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The Current Study Unit -- by R.Kimelman (Unit 8)

THE SHEMA LITURGY

This is the second installment of our study of the Shema liturgy. The full essay with documentation will appear in the first issue of K'nishta, a journal dedicated to the liturgy and the synagaogue from Bar-Ilan University. This and the next several installments focus on the three blessings of the Shema. It starts out with pointing out the common rhetorical structure of them all and then analyses each separately and finally together.

Some of the questions you might want to raise in our discussion are:

1. What can make the creation theology of the first blessing as persuasive today as it was in Antiquity?

2. Are the varying experiences of day and night in Antiquity as sharp in our day? If not, are there any ramifications?

3. Can the approach of the liturgy toward darkness be applied to evil?

4. How can we get biblically illiterate congregations to appreciate biblically-based liturgies?

D. THE BLESSINGS OF THE SHEMA

At the end of the previous unit (Shema I) we saw that neither Maimonides nor Nahum Sarna provided an adequate account of the presence and function of the redemptive motif in the third paragrph of the Shema. These failures underscore the need for an alternative explanation of the whole tri-partite unit. Such an explanation needs to account for the incorporation of the redemptive motif while showing that the thematic unfolding of the Shema and it blessings conspires to deliver a message greater than its parts. Whatever the original motivation for the sequencing of the three sections of the Shema, the liturgical understanding of the sequence should be discernible by correlating the blessing framework with its biblical core.

Such a correlation for analytical reasons will be linear, following the order of the motifs of the blessings. A linear reading alone, however, turns out to be ultimately misleading since, as we shall see, it creates the impression that the goal of the whole composition is its final motif, namely, redemption. On the other hand, as we shall see, a chiastic reading by virtue of its pyramidal structure underscores the centrality of the realization of divine sovereignty. Since this theme unifies the whole composition, it is clear that a linear reading must give way before a chiastic one.

As the unifying theme of the Shema and its blessings, the realization of divine sovereignty is refracted through the motifs of creation, revelation, and redemption. Having its own blessing, each motif constitutes a movement of the Shema composition. The two on creation and revelation precede the Shema, whereas the one on redemption succeeds it. In the first and third movements of creation and redemption, the theme of divine sovereignty is reinforced by the testimony of celestial and terrestrial choirs. Through the orchestration of these heavenly and earthly realms, divine sovereignty is attested to throughout the universe. By including references to past as well as present, heaven as well as earth, the liturgy presents the whole from the perspective of an omniscient narrator.

It is the correlation between the blessing framework and the three biblical sections that lends architectonic structure to the whole composition. The perorations (hatimah/hitum) that encapsulate the themes of the blessings make this explicit. According to them, the first morning blessing celebrates God as creator of the luminaries, whereas the first evening blessing celebrates God as orchestrator of the onset of evening. Both share the motif of creation. In both morning and evening services, the second blessing celebrates God as lover/chooser of Israel, whereas the third celebrates God as redeemer of Israel.

All the blessings possess a common rhetorical structure. The structure consists of three dimensions: a theological affirmation, a divine idea-event, and an experiential link. By anchoring divine sovereignty in the divine idea-events of creation, revelation, or redemption, followed by a parallel in experience, the argument for such sovereignty is enhanced. All three blessings are structured so as to induce in the worshiper a perception of reality that confirms its theological agendum. It is the rooting of these idea-events in experience that makes them more palpable while rendering the worshiper more receptive to the theological agendum. Martin Buber penetrated to the significance of the role of this experiential component in theological affirmation by noting that "both creation and redemption are true only on the premise that revelation is a present experience." This linkage between theology and experience informs, as we shall see, the rhetorical structure of the liturgy.

Anchoring the events of creation, revelation, and redemption in human reality renders the sovereignty of God more realizable. By mining human experience for intimations of these idea-events, they become amenable to prayer. The purpose of the prayer is to get the worshiper to construe his/her experience in a manner that will confirm its theological agendum. It is the convergence of experience and theology that makes the theology plausible. Indeed, the rhetorical strategy succeeds as the receptivity to the theology increases.

1. THE FIRST BLESSING

The structure of the opening blessings of the morning and evening service exemplifies the relationship between experience and event as well as between event and theology. The opening argument whose conclusion is encapsulated in the peroration of the morning blessing reads as follows:

1. Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the world

2. (Who) forms light and creates darkness

3. (Who) makes peace and creates all.

4. Who illumines the earth and its residents with mercy.

5. And with His goodness renews every day continually the work of creation.

6. "How numerous/great are Your works O Lord, all of them You fashioned in wisdom, the earth is full of Your masterpieces."

7. O Sovereign (who) alone was exalted from then,

8. Praised, glorified, and elevated from days of old.

9. Lord of the world/eternity with Your manifold mercies have mercy on us.

............

10. Blessed are You, Creator of the luminaries.

Line 1, "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the world," is the standard six word Hebrew formula that opens all official blessings. Lines 2-3 have as their intertext Isa. 45:7 with which it is identical save that the ending "creates all" replaces the original "creates evil." The claim that Isa. 45:7 is the intertext implies that the liturgical text is to be understood in the light of it. The correct construal of meaning takes place in the mind of the reader who juxtaposes both texts. It is through the superimposition of the biblical text on the liturgical text that the liturgical meaning coalesces. In other words, the meaning of the liturgy exists not so much in the liturgical text per se as in the interaction between the liturgical text and the biblical intertext in the mind of the reader. Meaning here takes place between texts rather than within them.

What is the meaning that results when the biblical text is placed, as it were, behind the liturgical text? The recognition of the Isaianic verse that lies behind the liturgical text primes the reader to expect that "creates evil" will parallel "creates darkness." The expectation of "evil," however, is subverted by the presence of "all." The move from evil to all changes nothing theologically, as Isaiah himself goes on to say, "I the Lord do all these things," but it does affect a change in the mind of the worshiper. By subverting the expectation of "evil" with "all," the positive aspect of God is highlighted through removal of the negative. What is out of sight is out of mind. The exchange of "all" for "evil" along with the mention, in line 4, of the sunlight being brought on with mercy, sets the stage for the upcoming request of line 9: "with your manifold mercies have mercy upon us." Since God's mercy extends to the earth, so goes the argument, it should surely extend to us. In addition, by replacing "evil" with "all" darkness is disassociated from evil through dismembering the parallel between them. This disassociation of evil from darkness adumbrates the theme of the evening blessing while linking the two. The severing of the literary parallel paves the way for the severing of the metaphysical one. The goal is the removal of darkness from the realm of evil or chaos by subsuming it under the realm of divine sovereignty.

The agendum of the blessing is to present God as creator and hence as mon-arch, i.e., single ruler. In order to bring about the acceptance of its agendum the blessing attunes the worshiper to the diurnal renewal of the wonders of the universe. It works at sparking astonishment at the intricate, ingeniously formed creation while attributing the light and warmth of the daily sunrise to divine compassion. The argument revolves around solidifying the linkage between the experience of light and the idea of creation. Accordingly, it is optimally said at sunrise. Having just experienced the dark and the cold, the worshiper is predisposed to grasp the sun's rays as expressions of divine mercy which in turn brings to mind His goodness at renewing the works of creation (lines 4-5). Similarly in a strophe of the paytanic preface to this blessing on the Sabbath, it states, "Who illumines the whole world and its inhabitants which He created with mercy." It is precisely this perspective on sunrise that renders it a signifier of creation and makes creation present and available by experiencing it as renewed daily.

This train of thought culminates in line 6 by the ejaculation of wonder -- "How numerous/great are Your works O Lord, all of them You fashioned in wisdom, the earth is full of Your masterpieces." This strophe is actually a verse (Ps. 104:24) without the normal indications of citations such as "as it says." A biblically conversant reader will realize that the creation narrative of Genesis is being evoked just as it is evoked in the next strophe, lines 7-8, which concludes with the idea that the sovereign God has reigned alone since then. "Then" (me'az) refers to the aforementioned work of creation. The reference to creation is seconded by the parallel phrase "elevated from days of old" (mi-mot `olam). The two synonyms for "ancient times" me'az and mi-mot `olam together echo the creation imagery of Psalm 93 where they again parallel each other. Psalm 93 adduces the stability of the world to support its thesis that God has reigned from then (me'az), i.e. from creation, and from ever (me`olam). It is clear that the rhetoric of the blessing is predicated upon hearing its biblical echoes.

The difference between the liturgical pointer to creation and that of Psalms is instructive. Whereas Psalm 93 uses the stability of the world to point to God's sovereignty; the blessing uses the renewal of creation to do so. In the former, the increased sense of security enhances the thesis of divine control; in the latter, the experience of wonder enhances the thesis of divine creation. Thus the language of Psalm 93 is not just being reused but rethematized to serve the thesis of the blessing. The significance of the thesis of the linkage between wonder and creation is seconded by the concluding section where the worshiper extols the sovereign God who alone performs wonders and renews creation.

The linkage among wonder, creation, and Creator coincides with the then current philosophical speculation. On the Jewish side, Philo said:

"Struck with admiration and astonishment they [the philosophers] arrived at a conception according with what they beheld, that surely all these beauties and this transcendent order has not come into being automatically but by the handiwork of an architect and world-maker."

On the pagan side, the philosopher Sallustius said: "Whence comes the ordering of the world if there is no ordering power?" Although the standard cosmological argument may lie behind the position of Philo and the blessing, it does not exhaust it. The cosmological argument, as found, say, in the Wisdom of Solomon, states: "From the greatness and beauty of created things, is their author correspondingly perceived" (13:5). For Philo and the blessing, however, it is precisely the added element of wonder that renders such an argument cogent. For Philo, the wonder consists of the astonishment at the transcendent order; for the blessing, it is of the grandeur of creation. As Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, "Awareness of the divine begins with wonder," and ends with "the discovery of the world as an allusion to God." By apprehending the world through the lens of radical amazement, according to the blessing, the creation and its corrolary of divine sovereignty is made believable.

In contrast to the focus on the wonder of the new-born day in the morning blessing, the focus of the opening blessing of the evening service is on the regularity of the predictable night. Nonetheless, it seconds the thesis of divine sovereignty in the following manner:

1. Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the universe

2. Who with His word b r i n g s on evening [night].

3. Who in wisdom o p e n s the gates (of dawn) and in understanding c h a n g e s the times (i.e., of the day) [day, night].

4. A l t e r n a t i n g the times and a r r a n g i n g the stars in their watches according to His will [day, night],

5. He c r e a t e s day and night [day, night].

6. He r o l l s away light before darkness [day/night] and darkness before light [night/day].

7. He c a u s e s day to pass and b r i n g s night [day, night]

8. And d i s t i n g u i s h e s between day and night [day, night].

9. Lord of (the heavenly) Hosts is His name

10. May the enduring, living God constantly reign over us forever.

11. Blessed are You, Lord, Who brings on evenings [night].

This dusk or tellurion prayer is marked by repeated variations on the cyclical changes from light to darkness. The framing strophes with their repetition of "brings on evening" (2 and 11) mark the onset of night, whereas each internal strophe, as noted in the brackets, mentions day followed by night. The pervasive redundancy serves to point out the regularity and predictability of the heavenly changes at dusk in order to allay apprehensions of chaos in the face of the enveloping darkness. The measured quasi-symmetrical lines reflect the symmetry and regularity of the universe. The ten transitive verbs (italicized and spread out, here) can even point to an all-pervasive divine activity possibly redolent of the ten-fold repetition of "God said" in the creation narrative. The implied analogy between the poetic function of language and the creative activity of God informs the rhetoric of the blessing.

By disclosing how the night is orderly, coherent, and skillfully patterned, dusk now bears witness to structure. Instead of confusion, optimal divine control prevails. Evening is no longer the moment when the contours of creation become dissolved into primordial chaos. Instead, night, as in the biblical creation narrative, has been wrested from the vestiges of the darkness and formlessness of creation and pressed into the service of a rhythmic and beneficial creative order. As light unfailingly rolls away before darkness, so darkness unfailingly rolls away before light (line 6). As the creation narrative, our prayer apportions to darkness its time. Assigned a role in the overall structure of the cosmos, darkness no longer represents anti-structure. Since the order of the day does not collapse before any disorder of night, the recognition of nocturnal structure strengthens feelings of security as it dispels fear of pandemonium.

Such a sense of security is reinforced by deploying the military metaphor of "the stars in their watches" (line 4) as opposed to the more standard "stars in their courses." In sum, the realization that God is the author of night as He is of day sunders the nexus between night and chaos.

The change of the evening guard stars, as it were, a cast of thousands. In order to produce a splendidly orchestrated twilight spectacle, every role is said to be synchronized by divine speech in a manner evocative of Creation itself. Presenting such an orderly change of stage and scenery bestirs in the worshiper the desire to have the great Designer extend His reign over the natural world to the human one (line 10). Even in those versions where this request is absent, evidence of God's sovereign power in structuring the evening suffices to evoke the kingship motif.

The morning and evening prayers both mine the transformations of the day for evidence of divine sovereignty. They also adduce the created order as evidence of divine wisdom. Despite the commonality, it is the contrast between the argument from day as opposed to that of night that is instructive. The problem of the day is the loss of religious resonance once its perceived regularity is taken for granted. As Aristotle noted, "it is really our too great familiarity with the marvels of nature that blind us to their meaning." The tactic of the blessing is to remove, to use the phrase of Coleridge, the "film of familiarity" that blinds us to the wonders of creation. As a static natural order enhances the plausibility of the eternity of matter, so perpetual newness plants the seeds of belief in creation. The morning blessing succeeds to the degree that the worshiper perceives the newness of the day as indicating divine creation.

The problem of the night is the fear of portending chaos. The tactic of the blessing is to throw into relief the nocturnal structure as evidence of divine architecture. This follows the thinking of those contemporaneous philosophers about whom Cicero said:

"When they had seen its definite and regular motions, and all its phenomena controlled by fixed system and unchanging uniformity, they infer the presence not merely of an inhabitant of this celestial and divine abode, but also of a ruler and governor, the architect as it were of this mighty and monumental structure."

Philo made a similar point by emphasizing the rhythmic order of the heavens. He argues that whoever beholds --

"the yearly seasons passing into each other, and then the sun and moon ruling the day and night, and the other heavenly bodies fixed of planetary and the whole firmament revolving in rhythmic order, must he not naturally or rather necessarily gain the conception of the Maker and Father and Ruler."

Both Cicero and Philo point to how the blessing is able to induce the worshiper to perceive the regularity of the night as an indicator of divine control. It is precisely the emphasis on divine control which vitiates any claim to theological dualism.

The distinction between the novelty of the day and the regularity of the night is ascribed to R. Abbahu who noted that God is exalted in the morning for constant daily renewal of creation and lauded in the evening for bringing on the evening twilight. Despite the different foci, the strategy of both morning and evening blessing turns out to be an argument for the behind-the-scenes presence of a divine Director.

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