded by one on healing, the intervening deliverance theme tends toward a personal spiritual deliverance, sometimes referred to as a healing of the soul. The understanding of deliverance as personal salvation is seconded by a midrash that correlates the eighteen benedictions and the prayer of Hannah (1 Sam. 2:1-10). By correlating "I rejoice in Your salvation" (1 Sam. 2:1) with blessing 6 on forgiveness, the midrash underscores the role of forgiveness in the scenario of personal redemption.

The link between redemption and forgiveness is also tightened in a Genizah version of blessing 6. This version juxtaposes a verse on redemption (Ps.34:23) with a reworked one on forgiveness (1 Kings 8:34-36). The first two strophes state: "The Lord redeems the soul of his servants / and forgives the sin of his beloved." The linkage between personal salvation/atonement and forgiveness is also behind the midrashic understanding that applies the verse "The Lord is ... my salvation" (Ps. 27:1) to "the Day of Atonement when He save us and forgives us all our sins."

Finally, and most conclusively, the talmudic abridgment of the Amidah, the Havinenu, also links forgiveness with deliverance from sin by condensing blessings 6 and 7 into the single phrase "forgive us in order that we may be delivered." The fact that blessings 6 and 7 are conflated into one, whereas every other blessing has its own phrase, forges the relationship between forgiveness and redemption. The Havinenu, which serves as the earliest commentary on the Amidah, makes clear that rather than starting a new unit, blessing 7 caps blessing 6 by pointing to the redemption that is spawned by forgiveness in the belief that God "will redeem Israel from all their iniquities" (Ps. 130:8).

The sequence of blessings 6 and 7 find its biblical parallel, according to one source, in a verse that is also central to the High Holiday liturgy: "I wiped away your sins like a cloud, your transgression like mist. Return to Me, for I redeem you" (Isa. 44:22). Such is the redemption/salvation that ensues from the removal of sins and the return to God.

The liturgical formulation for the theme of forgiveness in blessing 6 goes as follows:

    a                  b                   c
1. Pardon us     our Father     for we have sinned.

    a                  b                   c
2. Forgive us    our King        for we have rebelled.

3. Blessed are You, gracious One who pardons abundantly.

The distinctive meaning of this blessing revolves around the question of whether blessing 6 intends any distinction between the opening two strophes. A positive answer assumes that "pardon", "father", and "sin" form one cluster of associations, whereas "forgive", "king", and "rebellion" form another. A negative answer includes the assumption that the term salah ("pardon") of the first is nothing more than the biblical equivalent of the rabbinic mahal("forgive") of the second. It is likely that salah is deployed for its distinctive biblical meaning as reconcile or heal. As Milgrom notes, "when God extends His boon of salah, he thereby indicates His desire for reconciliation with man in order to continue His relationship with him." The formulation of the first strophe makes this point by designating the wrongdoing a sin, the term for inadvertence. Appealing to God as father, it seeks reconciliation. The goal is not an eradication of the wrong, only its overlooking, as fathers do. Inthe same vein, the specific point of the second strophe is made by designating the wrongdoing rebellion, the term for deliberateness. Appealing to God as king, it beseeches forgiveness. Since it is God as king against whom we rebelled the goal is to get the wrong expunged from the record. Whether we have sinned or rebelled, we can be assured that God as father or king will forgive and be reconciled to us since He is gracious and readily pardons. This dynamic of forgiveness paves the way for the redemption of blessing 7.

As blessing 6 leads into blessing 7, so blessing 5 leads into blessing 6. It is precisely the location of blessing 5 that makes the case for the centrality of Torah and service/prayer in the process of personal redemption.

It goes as follows:

    a                       b                   c
1. Bring us back     our Father     to Your Torah.

    a                       b                   c
2. Draw us near     our King          to Your service.

    a                      c                                       b
3. Lead us back     in complete repentance      before You.

4. Blessed are You who desires repentance.

The rhetoric of the blessing is a rhetoric of return. The first strophe isbased on the parallel drawn by Nehemiah between "returning ... to You" (Neh.9:26) and "returning ... to Your Torah" (Neh. 9:29). The point being that the return to God is through the Torah. By associating the two elements of Torah and return with the addressee "our Father," the point is driven home. Through both -- "bring us back, and "our Father" -- the case is made that one need only to recommit, not start over, to repent. The idea that repentance involves the recovery of lost ground smooths the path for such a return. The argument for such an about-face is strengthened through the use of the same term (teshuvah) for both return and repentance.

The second strophe with its use of the multivalent term "service" (`avodah) is so rich with associations that it defies any single construction. Biblically,it could mean "grant us access to the Temple/cult service," since "to draw near" is the technical term for access to the Temple, whereas "service" (`avodah) is the technical term for the cult. The meaning of drawing near is retained in its Qumran and rabbinic use in the sense of gaining admission. In the pilgrimage holiday liturgy, however, it refers to the Sinaitic revelation. There, as here, God is addressed as "our king." A similar expression appears at the end of the second blessing before the Shema`. As a post-Temple formulation, however, the connotation of "service" points more to the general service of God, as it appears in the Passover Haggadah, or to prayer as the service of the heart, as it appears elsewhere in rabbinic literature. There is also the association with M. Avot 1:2 where "the world/age stands on three things: Torah, `avodah, and acts of piety." This tripartite statement parallels significantly the three in our blessing: Torah, `avodah, and repentance. In both cases, the term`avodah bears a similar range of associations.

The equation of the value of prayer and the cult is made explicit in blessing 17 where the word for "prayer" (tefillah) is interpolated into an ancient blessing on the Temple service (`avodah) twice. The resultant a b a b structure alternates between "prayer" and "service":

1. Be pleased, Lord our God, with Your people Israel and with their tefillah

2. Return the `avodah to the Temple precincts

3. Accept willingly and with love the offerings of Israel and their tefillah

4. May the Tamid offering of the `avodah of Israel, Your people, be acceptableto You ...

By alternating tefillah and `avodah, the blessing creates an equivalency between them. It also intersperses forms of the technical term for the acceptance of a sacrifice (le-ratson) three times. They are rendered above as "be pleased," "accept willingly," and "be acceptable." The location of this blessing at the head of the last triad of the Amidah guarantees that the term tefillah refers to the Amidah, as it was then called.

The third strophe of blessing 5 reverses the order of the previous strophes. Whereas strophes 1 and 2 are parallel, both adhering to a pattern of a b c, strophe 3 reverses the order of b and c, making the pattern a c b. Thus the blessing concludes with "before You." The result is that the return to Torah and the drawing near to the service of God become the means for the complete repentance that is epitomized by being brought "before You". This climactic conclusion is accentuated by replacing the normal biblical preposition for the verb "return," namely, "to [you]" by "before [you]."

The climax of "before you" is enhanced by the resulting rhyme scheme as can easily be seen from the way the blessing is charted out below:

a                       b                   c
hashivenu         avinu              le-toratekha

karvenu             malkenu          le-avodatekha

ve-hazerenu     be-teshuvah     shelemah lefanekha

The rhyme scheme of strophes 1 and 2 is a a b, whereas strophe 3 is a c b. The reversing of the pattern from a b c to a c b in the final strophe allows the rhyme scheme to achieve near-perfect symmetry.

The significance of the location of this blessing on Torah in the redemptive scheme is highlighted by the following comparison of blessing 7 with the biblical mint whence it was coined: Ps. 119:153-54     Blessing

A. See my affliction and rescue me,     A. See our affliction

B. for I have not neglected Your Torah.

C. Champion my cause and redeem me.     C. Champion our cause and redeem us.

Besides the standard change from Bible to liturgy of singular to plural, both Psalm and blessing assume that redemption is grounded in Torah. What the former has to state, the latter, by virtue of its strategic position in the order ofthe Amidah, can presume.

In sum, the individual deliverance motif of blessing 7 extends the personal redemptive scenario to four blessings: the understanding graciously granted by God in blessing 4 is pressed into the return to Torah, et al., of blessing 5, which in turn sparks the awareness of sin that leads to the seeking of forgiveness of blessing 6, which in turn paves smooth the way for the atonementof personal redemption of blessing 7.

B. Blessings 8-9

After the four blessing unit delineating the process of personal redemption come blessings 8 and 9. According to Abudarham, they are juxtaposed because after praying for "the redemption of his soul and health for his body, one prays for sustenance to preserve the life of body and soul." This, however, fails to do justice to the specifics of blessings 8 and 9, which focus not only on the substance of health and sustenance but also on the restoration of bodily vigor along with the maintenance and revival agricultural prosperity. Both are presented as divine involvements in the natural process comparable to redemption. As the Midrash says, "As the sick looks to relief, so Israellooks to redemption."  For the worshiper, they evidence in the natural realm the same reversal of destiny or saving grace that is available in the human realm through personal redemption. Indeed, the themes of seasonal revival and healing the sick are also associated with resurrection in blessing 2, as we shall see,as well as in those versions of the blessing for the new month that pray for "timely rains, complete recovery, and speedy redemption."

The rhetoric of these blessings flows through the furrows plowed by the biblical rhetoric of redemption. As there so here, physical and natural transformations are indicative of historical transformations. If the desert can bloom, the flowering of Israel's redemption cannot be far off, argues Isaiah who goes on to predict:

The lame shall leap like deer ...
Waters shall burst forth in the desert ....
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come with shouting to Zion (Isa. 35:6,10).

In all, the first two units of the intermediate blessings (4-9) present three accessible dimensions of redemption in order to sustain the hope for the not yet available national redemption. All three involve a positive reversal of fortunes. The guilty are forgiven, the sick are healed, and the earth becomes fertile. Their location before the unit on national redemption (10-15),enhances the plausibility of that grand reversal of fortunes. The need for enhancing the plausibility of national redemption is due to the absence ofcorrelates in experience. This is all the more reason for using the experience of personal healing and recovery et al. to render the faith in national healing and recovery believable.